Users Being Migrated To New Version of Hotmail

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has started work on migrating Hotmail users to a new version after testing the new system on select customers for almost two years. Microsoft stated in the article that more than 20 million users provided feedback to the new-look Hotmail. 'For now, Microsoft will give Hotmail users the option to continue using the old version if they don't want to switch to the upgraded version. However, at some point, everyone will be unilaterally migrated over to Windows Live Hotmail ... New users will be automatically signed up for Windows Live Hotmail but, like any user of the new service, they will get to choose from two user interfaces: a "classic" layout that closely resembles the old Hotmail; or the new interface, which was designed to look like Microsoft's Outlook e-mail and calendaring desktop application.'"

Comments

20 Million users contributed feedback

[hudsonhawk]

...and none of them asked for a "Mark as read" button?

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Right click and hit "Mark as Read"

The fact that there is a mechanism for this does not refute the previous poster's point. Right-clicking should never, ever be the only way to get to some functionality. I'm not sure I've ever seen a interface design or usability book that did not mention this. I think even MS's own UI design guidelines mention it. Right-clciking and selecting a menu option is a lot slower and less learnable than a button, but aside from that the important thing is relying upon multiple buttons breaks the interface for a wide variety of alternative input methods. Try doing that using a screen reader for the blind, or a stylus on a tablet, or even using MS's own voice recognition interface. Try it on a touch screen kiosk, using a control stick for people with palsey, or using a browser that does not support that function for one reason or another.

When people are lower level developers and don't have any real UI training and are creating an application for internal use or for a special purpose with limited audience, I can forgive this sort of thing. When one of the largest software development houses on the planet does it for a program they plan to roll to millions of the general public it is just fucking absurd. I want to know. Where does MS hire their UI people and why can't they manage to avoid basic mistakes that have been known to the industry for decades now?

Dropping the Web-based E-mail Ball

[eldavojohn]

Two years ago, the company I work for began offering MS Outlook through the web to employees. At first I was skeptical, I didn't think it would be that useful. But, a year after that, it was seriously fully functional Outlook over a website. I also use Hotmail for my personal life and had wondered why in the hell Microsoft didn't apply the same great ideas from the web-based Outlook client to their Hotmail site. I don't think my company would drop its control of its Exchange Servers if Hotmail offered the same look and feel. I didn't think Microsoft would lose any business at all but they would have cornered the market in e-mail.

Sometime between a year ago and today, it's become fully compliant with Firefox 2.0--I'm pretty impressed and actually don't mind using web-based Outlook when I'm out of the office.

Why did Microsoft sit on their hands as Google slowly built up their capabilities to match those of Outlook? Why didn't Microsoft work on porting what they had done for Outlook to their Hotmail servers? I guess server load could always be the answer to those questions but I'm starting to think that Microsoft thought Hotmail would always be number one in personal e-mail. Thankfully, it looks like the competition is putting the pressure on them to improve their service.

I used this tool two years ago, way to drop the ball, Microsoft. You could have beat Google to a calendar application and solidified Hotmail.

Re:Dropping the Web-based E-mail Ball

[CastrTroy]

I don't think that Hotmail was ever number 1 in online email. I think the only reason that anybody signed up was because they wanted to use MSN messenger, and it's extremely hard for most people to figure out that you can use a non-hotmail address, let alone figuring out the process for actually doing so. I've always found their spam filtering, amount of space (2 MB up until google's huge storage made them upgrade it) , and entire interface to be lacking. The biggest missing feature is an option to "Mark as read" as another poster pointed out. The only reason so many people have signed up, is because they think it's the only way to get on MSN Messenger.