When you add Live Connect services to your application, you open the door to a vast amount of user information. Everything from a first name to a collection of photos and videos is potentially available to your program. This data enables you to build personalized experiences into your programs.

To access user data correctly, there are just a few key ideas, or core concepts, to learn. After you understand these concepts, you can quickly begin developing personalized experiences using Live Connect services.

• Loading the JavaScript Library
  Learn how to add the Live Connect JavaScript library to your application.
• Signing Users In
  Learn how use Live Connect to sign users in.
• Obtaining User Consent
  Learn about the consent flow, which is the user-experience path that users follow to grant your application permission to access their data.
• Getting User Data
  Learn how Live Connect services returns user data, and how to store that data efficiently for use in your application.

These core concepts build on the information that we provide in Getting Started. After you are familiar with these concepts, you can use the sample code to add Live Connect features to your application. You can extend these samples using the scenarios described in Identifying the User and Personalizing Your Application, Making Your Application Social, and Accessing Albums, Photos, and Videos. You can also go straight to the Live Connect Reference to customize your application as you like.

Live Connect Branding Guidelines

This document is intended to provide guidance on use of Live Connect branding marks. Usage of these icons requires acceptance of the Live Connect - Terms of Use. Please note that Microsoft might update this document from time to time.

The Live Connect offering is used by partners wanting to build rich engaging experiences on their sites. Live users can find and invite friends from their contacts, easily sign in using their Microsoft account, and partners can enable chat right in the context of their sites.

We have created multiple versions of the button with white and blue backgrounds. We encourage you to use the white background in order to create consistency across sites as well as teach the user what to look for visually in terms of Live Connect. If you strongly prefer blue, given the look and feel of your site, then you are welcome to use that instead.

Please see the table below for examples of Live Connect that are generated by the WL.ui sign-in control.

Brand and button style	Button
Windows Live (blue background)
Windows Live (white background)
Hotmail (blue background)
Hotmail (white background)
SkyDrive (blue background)
SkyDrive (white background)
Messenger (blue background)
Messenger (white background)

In such cases Live, SkyDrive, Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger are the only appropriate brands that can be used in conjunction with these buttons. For example: Connect with MSN is inappropriate usage.

Live Connect also has individually implementable portions of the offering. See below for brand guidance if only implementing part of Live Connect.

Size in pixels	Icon
Windows Live - 16 x 16
Windows Live - 22 x 22
Hotmail - 16 x 16
Hotmail - 22 x 22
Messenger - 16 x 16
Messenger - 22 x 22
SkyDrive - 16 x 16
SkyDrive - 22 x 22