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Sign-in support for multiple IDsDo you have multiple Windows Live ID accounts? Do you use the same Windows account with more than one person? Do you switch between these accounts frequently? If you answered yes to these questions, you’re in for some good news!
Today we are shipping the Windows Live Sign-in Assistant which is an Internet Explorer add-on that comes included with Windows Live Smart Clients, such as Windows Live Messenger. The goal of this add-on is to help make your sign-in experience faster and more convenient for users that have more than one Windows Live ID account.
Easily choose which account you want to use
Multiple Windows Live ID accounts are often used on a particular computer, either because multiple people share a computer (like in a family home), or, because you are an individual user with multiple accounts (for example, separate accounts for ‘work’ and ‘home’). A key feature that Windows Live ID sign-in experience will offer is the ability for our users to save multiple credentials on their machine. These multiple accounts will be shown as a list on the sign-in page – you’re even able to save your password for each of these accounts, eliminating the need to re-type your password everytime you want to change your identity! (Note: if you use a shared/public computer, we do not recommend saving your password) Take a look at this screenshot taken from one of our test environments:
(click to enlarge): True Password Persistence!
Before the Windows Live Sign-in Assistant, the ‘save my password’ option caused your sign-in state to be persisted across multiple browser sessions (it was a persistent cookie), but hitting “sign-out” at any page would delete the cookie and the next time you wanted to log in, you were prompted for your password again.
This was a frustrating experience for users.
With the Sign-in Assistant installed, the ‘save my password’ box will work just like it does in Messenger – it will keep the password in a local credential store (we use the Windows Credential Manager). If you’ve chosen to save your password, all it takes to sign in is a single click on the appropriate user tile. This is a huge improvement over the previous experience. We’ve also made it very easy for you to remove your saved password, just click on “remove” link and the member name and password are deleted from the credential store. You are in still in control of when your credentials are saved.
One credential list shared by Windows Live smart clients and browser applications
The list of users that is shown on the sign-in page is actually the same saved user list used by Windows Live desktop applications, meaning that if you save a credential in Windows Live Messenger, it will be shown by your browser on the Windows Live ID sign-in page! If you choose to “save my password” on the Windows Live sign-in page, your username and password will show up on the user list in Windows Live Messenger. This will unify the experience across Windows Live ID enabled applications. This also means that choosing “remove” on the Windows Live Sign-in page will remove the saved ID/password for all applications on your machine. This is a fundamental shift from our previous sign-in experience and different from other sign-in experience you may be using. However, the upside of this is that it unifies all the Windows Live services and clients as a single product under Windows Live ID.
How can you get the Sign-in Assistant, and when can I start using the new UI? You can get the Windows Live Sign in Assistant with the upcoming version of Windows Live Messenger 8.0 Beta (you can sign up for the beta at http://ideas.live.com). Make sure you check the box on install that says “Windows Live Sign-in Assistant”. The enhancements will be seen only on Windows Live sites which have the new Windows Live Sign-in UI enabled (checkout Lynn’s previous post on the new sign-in experience).
How does it work?
The Sign-in Assistant consists of two components – an ActiveX control and a browser helper object. These components provide an interface to our sign-in UI that allows it to make calls to the Windows Live ID client runtime libraries. Using those libraries, we are able to enumerate and perform functions on the accounts stored in the Windows Live common credential store. The common credential store is stored within the Windows Credential Manager and is where all of your Windows Live ID accounts get stored when you say “remember me” in Windows Live Messenger. In short, the BHO/ActiveX allows us to unite the user list between all Windows Live apps to enable rich scenarios without the limitations of HTTP cookies.
What are the implications to installing the Sign-in Assistant?
Installing the Sign-in Assistant simply means your sign-in experience will be more convenient and faster, especially for users who have more than one Windows Live ID. The sole purpose of the Sign-in Assistant is to enhance the Windows Live ID sign-in experience. The Sign-in Assistant contains no spyware, does not track your surfing patterns or behavior and is not related to the delivery of advertisements. If you decide that the Sign-in Assistant is not for you, you can disable it by going to the Tools menu in IE, selecting “Manage Add-ons”, highlighting “Windows Live Sign-in Helper”, and then choosing “Disable” in the settings box. Alternatively, you can remove it permanently by using the “Add/Remove Programs” dialogue in the Control Panel (it shows up as “Windows Live Sign-in Assistant”). That said, we hope that you’ll like the enhanced sign-in experience and choose to keep the Sign-in Assistant running!
That’s all for now
We’re very excited about the richness of the sign-in experience and the scenarios we’ll be able to unlock in the future, including authentication state transfer from the web to a desktop client (we’ll post more on this in the near future)!
Make sure you check the “install windows live sign-in assistant” box when you install the upcoming version of Windows Live Messenger 8.0 beta and don’t forget to leave us feedback (good or bad) after you’ve tried it out.
-Mark Wong and Erren Lester, Program Managers
FAQs
New! Q: I installed the Live Messenger beta and the Windows Live Sign-in Assistant but I only see a single user on the sign-in screen. What's going on? A: For those having troubles getting the multi-account feature on sign-in, it's likely because you are either (a) using a browser other than Internet Explorer, or (b) previously installed a Live Messenger beta with an old build of the Sign-in Assistant.
If you fall into (a), you can solve it by using IE :) We wanted to support more browsers in this initial release, but had to make some feature cuts along the way to ensure we shipped on time. We are actively looking at increasing non-IE browser support in the future.
If you fall into (b), use "Add/Remove Programs" in Control Panel and uninstall both Live Messenger and The "Windows Live Sign-in Assistant". Then you can reinstall the official Live Messenger Beta from http://ideas.live.com. This official beta version will install the correct, and working, version of the Sign-in Assistant for you.
Q: You have 2 components, a BHO portion and an ActiveX control, what does the BHO component do?
A: The BHO inspects some of the traffic to and from the login.live.com domain during sign-in. The BHO only acts when data is coming from or going to this domain. We do not save or track your internet usage. We only do things like save passwords and get and save authentication states.
Q: Oh, ok, so you save my passwords and use them to help me sign-in at Live.com. What other passwords does Microsoft monitor and save?
A: None, we only look and save your Windows LiveID information, and only if you explicitly choose ‘remember me’ or ‘remember my password’. If you don’t have the Sign-in Assistant installed, our behavior is the same as in the past strictly utilizing HTTP cookies. We will never store, save, or otherwise interact with any data that is not directly relevant to authentication with a Windows Live ID. For more information about how our service handles your personal information, check out the official Microsoft Online Services privacy policy. Comments (278)
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