Microsoft has just released Silverlight 4 Beta, a desktop based client for Facebook that could be installed on Windows or Mac OS X. There have been quite a few Facebook clients around but Microsoft Silverlight is perhaps one of the most complete out-of-browser applications to access Facebook. It has it all what you’d expect from something to replace the browser experience of your favorite social networking website. Detailed features are listed here:

Awesome User Interface

Microsoft’s Facebook client requires Silverlight 4, and the overall look and feel justifies the requirement. Silverlight’s been popular as a useful tool for building captivated User Interface with high graphics so it does with the Facebook client. User Interface is awesome and easy to use with Full feed view and Grid view.

Hosting HTML Content Interactively

Thanks to HTML Agility Pack, Microsoft Facebook client application can host HTML content interactively. This enables effective scanning of Links and Image source paths and scrapping of feeds with use of XPATH queries and XSLT file serving. As a result you get to see features like support for playing videos within the application instead of opening video links in browser window.

Easy Status Update Facility

See the link on top titled “what’s on your mind?”? Updating your status and sharing content is as easy as clicking on that link. Clicking on it shows a text box where you can set your status, it also shows options to attach a link or upload an image

Easy Image Uploading

Uploading images to Facebook has been made easy with drag and drop capability, you just got to drag the image on the app and it will upload it for you. Another amazing feature is that the application can access your webcam, so you can take a snap and upload it immediately.

More Features

Here is the list of features according to Microsoft:
• Out-of-browser support
• Hosting HTML content interactively
• Local Device access (webcam)
• Rich-Text control
• Embedding alternative media content
• Desktop notifications
• COM integration (with Microsoft Outlook®) on the Windows platform
• Right-click
• Drag-n-drop
• Window control
• Animations

What’s missing?

There’s still more room for improvement though. We’re yet to see a Facebook client that supports Facebook Chat. Feature to upload videos would be a nice addition as well. There should obviously be a control panel or settings menu for the application itself where users could set the options and could customize and filter their account data. Also, if the guys at Microsoft could add a way for logged in user to update his/her administered Facebook pages, there could be great potential for business users using this feature.
Although these features could add a whole new dimension to Microsoft Facebook client, it still is built with enough features to appeal the regular Facebook addicts and will outclass many other Facebook clients due to its interactive features, visual appeal and the speed.