I’ve been sitting on this one for a while, but it’s finally time to push it out the door. XBList 3.1 doesn’t have any revolutionary changes, but it’s got a lot of polish and nice little fixes and features that are sure to make life better for XBList users. The most noticeable new enhancements are that I’ve gotten XBList to use your system default font now (this means Vista users get the lovely Segoe UI font), and the popup notifications have been transformed from Windows 95-style to Windows Vista style.
I also added a lot of little features people have been asking for. There are now options for XBList to be on top of all windows, to start up with Windows, and to start minimized. You can compose a new message to your friend by just double clicking their name. I’ve also fixed a bug where two people who share a computer couldn’t both run their own copies XBList.
This release also includes some nice features for Vista users. First, it includes a manifest, so there will be less compatibility warnings and such. Next, it’ll offer to fix your Internet Settings automatically so that signing in under Vista is smoother. I’ve also built a completely new installer using WiX, which is prettier, smaller, and more functional.
I encourage anyone who’s interested to look at the changelog for the full list of updates. One thing you might notice is that I’ve added some backend support for making a Windows Sidebar Gadget that displays your friends list. I can’t promise I’ll get around to it (I’ve had bad experiences with Gadgets before), but it’s nice to know the capability is there.
I really thought that by now I’d be announcing that XBList is totally obsolete, for two reasons. The first is Games For Windows – LIVE, which aims to bring the Xbox Live experience to PC games. I tried out the beta, and while it’s neat, there’s no indication Microsoft is coming out with an XBList-style application for the Windows desktop that’ll show you your friends. The second reason was the new Windows Messenger integration in the Spring Dashboard Update. I love this, but half my friends aren’t on Windows Messenger anyway, and I can’t see people’s Xbox status from Adium, Trillian, or Meebo, so I’ll keep using XBList to know who’s ready to play some Halo 3 (beta). I hope everyone else continues to find it useful as well.
Tags: friends list, XBList, xbox, Xbox 360, xbox live
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I’ve been using this for a while now. I too believe that it would become somewhat obsolete when the Live Anywhere infrastructure was first announced and I was even excited about it but Microsoft seems like they are going NOWHERE with their implementation.
I feel like they are doing it the wrong way. The correct way being YOUR way. :)
On the update itself:
- I love the new pop-up but I would really like to be able to dismiss it easier. I think it should be done the same way Google Talk does it. By that I mean that a right click would dismiss it (and still keep the X button), a mouse hover should keep it “alive” (if this isn’t already like that) and that a left click should open the XBList window (if minimized).
- I also believe that (on the main dialog) the minimize button should minimize XBList to the Taskbar and that the X button should minimize it to the Tray. As it is now, when X is pressed it kills the application. I very often press X to minimize (because of other application behaviors) and end up killing the app.
- Last but not least, I was wondering if XBList would be able (somewhere in the future) to log-in using a Firefox cookie (or any default browser) instead of an IE cookie? I am asking this because I usually clear all cookies from IE (and end up deleting my Xbox.com cookie) for fear of the infamous Tracking Cookies and I was a “select” number of cookies i “need” (logins, settings, etc.) for some website that are not deleted with Firefox when I clear my cache.
In any case, this is awesome. Thanks so much!
I’ll look into being able to dismiss the popups with a right click. I don’t know that I’d think to do that – as it is, you can just hit the “close” box on the popup to dismiss it earlier. As you said, hovering will make it stay longer.
The way XBList does minimize-to-tray is the correct way for Windows applications to do minimize-to-tray. I don’t think I’ll be changing that.
As for logging on using Firefox cookies… no. But, in the future I hope to not have to use that whole hacky “hijack an IE instance” scheme for login anyway.
Any plans for a lighter version of this to live in the Vista Sidebar? Or maybe convert the full version into a sidebar gadget? Would be quite cool no?
As I mention in the post, I’ve got XBList set up to have a Sidebar Gadget in the future, but I’m not sure if I actually want to write it. Maybe someday…
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