Microsoft releases “Fishbowl” Facebook Windows 7 application

Microsoft demonstrated SilverFace during the Silverlight 4 announcements at PDC 2009 last week.

Although SilverFace is not available download, Microsoft has made Fishbowl available. Fishbowl is a WPF desktop application that uses the Facebook stream APIs to allow access to Facebook in a clean and impressive UI. Fishbowl also includes Windows 7 only features, including taskbar notifications, jump-lists and taskbar previews. The interface fully supports multi-touch navigation too and image gestures to navigate and view your photos. Fishbowl was created by the UXLabs@Microsoft to showcase the Windows Platform.

Exploring photos is one of the best features of Fishbowl, you can flick using touch gestures or flip through images with your mouse scroll-wheel. The notifications feature will pin a number to the taskbar and using aero peek you can quickly take a glance at your profile and your friends from just the taskbar.

Fishbowl is available for free as a technical preview from Fishbowl Client. Fishbowl will also work on Windows XP and Windows Vista according to Microsoft.