I would like to announce some very good news for all Windows Developers! We will soon have our own Skype COM API. If you (like me) don't feel at home messing about with Windows messaging then this news is for you!

Right now we are doing three things to get this out to you ASAP:
1. Testing and debugging
2. Writing documentation
3. Using it to build our own next-generation toolbars

Why is a com-wrapper good?
Most modern programming languages are object-oriented. When programmers write code, they think about functionality in terms of objects. These objects can have properties and methods. A Skype COM wrapper makes it easier to work in this way, also when building Skype applications.
One of the objects we have now is a User object with all the appropriate properties such as IsVideoCabable etc:

This will make it possible for you to write code like this:

For Each objUser in objSkypeCOM.UserCollection
    If objUser.MoodMessage ="" Then
          objSkypeCOM.SendMessage objUser.Handle, "How are you feeling?"
    End if
Next

Maybe I should use that code myself every day? Will that make me more popular?
Besides making it easier for us to write silly little code examples it will also allow you to do advanced things like controlling the audio settings or write "application to application"-solutions! I also want to mention the caching features that are built in. They make looping through the collections extremely fast in comparison to making repeated windows messaging calls and waiting for the responses.

Background
As I recently blogged about we have hired Andres Kaasik to work on the Skype Toolbars team. His first task was to re-brand his SkypeX component and add the 2.0 API features. That work is now nearly completed and we are happy to finally get to release this important tool.

KhaosLabs
I also want to take this opportunity to publicly thank the gifted developers at KhaosLabs. Kevin and Jason have done a great job on building the ActiveS com wrapper. I used it myself when building the currently published Skype Toolbar for Outlook and I know it works well. We are very keen to see what will come out of the Khaoslab in the future.