Microsoft Agent and Visual Basic .Net development

Introduction

1.1 What is Microsoft Agent?

Microsoft Agent is a set of tools to enrich your program’s environment. It makes “characters” talk, move around, and even play out animations. They can also respond to a user’s speech, spoken through a microphone (known as conversational interfaces).

Microsoft Agent is simple to program and fun to use, but it can still do complex things.

1.2 What are the characters?

The “characters” are animated graphics put together in the Microsoft Agent Character Editor. There are different kinds of characters, some can talk, some can’t, some are for Microsoft Office, some are just for Windows. The Microsoft Agent Character Editor adds commands to the characters that can be activated through Microsoft Agent.

You can download characters at www.cantoche.com/english/gallery/msagent.htm, or, you can design your own with the Microsoft Agent Character Editor. It is available at www.microsoft.com/msagent/.

When you load a character through Microsoft Agent, a “character icon” appears in the taskbar. If you move your mouse over the icon, a tool tip appears, telling you the name of the character. Single-clicking the icon displays the character. When the character is displayed, it is displayed in it’s own window. The user can move the character by dragging it with the left mouse button. Note: You do not have to click on the character icon to show the character; you can also do it in code, how to do that will be shown later.

In addition to the talking, the character displays a word balloon that shows what is saying, the balloon hides when the character is finished talking. Note: You can disable the word balloon in the code, how to do that will be shown later.

If speech input is enabled, when the user presses the character’s push-to-talk button on the keyboard, a listening tool tip is displayed notifying the user that the character is listening. If the character recognizes something that the user spoke through the microphone, the listening tool tip displays what the character heard, and if programmed to, the character will respond. The character will not recognize anything the user speaks unless it was added as a command to the character in the code. How to add commands to characters will be shown later.