Chapter 5: The Windows 8 Messaging App
In This Chapter
Introducing the tiled Messaging app
Finding friends
Chatting with friends
Pretending you’re offline
Instant messaging (IM) in the Microsoft milieu has gone through zillions of changes — not in the product itself, which hasn’t changed all that much, but in the way it’s been presented, marketed, and tucked into all sorts of strange parts of the Microsoft empire.
When Windows XP ruled the roost, there was Windows Messenger, MSN Messenger, and .NET Messenger, all from Microsoft, each with its own foibles and bumbles. Some versions of some Microsoft IM programs wouldn’t even talk to others.
With Vista and through Windows 7, some sanity returned to Microsoft’s instant messaging mess: Exactly one offering existed, and it had a funny name — Windows Live Messenger.
Now everything’s new and improved, and there’s Messaging, as in the Windows 8 tiled Messaging app. Messaging is based on the same underlying Messenger engine — in Messaging, ...
