Hi,

In Windows Live Messenger Wave 3 there was a feature called Hand Writing which allowed users to draw something and send it to the other user in a regular msn conversation.  I am unable to find this feature in Messenger Wave 4 Beta.  I would like to know what happened to this feature or is there something I need to do to enable it.  If this feature was removed, I would like to request this feature to be added to Messenger Wave 4.

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The Ink feature was fun and unique to Messenger.  It was a difficult decision but we had to remove the feature in wave 4 for the following reasons:

- After some major layout refactoring work in the product a number of bugs were introduced to Ink that would have been costly to fix.  It was simply time we couldn't afford.

- Though the feature was fun to try out, usage data shows Ink was not highly used.  It was understanble because the feature didn't really accomplish any scenario very well. Writing words with the feature was difficult and doesn't produce polished results (words always come out as barely readable scrawls).  The canvas is also too small to make drawings that are truly expressive or interesting to look at (or really looked like anything).  There were scenarios that we thought would have been interesting, like enabling doddling on shared photos (mustache on faces) etc, but as a team we decided that Ink was not an investment area for this wave.


I think Ink has tremendous potential, especially when combined with touch interfaces.  We'll definitely be working hard to look at re-enabling the Ink scenarios in the next wave.  If you were using Ink in wave 3 for specific scenarios and found it useful, please tell us what those scenarios are, and also ways you think it can be improved. 


Alton Report as Abuse

A specific scenario whcih I used ink for is when I am trying to explain something to one of my contacts, I can easily draw a rough diagram or so to help with explaining to that person.  If there wasnt much space to draw by default, I had the ability to make the drawing canvas larger and fit in whatever I was drawing.Report as Abuse

There are many scenarios that ink was used in, even though not used widely. Like Sammy said, using it to help contacts or explain something more clearly that could be explained through a picture rather than text. Plus it was also used by myself for a little fun and being able to draw like that instead of type was actually a nice perk that MSN had and I really liked. It's something none of the other IM clients out there had, unless you got a stupid plugin or add-on which never really worked correctly which is why MSN stood in the top for that. It worked without an add-on and something you guys had over other clients.Report as Abuse

Same here, it's nice to explain or exemplify things (especially when studying for the college exams with friends). I wonder if this can't be brought back as an Activity or something similar that opens a side canvas for drawing. It would also be cool to have some drawing tools such as lines, squares and circles.

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As a university student, I frequently use the Ink feature to explain things to my friends.  Report as Abuse

I normally use it to illustrate ideas which cannot put into words like a quick map of something, a maths formula, a quick sketch picture for fun. 
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I came here checking to see if there was a resolution on an issue related to the Ink feature, hoping it had been addressed in wave 4. However, it shocked me to have discovered such a great feature has been removed.

I believe that part of the reason why this feature was not as highly used was mostly the result of a basic issue with it: If the user spent more than a certain period of time (either drawing or writing), the ink message would not be sent. ("Your ink message could not be delivered to all recipients.")

People on-line had found this issue and the only workaround was "don't spend too much time nor effort on your ink message". This contributed to use the feature sparingly and wait for the next version to correct this faulty behavior.

Another factor that reduced the usage of the feature was the fact that there was no way to author the ink messages using another program (Like One Note) and then paste the message on MSN as an ink message. Instead, the Ink copied would be turned into a GIF that would be sent to the other contact (Which made people decide to use a picture editor for them to compose their pictures rather than using applications like One Note). Moreover, if an ink message had previously been sent into a conversation, copied and then pasted into the same conversation, the ink message would be sent as a GIF, not allowing the edition of the ink message.

Yet another factor would be another bug: Some times when ctrl+Z was pressed, the whole canvas would become white and the author would believe their ink message was lost (Which was not completely true, they only needed to switch to the regular text message mode and back to the handwriting mode)

So, summarizing, these are some of the factors that impacted the usage of such a promising feature:
1.- The ink messages would not be sent if the user spent more than 15-30 seconds authoring it
2.- There was no way to create an ink message outside of Messenger
3.- There was no way to paste an ink message into the conversation Window without it being turned into GIF
4.- There was no way to edit an ink message authored in Messenger
5.- Sometimes Ctrl+Z would clear the canvas, making the author believe the ink message was lost
6.- There is no straight forward way to save an ink message created on Messenger (Yet, they can be copied to One Note and still be treated as ink)

(More...)Report as Abuse

(Continued from above...)

There are more reasons that would result in the low usage of the feature (Like the reduced amount of colors available for the ink, for example), but the ones described above affected the user's perception of the stability of the feature and decreased the use of it.

However, there are several scenarios where this feature can be used (And some of them have already been provided in this thread):
1.- Drawing simple diagrams like:
   - Simple maps (Here is how you get to College once you get off the bus)
   - Subject Tutoring (Math, Geometry, Physics, Chemestry, Psychology, Architecture) (This is an pentagon, and this is a cylinder, the formula to calculate the area of a pentagon is... And the formula to calculate the volume of a cylinder is...)
   - Switch/Button Positioning in Artifacts (The red button is the on/off switch, avoid pressing it, the blue button at the bottom is the one you should press)
   - Product sketching (This is how it would look like if we put it together with the bolts on the table)
2.- Drawing custom emoticons
3.- Drawing pictures:
    - Simple comic characters
    - Complex characters
    - Portraits
    - Simple color schema for characters/backgrounds
4.- Sharing Notes and Diagrams from One Note

In my case, I was able to draw a Kermit and Big Bird for a friend on the window at one point. Resizing the canvas is easy and straight forward (As mentioned by somebody else). I also drew the face of a dog (I had to draw it over 10 times, so at the end I knew the strokes by heart and didn't get to color it in detail due to the issue already mentioned in this reply)

The potential of a better integration with One Note is something that should not be overlooked. If this thread is read carefully, it is easy to see that people who would use this feature the most are highschool/college students, who might already be using One Note, understand its capabilities and would like to share with their contacts (Granted, One Note has a great way to share note books, but this would allow sharing of simple notes when one party doesn't have One Note or One Note is simply not installed currently on that machine)

I truly hope that this is taken in consideration and I am sorry about the double-post and long messages.

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The removal of the inking feature from Messenger Wave 4 has a huge impact on those of us with slate tablet PCs.  It was so easy in Wave 3 to send a quick, handwritten message to someone without having to rely on the tablet input panel for entering handwriting and converting it to text.  Please, please, please bring back the inking feature to Wave 4!!

-Reed
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