Figure 1   Figure 2   Figure 3   Figure 4   Figure 5

Contents at a Glance Introduction Features Preference Storage for Windows Live Spaces Author Mode Instruction Contact me Appendix I - Introduction to Book List Manifest Appendix II - DISCLAIMER Appendix III - Q & A   Introduction       Thanks for paying attention to Book List Gadget for Windows Live Spaces.     It's my first shippable gadget for Spaces. At first, building a book list for Windows Live Space is just for the purpose of providing the missing function for China market (The Spaces for China market has not a book list with images. Unluckily, my passort was registered from China but I'm a crazy reader and most of my books are brought from Amazon!). But during my work, a desire to make it better increased stronger and stronger in my mind. It's just my style. At last, I built a book list which can be customized and the gadgets will display by the owner's settings. Basicly, it will use the information from the owner. The details from Amazon will be shown if the ower provides the ISBN and something is missing. Want to have a list in the most convenient way? Just provide a list of ISBNs and the gadget will automatically get all the information you need.     Well, let's begin.     Features       Please see Figure 1-3. You can possibly gain a proper impression what the gadget look like. As you can see it, it's similar with the book list of Windows Live Spaces. Here're the basic functions of the gadget: It shows the authors, the title and the publisher.   The text to show can be given by the owner or from Amazon if ISBNs are provided. All the texts will link to some place - if you need them to do so. The format of texts can be defined by the ower by 'template'. The owner can give a title to the book list. The owner can set the position of images - left or right. The details can be show/close by a switch for each book. The details are definitely from Amazon when the gadget is loaded. The color of background, plain texts, anchor links and separate line can be defined by owner. It means the gadget can be configured to work with almost all the themes.   Preference Storage for Windows Live Spaces       All the gadgets need saving and loading preferences. Unfortunately, Windows Live Spaces Gadgets haven't build-in function of preferences preserving (It's unlike gadgets for Windows Live since there's a huge difference between them and it will cause serious security and perf issues).       For the reason of that, I wrote a simple storage for saving preferences. It's really simple, not fully stress tested and actually I've no idea whether it's reliable or not (I've tried my best but who knows the host service). So please DO NOT try to break the storage. It seems I've accepted the issues which should be assumed by Windows Live - it's not interesting - wish my service can work properly longer.       Please click here to visit the sign up page (Figure 4) and sign up your space name with password (Your password will be hashed and store into database and will never exist in clear text). And, you can change your password in change password page (Figure 5). Please be careful that you must only register the name of your own space WITHOUT 'space.live.com' (e.g. I should register 'jeffreyzhao1985' as my space name). Any mistake could cause another user's being not able to register. If you find that your space name has been registered by others, please contact me ASAP.   Author Mode Instruction       After you add the book list gadget into your space, a control panel like Figure 3 will occurred.       Manifest Url is the url of book list manifest provided by the owner. The manifest is an xml in a specific schema. The schema will be described in Appendix I.       Title...seems it's self-explanatory enough.       Template is the format to show a single book's title, author and publisher. A template is a case-sensitive string contains '{Title}', '{Author}' and '{Publisher}'. They will be replaced by the corresponding information of book. Template is an optional section. If the user leave it blank, the gadget will use '{Author}: {Title} - {Publisher}' as template by default.       Image's Position - left or right.       And then, there're four colors for the owner to input. You can just use "Black" or "White" to indicated a color (All the colors can be found here). Also, a standard #RRGGBB color format can be used.       At last, fill in the password and click Save button to the save your settings. Please register the storage for you space before your saving.     Contact me       If you found any bugs or you have any suggests, please feel free to contact me via E-mail. My E-mail address is jeffreyzhao1985@hotmail.com. Also, you can just reply the entry and leave any message here.       I'm always waiting for your feedback.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<Books>

    <Book ISBN="0735621632" />

    <Book ISBN="0735619670" />

    <Book ISBN="0201799405" />

</Books>

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<Books>

    <Book ISBN="0735619670" />

    <Book>

        <Title url="http://www.samplebook.com">Sample Book</Title>

        <Author url="http://www.author1.com">Author 1</Author>

        <Author url="http://www.author2.com">Author 2</Author>

        <Publisher url="http://www.samplepublisher.com">Sample Publisher</Publisher>

    </Book>

</Books>

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<Books>

    <Book ISBN="0735619670" />

    <Book ISBN="0201799405">

        <Title>Sample Book</Title>

        <Author url="http://www.author1.com">Author 1</Author>

        <Author url="http://www.author2.com">Author 2</Author>

    </Book>

</Books>

1. 客户端用户使用一个ID与服务器进行交互，每个用户有个独立ID，该ID公开。
2. 用户无口令。
3. 客户端和服务器端的交互代码公开。
4. 无任何加密连接措施，交互的内容为明文。
5. 无法得到连接条件的任何信息，比如连接的对方IP等，也就是说，获得认证对方用户只有ID一个信息。

• The portal site http://www.live.com has changed the UI several days ago and became more elegance. But the most interesting feature (is it?) to me is it reduced the bugs like memory/CPU leak (and I can finally access the site smoothly from the poor internet connection "Tie Tong"). It's not so easy to make this achievement since the site is too dynamic to be controlled, as almost all the Ajax/javascript programmer know. What I'm think about is the custom and 3th party Gadgets. It can hardly limit all the extentions in an open features in a critera of high quality.
• The most famous product in MSN period (at least it is in China) - MSN Messenger - which has bees renamed as Live Messenger relased the final version today. It reduces the start-up time obviously and it's the best improvement, and ... the user can make a phone call via IM? I don't know what is that but I'm afraid that this feature can't be use in China.