Support Activities/Games
The MsgrConfig reply from the server contains 2 URLs:
<AppDirConfig> <AppDirPageURL> http://appdirectory.messenger.msn.com/AppDirectory/Directory.aspx?L=en-us </AppDirPageURL> <AppDirSeviceURL> http://appdirectory.messenger.msn.com/AppDirectory/AppDirectory.asmx </AppDirSeviceURL> </AppDirConfig>
The App Directory Service is a SOAP server which can be recreated easily in PHP, for example. Indeed, the WSDL (a file which describes the SOAP server requests and responses) file of the App Directory Service (used by Games and Activities) is available there:
There is also some information here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa751073.aspx This is part of the documention of the "Windows Live Messenger Activity SDK": https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa751024.aspx The SDK is available there: http://wayback.archive.org/web/20051104052000/http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/c/3/2c300000-e774-4e80-9682-9a01109fd309/messengerActivitySDK.zip
The App Directory page (I think this page was loaded when you clicked the "Activities" button) is also cached in the WayBack Archive:
It needs 5 images:
The File Sharing Activity seems to be cached in the Wayback Machine:
It requires an ActiveX:
(If you want to test, this page loads only in Internet Explorer as it requires an ActiveX. I tested using IE 11 under Windows 7. If you load it using Firefox or Chrome, the page will be blank.)
My understanding is that when a user clicked "File Sharing" under "Activities" menu:
- Because the "Activities" menu is actually a HTML file (see previous post), a Javascript function would transmit the Activity ID to MSN Messenger.
- MSN Messenger would query the App Directory SOAP Service using its "GetAppEntry" method with the requested Activity ID as a parameter.
- The App Directory SOAP Service will reply with a lot of data; including a URL field which should be the first url of this post.
- MSN Messenger enlarges the chat window and loads this URL on the right side.
Here is the (old) Tic Tac Toe: (It's an interesting game as it's actually a HTML/Javascript game: no ActiveX! Can be a good start to debug.)
http://wayback.archive.org/web/20031226111945id_/http://appdirectory.messenger.msn.com/AppDirectory/P4Apps/TicTacToe/tictactoe_en.htm http://wayback.archive.org/web/20070323200437id_/http://appdirectory.messenger.msn.com/AppDirectory/P4Apps/TicTacToe/empty.gif http://wayback.archive.org/web/20030731204453id_/http://appdirectory.messenger.msn.com/AppDirectory/P4Apps/TicTacToe/images/redo.bmp http://wayback.archive.org/web/20130703174717id_/http://appdirectory.messenger.msn.com/AppDirectory/P4Apps/TicTacToe/images/redx.bmp http://wayback.archive.org/web/20070831083510id_/http://appdirectory.messenger.msn.com/AppDirectory/P4Apps/TicTacToe/images/redxanim.gif http://wayback.archive.org/web/20070323200356id_/http://appdirectory.messenger.msn.com/AppDirectory/P4Apps/TicTacToe/label.bmp
It's only missing a "redoanim.gif" image in the "images" folder and a "grid.gif" file in the main folder. The "redoanim.gif" was a 65x70 GIF file. The "grid.gif" was a 210x210 GIF file. It can probably be recreated from this screenshot: http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1167/544/1600/msn10.jpg
I think I found Bankshot, Chess, MineSweeper, SolitaireShowdown, Upwords, WoF. They are all ActiveX. I think I can make them working but, for now, I am stuck as they need the Messenger server to talk to. I also found MediaPlayer, PhotoSwap, ... but they lack some files.