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

[sarathmenon]

Its a feature, not a bug! How else would you be forced to read all those emails?

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[EvilEddie]

Too little too late.....gmail and yahoo mail must have stole alot of market share.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[fondacio]

Right-click message, "mark as read", done. Unless you're on an Apple, of course...

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out the bar graph at ZDNET. Yahoo and Hotmail are virtually tied with Gmail significantly behind.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was funny because what's the likelihood that a 2+ button mac user would be using a hotmail account?

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?

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[vertinox]

I know you are trying to be humorous, but if Live is anything like Outlook Web Access 2003, you will be missing a good deal of features because you aren't running it in IE (like the right click options). This would apply to Fire Fox users on Windows as well.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[Ucklak]

Because Gmail required invitations for the first few years and is horrible on retreiving lost account info.

I received in invitation years ago, signed up but realy didn't use it. Now I can't sign up using that old email I used to register and I'm not able to retreive the old account info from Google.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[chris_mahan]

OLPC is giving a gmail account with each of the machines. That should be interesting if it really takes off.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[jZnat]

This is why Apple computers still come with only one mouse button (mighty mouse needs to enable extra buttons): Apple is able to "incentivize" developers to make absolutely sure that the UI is fully usable without a right click button. Microsoft can't force this, hence millions of context menus.

The fact that Microsoft aren't even following their own UI guidelines is pretty stupid, though.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[jbravo556]

Talk about interface inconsistency. Why is 'Mark as Unread' a button and 'Mark as Read' isn't? Also, in my Safari, right clicking the message doesn't pop up a menu containing 'Mark as read'.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[joconor]

This illustrates how Microsoft has taken User Interface development down a very bad path.

The original Mac OS UI standardized on a single location to find actions: The Menu Bar. Whatever you had to do, you knew where to look. This was in direct contrast to command line applications where you either had to keep the commands in your head, or look them up in documentation. Now, we have a proliferation of places to look for actions in a graphical interface: Menu Bar, multiple Toolbars, contextual menus, etc. This proliferation of places to look for actions is leading to greater UI confusion, and back to the UI problem of command line applications, as evidenced by the poster who didn't realize there was a way to mark an email as 'read' in the new Hotmail. The graphical interface is supposed to show you what you can do, you're not supposed to have to 'just know'. I find contextual menus particularly egregious, as there is no 'affordance' to indicate to the user that there's anything to look for. Does one just randomly right-click on everything to see if it has a contextual menu associated with it? Bah. UI design at its worst.

Unfortunately, due to the monopoly position of Windows, even the Mac OS has been forced to go down this path of providing toolbars and contextual menus. One mitigating trend I've observed in some (not all) Macintosh software is the use of contextual menus to duplicate operations presented in the menu bar.

UI design needs to return to a single canonical location to find operations (the Menu Bar). If UI designers want to use Toolbars and contextual menus, use them only as shortcuts for operations that are already presented in the Menu Bar.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[Columcille]

It's nothing like Outlook Web Access. Windows Live Mail is actually a pretty slick interface, and runs perfectly fine in Firefox. I still prefer gmail over Live Mail, but Microsoft at least moved substantially in the right direction.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[blowdart]

Live has worked for months, if not over a year, with Firefox and right clicks, in both browser it looks pretty much the same. Even with the latest version of OWA firefox still isn't supported as a rich interface client.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[Mad Dog Manley]

I guess 20 million users don't mind having their accounts to be deleted after 30 days of inactivity either. Funny how that doesn't happen with Gmail.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[SleepyHappyDoc]

Is that graph measured in 'millions of unique spammers'?

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[3choTh1s]

Right-clicking should never, ever be the only way to get to some functionality.

Bullshiz. Lets just use Live Hotmail as an example. I've been a beta tester for it since a month after beta testing started. I've asked for a lot of things and each time after the next revision I got them(after of course they started supporting firefox). Not bad in my opinion. But the one thing I didn't ask for was "Mark as read." I have literally used that function twice in my life. And never in Hotmail/Live Hotmail. So lets just say that a good majority of people are like me and use that function only a little in their lives. Should we clutter up a interface just so that we have a function that we will only use twice a year? How about "Use as template" or "Add sender to Contact List." I'm sure there is no end to the buttons you could add to a interface but having the context menu for little used items are fine.

Btw. If you switch the interface to "Classic" the Mark As Read buttons are placed up in the toolbar , obviously since you can't use the right mouse button. Good enough for those other cases when you don't have a choice in the matter.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[PopeRatzo]

That's right. It's only been several months since Gmail has been open to anyone without requiring an invite.

I really like their spam filter and Pop implementation. I've got my own domain, but I still use Gmail for my primary email provider. There was a blip earlier this week when things went wrong for half a day, but over the last year that I've used Gmail, they've been more consistent than any other email provider I've ever had, free or otherwise.

I don't own any Google stock (wait, yes I do), and when I bought my newest computer which I use mainly for multimedia production but is also my main system at home, I decided I was going to forgo MS office and use a combination of Google Apps and Open Office. It's one of the better decisions I've made regarding software. No bloated MS Office junk on my system, and yet I can do most anything, in nice portable formats, too.

I will admit to still having one hotmail account, which I use as a spam catcher. If I ever need to provide an email account for something on the web that I know is going to generate spam, I just give 'em the old hotmail account, which I check once every month or so.

Why is gmail able to provide almost 100% spam filtering, but hotmail and yahoo can't seem to realize that an email with a message offering "pen1s enlargement" is spam?

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Bullshiz.

Obviously a well-reasoned and professional opinion will follow.

Should we clutter up a interface just so that we have a function that we will only use twice a year? How about "Use as template" or "Add sender to Contact List." I'm sure there is no end to the buttons you could add to a interface but having the context menu for little used items are fine.

I never specified the method that should be used to add these features, only the method that should not be used as the exclusive method to add these features. You can put them in a drop down menu of a dozen rarely used features. You can add them as buttons. You can do a combination. You can do all sorts of things, so long as you don't make them completely inaccessible to many classes of users, by only putting them in the right-click menu.

...but having the context menu for little used items are fine.

No it isn't. Having functions made completely inaccessible to many users is not fine. It is shitty design you'd expect from some college student creating his first shareware project. If you still disagree, stop by a UI design conference some time and go up to any of the engineers. I'm sure they'll be happy to lynch you for such heresy.

Btw. If you switch the interface to "Classic" the Mark As Read buttons are placed up in the toolbar , obviously since you can't use the right mouse button. Good enough for those other cases when you don't have a choice in the matter.

Nope, because most users won't know that, thus they'll never discover it. They'll just click around trying to find the feature for 20 minutes before deciding it isn't there. Or, they'll look at the help and realize they can't use it and just go elsewhere.

Your arguments are summed up as "gee its not really that bad." You don't provide a single reason not to provide it as a regular drop down or a button or another control everyone can access. Congratulations on being an MS apologizer of the first water. The design stinks. Deal with it.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[DrEldarion]

What's wrong with contextual menus? I think they're completely straightforward with "manipulate the object I'm clicking on" functions. Right click on a web page, and you get options relating to the web page. Right click on a graphic, and you get options relating to the graphic. Right click on highlighted text, and you get options relating to that text.

Everything has its place:

Menu bars: Control this application.
Contextual menus: Control this object.
Toolbars: Quick access to commonly used functions (almost always redundant with the other two).

I can't find anything wrong with that at all, as long as you grasp the application/object difference.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[Hatta]

Right-clciking and selecting a menu option is a lot slower and less learnable than a button

I don't buy that. Context menus allow you to pare down the available functions to what's appropriate. Buttons are always there, so there's going to be a lot more of them, most of which are irrelevant. They could also be anywhere on your screen, a context menu is linear. So it's going to be a lot easier and faster to find the option on the context menu than pretty much anywhere else. As for less learnable, how do you even quantify that?

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Context menus allow you to pare down the available functions to what's appropriate.

Context menus are great as a secondary way to access common functions. They are terrible as a primary way for the reasons I listed.

Buttons are always there, so there's going to be a lot more of them, most of which are irrelevant.

Buttons are fine and menus are fine (conceptually, implementations can be poor). Users understand that they exist and can look through them for the function they want.

They could also be anywhere on your screen, a context menu is linear.

Umm, linear? How is a context menu more linear than say a drop down menu? More importantly, how is it more usable?

So it's going to be a lot easier and faster to find the option on the context menu than pretty much anywhere else.

Well it certainly isn't going to be faster to find for a person using a screen reader, since they will never see it. As for everyone else, as I said I'm not opposed to context menus, simply to functions available only by the context menu. A well implemented context menu duplicates certain very common functions and is customizable so the user (who is the only one who knows his own workflow) can further streamline it. They are terrible, however, when used as the primary interface because they remove all flexibility from the interface excluding all the people in situations like those I listed. They also suffer from poor learn-ability and are confusing to novices.

As for less learnable, how do you even quantify that?

Generally via usability testing with software that tracks what a user does with an interface and how long it takes them both to accomplish tasks the first time and then subsequent times. For context menus as exclusive interfaces, however, testing has shown over and over and over again that they are a terrible idea. Alternate interfaces can't use them at all. Novice users often never find those functions or accidentally trigger them. One of the single biggest usability problems with computers today is users that don't know if they should right-click or left-click or don't even distinguish and always click both at once resulting in random results. It is not like this is news. This was exposed as a huge problem in almost all use cases decades ago and has been a standard feature of usability texts and UI design instruction for nearly as long. It is on the "top 10 UI design blunders" list.

If you're programming an interface to a professional CAD application, well your users will figure it out and very few users will need alternative input devices (except those using a stylus and board). If, however, you're programming a Web mail client that will be targeting brand new users it is a disaster. Imagine if you were a disabled person and went to the Web page of the biggest software maker in the US, only to find that their Web mail did not work for you for common tasks, unless you found some hidden setting that would switch it back to their old, deprecated interface? You really think that is okay or good design, when the work around is so easy?

I'm sorry but I've worked in UI design and usability testing, though not for several years. I keep up on the literature. Putting a function only in a right-click menu is a mistake for the clueless novice, not for professionals.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[ClosedSource]

"The original Mac OS UI standardized on a single location to find actions: The Menu Bar. ... Unfortunately, due to the monopoly position of Windows, even the Mac OS has been forced to go down this path of providing toolbars and contextual menus. One mitigating trend I've observed in some (not all) Macintosh software is the use of contextual menus to duplicate operations presented in the menu bar."

You're really an Apple apologist. First, you claim Apple had the best approach using soley the Menu Bar and than you excuse their later change in approach on Microsoft's monopoly. What other "bad" design decisions has Apple made because they were "forced" to by MS?

Here's an alternative explanation: GUI design evolved from what was established by Xerox and later Apple. Apple recognized that these new approaches added value and decided it adopt them. In other words, I'm suggesting that MS, Apple and others are right, and you're wrong.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[kchrist]

In other words, I'm suggesting that MS, Apple and others are right, and you're wrong.

I'd be interested in seeing your credentials as a usability expert.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[instagib]

"hotmail and yahoo can't seem to realize that an email with a message offering "pen1s enlargement" is spam"

It's a feature. They know their user's pen1s size.

(please forgive me, this was not a personal attack, just a cheap joke)

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[instagib]

"Right-clciking and selecting a menu option is a lot slower and less learnable than a button"

I'd say first part of that statement is not true, the second part is.

A button only GUI is the easiest you can get if the icons are done right - you see what you can get. Context menus are somehow halfway between this and the CLI: you have to know and remember the right-click-actions, but if you do, it's much faster than moving your mouse between the object you work with and the button bar.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[notyou2]

I will admit to still having one hotmail account, which I use as a spam catcher. If I ever need to provide an email account for something on the web that I know is going to generate spam, I just give 'em the old hotmail account, which I check once every month or so. So just in case you didn't know -- if you own mycoolname@gmail.com, then mail sent to mycoolname+anything@gmail.com will reach you as well. When I sign up with spammywebsite.com, for example, I use the address mycoolname+spammywebsite@gmail.com. If I wind up with spam from them, I know it, and can immediately set a filter to flag all such email appropriately.

This doesn't *always* work. There are some websites whose form validators reject email addresses with a plus sign in them. And I've even seen sites that juggle the plus sign so inappropriately that it gets passed unencoded as a GET variable, and turns into a space. But by and large, it's a very useful trick.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[spoco2]

Actually it works fine in Firefox. I'm one of the ones that have been using it since the beta started and overall quite like it. The right click menus are great ('view source' being a favourite for working out if that suspect piece of mail really is spam or not), drag and drop works fine, and the themes are nice.

My issues with it are:
* Clicking on the tick boxes in order to select emails for deletion or whatever is all well and good except that it's far too easy to miss the tick box and open the email instead.
* Where's the search?
* I get a funny issue with thin white lines breaking up many emails when scrolling within firefox... if I select the image/text on the image they go away... it's odd.

Overall, better than the old hotmail though, and hey it means I still don't have to change the email address people still know me for using since erm... like.... 1997 or something... geeze, has it been 10 years? Yoiks! It gives me a fine address for signing up to whatever the hell I like as I don't care about getting spam at that address :)

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[FigTree]

How about all the people switching from Windows? I bet a lot of them don't want to change their email addresses.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[drsmithy]

Unfortunately, due to the monopoly position of Windows, even the Mac OS has been forced to go down this path of providing toolbars and contextual menus. One mitigating trend I've observed in some (not all) Macintosh software is the use of contextual menus to duplicate operations presented in the menu bar.

This is almost always true in Windows as well (I'd say always, but I'm sure you've got one or two counter-examples ready to whip out).

UI design needs to return to a single canonical location to find operations (the Menu Bar). If UI designers want to use Toolbars and contextual menus, use them only as shortcuts for operations that are already presented in the Menu Bar.

That's what they _are_ used for.

Or, at least, that's what the UI guidelines for all the major platforms say they should be used for. What developers actually implement is their own business. You can lead the horse to water, etc, etc.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[Mex]

Ugh, I agree with you. I'm a relatively experienced PC user, but with Windows Media Player 11, I couldn't figure out where the hell I was supposed to open files from.

Turns out it was a right click move somewhere near the top.

Maybe dumb, but there's no "File > Open" menu.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[ClosedSource]

I wasn't aware there were credentials for being a usability expert. Is that something like a MCSE for GUIs?

I've used GUIs extensively starting from the Xerox Alto. I would think that would count for something.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[fabs64]

For sites that mess up with the +, you can always add a period somewhere in the middle of your email address, as all sites will deal with that correctly.
With gmail, foobar, foo.bar and f.oobar all end up at foobar@gmail.com

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[SurturZ]

I will never forgive Apple for inventing the double click. I think the crappy UIs out there are a result of poor input devices, and the single button mouse that led to the invention of the double-click is the worst offender.

What we SHOULD have is something like

• Left Mouse = Activate Item
• Right Mouse = Select Item
• Middle Mouse = context sensitive operation or menu
• Right Mouse+Drag = Move Item
• Right mouse+drag from empty area = selection box to select multiple items
• Hold Right Mouse+Left Mouse click = Expand selection with each left click - for word processing e.g. select word, sentence, paragraph etc

Double- and triple- clicking should not exist at all. Where the number of mouse buttons is limited (do Macs still only have one button?) modifier keys (Ctrl, Alt, Left Apple, whatever) can be used in conjunction with the extant mouse buttons to simulate more buttons.

Anyone that has seen their family members routinely triple click hyperlinks will agree with me.

While we are on the topic, rather than adding stupid app-launcher keys to the keyboard, they should add the following:

• Prev Field/Next Field - to replace the appalling tab/shift-tab
• Submit Form - this one clicks "OK" so users don't confused about the ENTER key when there are rich text fields on the form (Escape can remain the "Cancel Form" key)
• Help Key - using F1 as 'help' seems to have single-handedly killed the function keys. Eleven perfectly usable program-specific keys that no-one uses any more. Bring back function key overlays! :-)

(while I'm ranting, even if there were sound economic reasons to have only one mouse button, why oh why didn't Apple learn from the car radio manufacturers and have a 'long click' instead of a double click? At least oldies and the less abled can manage a long click, but double-clicking requires a level of dexterity that many people simply don't have! Not that I like the idea of a long click, but it would have been heaps better than the double-click)

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[kjart]

* Where's the search?

At the top? The textbox with the mail and web buttons beside it? If you've been using it since the beta started I'd have thought you would have noticed that :)

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[PopeRatzo]

That's a pretty neat trick, but I have to admit I'm surprised at how good Gmail spam filter is. I use SpamSeive on my Mac and gmail is about as good.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[Threni]

> Now I can't sign up using that old email I used to register and I'm not able to retreive the old account info from Google.

You've got 9 months, I think. Why not just create a new account? No-one will be using the old one anyway.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[Hatta]

I wouldn't suggest that context menus be the only way to access a function, but they are the best. The failure of alternative input devices to come with a meta key is a problem with those devices, not with the context menu.

Umm, linear? How is a context menu more linear than say a drop down menu? More importantly, how is it more usable?

Well I was talking buttons. Depending on what you call a button, I have from 2 or 3 rows of them in my browser window right now. As for menus, you first have to select which menu you need from the horizontal list of menus (file, edit, view, etc) then you go down a vertical menu. With context menus you right click and the menu you want is right there, no searching in 2 dimensions. You move your mouse and your eyes much less, so context menus are indeed much more usable.

As for learnability, sometimes it's better to sacrifice learnability for power. It only takes 5 seconds to explain to someone what the right click button is for, and they keep that with them for the rest of their lives. They'll save much more time using the context menu than they spent learning how to use it.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[Ucklak]

The email address is mine. You register with a personal address. That is the address I can't sign up for anything with Google anymore since I tried Gmail. Even today I can't.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[kchrist]

No, but nice try. Look up universities offering advanced HCI degrees for a clue. Here's a list to get you started. You might recognized a few little schools like CMU, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, and so on.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[ClosedSource]

What qualifications do the professors who teach these courses have? How many successful GUI's have they designed? Do they teach that context menus are bad?

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[kchrist]

Whatever they teach, it's based on actual research rather than uninformed blather by someone who didn't even know the field existed.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[ClosedSource]

Congratulations, you've combined the logical fallacies of argumentum ad verecundiam and argumentum ad hominem into a single sentence!

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[RobNich]

Prev Field/Next Field - to replace the appalling tab/shift-tab

IBM has had these on their terminal keyboards for a LONG while. But teminal apps are hard to screw up (not that many haven't done their damnedest), and web forms are notoriously tab-order-fucked, mostly because everyone uses tables to lay out the form.

Submit Form - this one clicks "OK" so users don't confused about the ENTER key when there are rich text fields on the form (Escape can remain the "Cancel Form" key)

An okay idea, but wouldn't work with many of the Javascript-only forms that assholes are coding now. Why? Some do it to keep our browser from storing the username and password (asshats that think that makes it more secure). Some do it because they think it's cooler to use Javascript to send the data instead of a form (idiots who don't know how forms and HTTP are supposed to work).

Help Key - using F1 as 'help' seems to have single-handedly killed the function keys. Eleven perfectly usable program-specific keys that no-one uses any more. Bring back function key overlays! :-)

I've got one of those! http://www.flickr.com/photos/random_robin/49210795 4/

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[spoco2]

I hadn't actually, as it doesn't fit with my preconceived ideas of where such a control should be. Any box outside of what I see to the be 'mail application' doesn't apply to it, so I don't look there for it... it should also be on the main toolbar for the mail, next to 'Check Mail', it'd make far more sense.

Re:20 Million users contributed feedback

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I wouldn't suggest that context menus be the only way to access a function, but they are the best.

The whole point of this discussion was that they should not be the only way to access the function, as they are in this new version of Hotmail. They are fine as a secondary mechanism.

Well I was talking buttons.

That was your incorrect assumption.

As for menus, you first have to select which menu you need from the horizontal list of menus (file, edit, view, etc) then you go down a vertical menu. With context menus you right click and the menu you want is right there, no searching in 2 dimensions.

Okay, since you seem to have never looked into the topic, here are the general usability rules for menus and the reasons for them. If you have 7 or fewer controls, use buttons. If you have fewer than 64 controls, use menus, with no more than 8 top level menus. If you have more than 15 items in a menu, you'll have problems. If you have nested menus, you'll have problems.

Now right-click menus are special because of the usability concerns they bring up. They should never, ever be the only way to access something, so they are always duplicating something you have elsewhere. They can be duplicating items in a nested menu, if you don't have a better option. They should always be customizable, since they are repeats, not primary access controls, and the user always knows their workflow better than the designer. If at any point you have more than about 12 items in your context menu, you will have serious problems with usability.

As for learnability, sometimes it's better to sacrifice learnability for power.

I agree. I disagree that this is one of those cases. This is a Webmail service. It targets a wide range of complete novices and the general public including people with disabilities, or who are using cell phones, and many other cases that cannot be accounted for.

It only takes 5 seconds to explain to someone what the right click button is for, and they keep that with them for the rest of their lives.

Spoken like someone who has never watched a usability test. Average users forget functions they do not use all the time. A lot of users check their e-mail once every few weeks. Just telling them where the right-click button is and what it is for is not enough and who exactly will be telling users of hotmail this?

They'll save much more time using the context menu than they spent learning how to use it.

No, they simply won't learn how to use it and will not use any function only there. For a reasonable subset of users (novices, disabled, phone users, tablet users, voice recog users, some alternate browser users, etc. it will be as though that function is not even there... and that is a big design failure.

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.

Re:Dropping the Web-based E-mail Ball

[Bogtha]

I don't think that Hotmail was ever number 1 in online email.

Assuming you mean webmail, then yes, HoTMaiL most certainly was number one at one time. It was practically synonymous with webmail. That's why Microsoft bought it.

Re:Dropping the Web-based E-mail Ball

[parkrrrr]

The biggest missing feature is a way to keep the spam from Microsoft's "partners" from pushing the real mail out of your mailbox.

Re:Dropping the Web-based E-mail Ball

[ady1]

Why did Microsoft sit on their hands as Google slowly built up their capabilities to match those of Outlook? for teh same reason the didn't upgrade IE for several years. There was no competetion in the webmail space. Yahoo! was virtually the only reliable alternate service and it sucked.

I guess server load could always be the answer to those questions Are you kidding me? that is how microsoft operates. They never improve a product unless:
1. Its market place is in danger or
2. It's a new product.

Re:Dropping the Web-based E-mail Ball

[AirRaven]

My only gripe with Windows Live Hotmail's Firefox support is that it automatically kicks you down to the slower, less flashy "classic" view if you access it from a Linux client- if you spoof your User Agent string to make it appear that you're using Firefox on Windows, the full AJAX interface works perfectly.

Blatant OS Discrimination from Microsoft. But then, what else is new?

Re:Dropping the Web-based E-mail Ball

[jZnat]

What about ISP webmail? Or the millions of SquirrelMail and other webmail apps strewn across the intarwebs? Hotmail had lots of competition, but Yahoo! was probably one of the few (if any) large enough to be considered a competitor.

Re:Dropping the Web-based E-mail Ball

[Columcille]

Why did you ask a question for which you provided the answer? Sure there were plenty of alternatives to Hotmail, but none of those alternatives was really an option for the average user wanting an email address. The pressure grew when other viable options grew, but until gmail, Hotmail continued to lead the pack. And as noted by a previous commenter, Hotmail and Yahoo mail still lead the pack.

Re:Dropping the Web-based E-mail Ball

[Columcille]

I've never had this problem. Windows Live Mail works fine for me using Firefox under Linux without any need to change settings or spoof the UA.

Re:Dropping the Web-based E-mail Ball

[Antony-Kyre]

Remember the good old days when Microsoft didn't own it? Sigh.

Re:Dropping the Web-based E-mail Ball

[debest]

The only reason so many people have signed up, is because they think it's the only way to get on MSN Messenger.

Yep, that's the only reason I have one, too. I went back to school, and everyone in my faculty sort "standardized" on MSN Messenger as the way to communicate for social chats and school projects. I have a hotmail address that rejects email now because I never used the account. (Every so often a classmate sends a file to my hotmail account because they see the ID in MSN Messenger. Then they complain that it bounces.)

Hotmail features

[sakdoctor]

As long as they keep the 'deliver all mail to the trash' feature they can style it however they like.

That's a lot of feedback!

[DogDude]

Well, here's hoping that they paid attention to that tremendous amount of user feedback. That's pretty impressive. Now, if only Yahoo would pay attention to their users, and fix their badly implemented new version, or at least not force users to switch.

Re:That's a lot of feedback!

[Anonymous Coward]

And you know what Billg said about each user feedback? "That's the dumbest fucking idea I've heard since I've been at Microsoft."

Re:That's a lot of feedback!

[u-bend]

> Now, if only Yahoo would pay attention to their users, and fix their badly implemented new version, or at least not force users to switch.

Amen to that. The Yahoo Beta experience operates like Vista on a PIII. It could be the clunkiest web application I've ever been encouraged to use, and it actually made me to go ahead and move to Gmail.

Re:That's a lot of feedback!

[Rolgar]

If all the Yahoo! to be purchased by Microsoft rumors of the last week came true, you might soon see Yahoo! mail from Hotmail by MSN. Then they could roll all of the Yahoo! users into this new interface while they're moving all of the Hotmail users as well. (This might be Google's wet dream.)

Re:That's a lot of feedback!

[TrippTDF]

I see what you are saying, but MS would be stupid to integrate Yahoo mail and Hotmail... you'd be removing a choice from the playing field, and people might switch over to gmail they don't like whatever interface MS gives them. If MS was smart, they'd keep all the Yahoo branding and make it at least look like there is a choice.

spin city

[Speare]

Steve: Hey, PR flack, the Hotmail group has been hemorrhaging users ever since I sugges... er, those idiots decided to "update" that user interface. How can we make that sound like a good thing?

PR Flack: Easy, Mr. Ballmer. Voi la

More than 20 million users provided feedback to the new-look Hotmail...

Kudos to MS

[EraseEraseMe]

Despite the long development time (and I've been using the new Hotmail for as long as it's been tested), it definitely is an improvement. Outlook itself is a fantastic e-mail client, and moving Hotmail to that kind of look and feel is definitely a bonus. I wouldn't mind being able to customize it a bit more but in terms of just being able to access my email in a quick and easy fashion, it's definitely ranking quite high in my books.

Dragging and dropping emails
Quick Preview of Emails
Equaling Google's mail storage

It's like there's a party in my mailbox and everyone's invited!

Re:Kudos to MS

[cHALiTO]

It's like there's a party in my mailbox and everyone's invited!

Okay.. how much did they pay you for this?

Re:Kudos to MS

[EraseEraseMe]

Even the opportunity to use such a fantastic product is payment enough! Hell, I should be paying them for some of these innovative and web-definitive systems.

Re:Kudos to MS

[EraseEraseMe]

Judging from the best-in-class Phishing and Spam Filter, I wouldn't be able to tell, as everything remotely interesting gets immediately sent to the Junk Mail filter, which then requires me to drag and drop them all back to the folder structure I had to meticulously create in order to categorize said important information.

Re:Kudos to MS

[macraig]

"...it's definitely ranking quite high in my books."

What, you have more than one ledger? That ringing in your ears might be the IRS and SEC calling.

Re:Kudos to MS

[smurfsurf]

> Outlook itself is a fantastic e-mail client

You are a comic, no?

The last time I used it (Outlook 2003), any attempt to quote properly resulted in a catastrophic mess of unintended indention and color and misattribution of lines. Did they fix this basic function of an email client in the meantime?

Re:Kudos to MS

[Keeper]

They gave him a free hotmail account...

Re:Kudos to MS

[grcumb]

Outlook itself is a fantastic e-mail client....

Outlook is an e-mail client? I thought it was a rootkit!

People still use hotmail?

[jellomizer]

I havent seen a hotmail account in ages. They seem more rare then aol.com emails. The bulk of emails I have seen are either yahoo.com or gmail.com.

Re:People still use hotmail?

[Itninja]

I do use it, but only as a junk mail collection bin. When I register for something that I am pretty sure will generate spam for me, I give them my hotmail account. I check it about once a month and look for any legitimate email; and delete the rest.

Re:People still use hotmail?

[chthon]

Likewise. The only hotmail accounts I see are from spammers and phishers.

Re:People still use hotmail?

[treeves]

I get more spam in my Gmail account than in my Hotmail account. Of course, it's neatly stored in a spam folder so I can delete it en masse without selecting as opposed to picking it out, then deleting it en masse in Hotmail.

Re:People still use hotmail?

[11_biznatch_11]

To each his/her own. I hardly ever see gmail accounts, occasionally a yahoo account, never an aol account, but most often I see/get email from hotmail accounts. I signed up for gmail soon after it came out and before I had even sent an e-mail I was getting dozens of spam a week, so I dropped that like a hot potatoe. I get maybe 1 spam a week that makes it through the hotmail filters to my inbox, 5-10 per week in my junk mail folder. And this despite the fact that i've been using the same hotmail e-mail address for over 6 years.

Re:People still use hotmail?

[jb.hl.com]

Maybe it's just the crowd you hang with/get emails from. Certainly, the non-techie users I see around here are mostly using Hotmail, and if not that then Yahoo. GMail doesn't even come into the equation.

Re:People still use hotmail?

[jvervloet]

I havent seen a hotmail account in ages. They seem more rare then aol.com emails. The bulk of emails I have seen are either yahoo.com or gmail.com.

You certainly don't live in Belgium.

Re:People still use hotmail?

[VitrosChemistryAnaly]

To each his/her own. I hardly ever see gmail accounts, occasionally a yahoo account, never an aol account, but most often I see/get email from hotmail accounts.

Because you live in 1998?

I have to agree with OP. It has been probably over a year since I've seen email from a hotmail or AOL account.

Re:People still use hotmail?

[Maxo-Texas]

I was forced to "whitelist" my hotmail account.

Now it works like it should with regard to spam.

I've not had to whitelist my yahoo account yet.

Re:People still use hotmail?

[LocoMan]

Agree there. The bulk of my clients, at least (video production) use hotmail, and also most of the people on my trillian list are MSN users, and most of them use hotmail as their main email. Most of what I receive on hotmail (that I check about one a week or less) are chain "cute powerpoint" emails, though.

Usually the more techy oriented people use gmail, but those aren't the bulk of the population. I've lost count of the times when I've been asked if I can send them a video I'm working on trough email (heavily compressed, of course)... and they give me a hotmail account.

If I had to guess, webmail popularity is heavily tied to IM popularity. Here in Venezuela, at least among the people I'm in contact with, MSN is the most used IM program and yahoo second, and don't really know anyone here that used google's IM... and in webmails it's the same, hotmail the most popular, followed (not too closely, though) by yahoo, and then by gmail.

Re:People still use hotmail?

[soliptic]

Maybe it's just the crowd you hang with/get emails from. Certainly, the non-techie users I see around here are mostly using Hotmail, and if not that then Yahoo.

<AOL> me too </AOL>

Re:People still use hotmail?

[KlausBreuer]

I do.

I signed up with HoTMaiL before MS bought them. I still use it simple for signing up somewhere, and I assume that the address could be abused by spammers.
And a few people still only know my hotmail account.

My 'real' web-based email account (GMail, what else) is only known to trusted friends. No company knows about it.

pocket msn

[BewireNomali]

i was part of the beta. seamless integration with windows mobile is the killer feature for me. i've had my motorola Q for about 8 months and i've needed to log into pocket msn twice (because I switched from original battery to extended life). mail is pushed to my phone and I get IMs etc. - as well as Live Search/Maps etc out of the box. I can honestly say that - having both a gmail account and live hotmail account - that gmail is down way more - which - coupled with the fact that I do most of my emailing and IMing from my mobile unit - have caused me to migrate back to being a dual user from being a gmail user exclusively for a while. i can imagine some of gmails problems are because of scale - so it'll be interesting to see how hotmail reacts when the service is sufficiently wide to test infrastructure.

Re:pocket msn

[Anonymous Coward]

never have i tried to sign into gmail to find it was down. And I use the thing religiously for work and personal use.

Re:pocket msn

[Virgil Tibbs]

why oh why would you constant ly want to be on IM?

Re:pocket msn

[BewireNomali]

i run a small firm - there are four of us - in Los Angeles, NY, and Washington, DC. we are constantly traveling; communication is vital to us and this is a very effective (in terms of functionality and cost) solution.

Hotmail is Awesome

[milsoRgen]

This is just more Hotmail Awesomeness IMO, I remember a few weeks ago the account I use for important communications was brought done due to inactivity, they somehow didn't notice I log into Windows Messenger every day... But the icing on the cake was when I logged into an account I rarely if ever use (it's primarily for junk mail, web registrations, etc) was working fine. Hadn't logged into that account in months and it was all there. My main account however lost all archived e-mails and contacts. Awesome. I use gmail now. Don't much care for it's interface, but it's by far more responsive then the new hotmail.

Re:Hotmail is Awesome

[peragrin]

Use your gmail address for MSN Live messanger service. That way people can reach you from either service via IM's.

Now if only someone would come up with a universal client that allows voice and video.

Re:Hotmail is Awesome

[Constantine XVI]

I wish, but you can sign up for WLM with any legit email address.

Microsoft's internal spam

[Scrameustache]

the new interface, which was designed to look like Microsoft's Outlook e-mail and calendaring desktop application Do these desktop application have the microsoft useless celebrity gossip as the main page when you load them?

I'd LOVE it if I could be taken to my gorram emails when I log in, rather than to their fluff pseudo journalism hackfest until I find and click the 'inbox' button.
Gawds, it's annoying enough to be taken there when you log out, but when you log in? Urge to kill... rising.

Re:Microsoft's internal spam

[john83]

Do these desktop application have the microsoft useless celebrity gossip as the main page when you load them? Is it possible to stay logged in and bookmark the inbox?

Re:Microsoft's internal spam

[Columcille]

The MSN frontpage is my #1 reason for not using Windows Live Mail. I primarily use gmail but I've kept one account set up for Windows Live Mail using Custom Domains just to see how development went. When they threw up MSN as the frontpage I cringed. Hard. When they left it, I decided to abandon my experiment and switched the domain to Google Apps. Having MSN sleeze news flash at me every time I go to check email - it just was too painful.

Re:Microsoft's internal spam

[Scrameustache]

Do these desktop application have the microsoft useless celebrity gossip as the main page when you load them? Is it possible to stay logged in and bookmark the inbox? That sounds like a horrible security risk, so, this being Microsoft, I assume that you can, yes ;)

But is it Exchange based?

[dzelenka]

I read the article (really) and it never says what servers are being used behind the curtain. They were embarrassed when they could not put Hotmail on Exchange when it was originally acquired. This would be a grand showcase for the scalability of Exchange. Why isn't it being shouted from the rooftops? Are they waiting to see if it _does_ scale?

Re:But is it Exchange based?

[giorgiofr]

Hotmail runs on BSD. I thought everybody knew it.

Re:But is it Exchange based?

[dzelenka]

Everyone knows the old Hotmail ran on BSD. I was wondering about the new Hotmail.

Re:But is it Exchange based?

[UnknowingFool]

No, in a move to eat it's own dogfood, MS moved hotmail to Win2K about a year after they bought it. Like all migrations, it was not without issues. Some users still complain that hotmail is not as responsive as it once was. I don't about the past but these days I use hotmail for certain functions (it used to be required to get a MSN Messenger account). There's a considerable lag just to read messages.

New sort function

[Anne_Nonymous]

Now you can sort your spam by "most valuable offers first".

How is this news?

[arhar]

First of all, how is this news? I did this about a year ago.

Now, I've been a hotmail user since early 1997. I switched to Gmail when it came out, but kept my Hotmail account for sentimental purposes. A few months back though, I finally completely gave up on it.

20 million feedbacks? Ha! Most likely, they haven't read any of it - and certainly haven't read mine. I wrote them about the maddening lack of 'Check all' function, and the fact that when you start checking emails one by one, if you miss by a few pixels - it will select that one email, and lose all your other selections.

This pretty much makes Live Hotmail completely unusable to anyone who needs to delete a bunch of spam emails (and with Hotmail, you get a LOT of spam.)

At least it sounded good in theory - Gmail is still far behind Outlook, imho. And when somebody makes GOOD web-based Outlook, I'll be sold.

Re:How is this news?

[frogstar_robot]

What's really cute is that they arbitarily decide certain domains harbor spammers when they do not. Hotmail accounts can not be reliably mailed to from our workplace. If a Hotmail user emails one of us then we can reply but we cannot cold send mail to Hotmail. I tried to resolve it with Hotmail and the only solution they offered me was to let a whitelist provider they use to crawl around our network then we'd have to pay them to get on the whitelist. Then MAYBE we could send to Hotmail inboxes again. I simply advised our staff not to rely on Hotmail and I explain "this is Microsoft's fault" whenever Hotmail issues come up.

Re:How is this news?

[Zonk (troll)]

At least it sounded good in theory - Gmail is still far behind Outlook, imho. And when somebody makes GOOD web-based Outlook, I'll be sold. Scalix. It rocks.

Re:How is this news?

[RingDev]

"I wrote them about the maddening lack of 'Check all' function, and the fact that when you start checking emails one by one, if you miss by a few pixels - it will select that one email, and lose all your other selections."

Uh, there is and always has been a 'check all' button. it's right at the top of the mail list. It does clear your check-selections IF you click on the line for the email, but not the check box as it loads that email into the preview pane. Does it do that if you don't have the preview pane up?

"This pretty much makes Live Hotmail completely unusable to anyone who needs to delete a bunch of spam emails (and with Hotmail, you get a LOT of spam.)"

I would hardly call a minor bug when you miss-click a "completely unusable" issue. Also, I have no idea what YOU are doing to get so much spam, but it isn't MS's fault. I get maybe 3-8 spams a week on my hotmail account, and they all get stuck straight in the 7-day auto-delete junk mail folder. I don't have to delete them, I just let them sit in there and they delete themselves.

I'm not sure if I like the new interface or not, but it's still a good free email service.

-Rick

Re:How is this news?

[shoolz]

A letter to the Hotmail spam filter engineers & programmers.

Re:How is this news?

[justasecond]

The Register says MS arbitrary *drops* e-mails (*not* dumps them into a junk mailbox, but just silently drops them) if it decides the sending mail server belongs on some mystical blacklist. Adding a SenderID or making your e-mail less spammy doesn't do a damn thing if your ISP's mail server was used by someone -- at some point in the distant past -- to send something MS decided was spam. And the only recourse is to pay something like $1,400 to some magical e-mail certification service.

Another boneheaded MS "innovation", right up there with deciding their virus scanner should delete the Outlook mail folders if the user receives an e-mailed virus.

Re:How is this news?

[frogstar_robot]

Adding a SenderID or making your e-mail less spammy doesn't do a damn thing if your ISP's mail server was used by someone -- at some point in the distant past -- to send something MS decided was spam. And the only recourse is to pay something like $1,400 to some magical e-mail certification service.

Tried that too! In fact, I did everything the unhelpful Hotmail guy suggested except the $1400 magical service. Lo and behold, we are still blacklisted by them. I woulda just said "aw screw it" except for the fact that a board member has a Hotmail account...... Had lotsa fun explaining that one........

Re:From the article

[pilgrim23]

I currently have some 8 or so email addresses. One of these is Hotmail. One is Yahoo, I also use Eudora, Outlook, and Macintosh Mail. Oh, and Pine and elm on two systems. To me interface is just eye candy. I DON'T CARE what Hollyweird scandal, or flashing ad for a airline ticket/ car/ toothpaste/, is displayed next to some email that is an advert for Nigerian investments (that is as valid as the ads/articles) -which is what 90% of my Hotmail contains..
I also do not try to juggle my life via some online calendar that can crash/die and leave me all a twitter where I am suposed to be at 10:00.

Mail is mail. you toss the junk mail, you read the interesting stuff, grimace at the bills, and rememeber you need to send that birthday card to Mom.
Online is no different then the paper kind. Hotmail's change of interface is like when the Electric company changed to smaller envelopes (and didn't bother to adjust their sorting machines). Better eye candy means more annoyance, Big Deal, Somehow, in spite of it, I supose I can still delete the spam. Thanks Microsoft for all the improvements.

Whee free disk space

[Roadmaster]

And with 2 GB of storage space, it's now even better. Where's WinLiveHotmailFS?

I've seen the new Hotmail..

[zyl0x]

..in action, and I've got to say, I have no idea what technologies they're using, but the thing is horrendously slow. It's ugly, cluttered with unnecessary buttons, and needlessly flashy. IMHO, quite the opposite of GMail, which has been doing a fantastic job thus far.

"POP" goes the weasels

[BigBadBus]

....and for an extra fee, you can get POP access.... ..or use gmail, where its free. Aw shucks ;)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Yahoo had it before

[Anonymous Coward]

Yahoo Mail had me test a new interface some time ago (a year ago maybe), and it looked like Outlook. If you do like how Microsoft Outlook behaves, good for you. I for one, and surely some others, just hate using Outlook for personal stuff. The Google interface is simpler to use. At work I need all the fancy-hidden-features of Outlook, but for personal messages, the easy-going Google interface is a great relief.

My Brief Review

[ubuwalker31]

Looks slick and professional on first glance. No ads. Nice color scheme. Mail isn't automatically saved to the sent mail folder. Attaching a file to an email requires two clicks, one to browse for the attachment, and one to upload it. The interface seems fast. I tried using the gmail hotkeys, like f, c, and it didn't work. bummer. Only 2 gigs of storage space. Overall rating: 78/100

RIP Outlook Express

[b0s0z0ku]

apparently, Windows Live Desktop Mail is supposed to replace OE in XP and Windows Mail is supposed to do the same in Vista. But can it do newsgroups? :) And will the replacement automatically migrate the OE data to the new client, or will people wake up with a new, empty mail client after running Windows Update?

-b.

Re:RIP Outlook Express

[Constantine XVI]

From what I've seen/heard, Windows Mail/Windows Live Desktop Mail is just a slight cleanup and rebranding of Outlook Express to go with the Windows rebranding of everything in Vista. (Windows Internet Explorer, Windows Addres Book, Windows DVD Maker, etc.)

'certainly' didn't read your feedback?

[choseph]

Why have they certainly not read your feedback? I see a Check-all box right there at the top of the mail-summary column. Did you even look at the release before you said they didn't fix any of the problems you gave feedback for?

Here's what I got:

[pedestrian crossing]

Sorry, but it looks like you won't be able to participate in Windows Live Hotmail at this time.

This might be because:

Your account is with one of our partners and has additional features that Windows Live Hotmail doesn't support yet

Windows Live Hotmail isn't available in your area at this time

You have a parentally controlled account

Your Windows Live ID indicates you're under 13

Re:Here's what I got:

[veganboyjosh]

dude, you can tell them any date for your birthdate, they won't even know. just make up a birthdate that makes you older than 13.

Did they change their 'delete everything policy'?

[jcampbelly]

I lost years of e-mails on Hotmail due to a pretty assinine policy of theirs. I have a passport account, which uses my hotmail credentials, to log into our Microsoft Partner account. I spent months in and out of there reading docs and downloading patches, thinking the whole time that I was "logging in" to hotmail. One day I went to check my mail and all of it was gone, due to inactivity during that period. I called microsoft about it and they said that basically they couldn't do anything for me, there were no archives of e-mail. Unless they've done away with this policy, nobody should use this service.

D'oh

[hudsonhawk]

I'm not sure how I missed that.

Nothing to see here, move along

[InsaneProcessor]

I still have all hotmail addresses sent to my spam folder and deleted. If it is from a hotmail account, I don't want it.

Still no Seamonkey support

[Little_Professor]

Their silly browser sniffing blocks out Seamonkey users, dumping us with "Live Mail Lite." But if you spoof the UA to read Firefox, it works fine. I've tried raising this with the Hotmail team and the Seamonkey devs, to no avail.

Re:Please have normal CSS support.....

[moore.dustin]

Idiot. The subject at hand is Hotmail, which is Microsoft, but does not have anything close to a 90% market share. I have to develop emails for a ton of different clients (HTML/CSS) and if they do something stupid is will make my life, or someone's under me, miserable.

...and for the record, I do not need a reason to bash MS, they readily provide reasons that I can pick and choose from at will. I choose this one because it relates to my work.

Hotmail Vs. Gmail

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Okay, I don't have a hotmail account, although I do have a Gmail one. So how do the two stack up? From reading comments here and looking at public sources I see:

• Gmail - disk space of 2.6G versus 2G
• Hotmail - attachment size, Hotmail claims to allow 10M attachments as the maximum, whereas Gmail claims 10M for the attachment and message combined. (Can anyone confirm the marketing is true?)
• Gmail - Free POP support
• Tie - I know Gmail has no ads and someone is claiming Hotmail has removed them now too for the free accounts. Can anyone confirm this?
• Gmail - Spam, last I heard Gmail was winning the spam battle without the high false positive rate that has been plaguing Hotmail.
• ? - interface. Any interface designers with a clue taken a look at both of these?
• Gmail - prestige. We interviewed a person with a Gmail address the other day and someone commented that she probably has a clue in technology. At an old job someone made the opposite comment with regard to an applicant with a Hotmail address.
• Gmail - cross platform support. Gmail works the same way with Safari and Opera, while Hotmail degrades to the old interface in them.
• Gmail - language support. Gmail claims to support 41 unique languages (not variants) versus Hotmail's 31.
• ? address book import/export - Gmail supports CSV import and export. Hotmail is unknown?

Does anyone have any other comparative features or info or corrections for the above list?

Re:Hotmail Vs. Gmail

[cybereal]

Mostly I agree, but there are a few things you've missed or mistakened...

Gmail - disk space of 2.6G versus 2G

I currently show 2,849MB of space. It goes up all the time. It's not a static limit. This is important to note because over time hotmail will remain at 2G and google mail will soon reach 3 gigs.

Gmail - cross platform support. Gmail works the same way with Safari and Opera, while Hotmail degrades to the old interface in them.

While this is certainly close to true, it's not entirely accurate. GMail works very similarly across browsers, furthermore, not all features are supported on Safari or Opera, et al. The built-in google talk client does not work on Safari, for example.

Tie - I know Gmail has no ads and someone is claiming Hotmail has removed them now too for the free accounts. Can anyone confirm this?

This is definitely not true, at least on the gmail front. I haven't used HoTMaiL in a long time. But I can attest to gmail, and let me tell you, there are definitely ads. They are context sensitive text ads that use the contents of your email to choose which ads to show. They show up on the right side in a column next to the email you are currently viewing.

I can't imagine anything HoTMaiL does will ever draw me back to their service. I've used a number of email providers over the years and nothing has ever come close to the mass spam attraction that HoTMaiL sustains. And the kind of vendor lock-in they provide just isn't attractive at this point in the history of the internet. Yahoo! has provided a more interesting interface with arguably better usability than gmail, but still it won't draw me in. I won't pay Yahoo! to get rid of 8cm*cm ads when gmail will give me the same features for free. and only some minor text ads to support it. Besides, anymore I'm just forwarding my gmail mail to an IMAP server :)

Re:Hotmail Vs. Gmail

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

While this is certainly close to true, it's not entirely accurate. GMail works very similarly across browsers, furthermore, not all features are supported on Safari or Opera, et al. The built-in google talk client does not work on Safari, for example.

I was talking about the e-mail features only. I believe the MSN chat function on the MS client is broken in alternative browsers as well. Are there ant GMail features that don't work (as opposed to integration with other Google services)?

Here is the revised list;

• Gmail - disk space of 2.6+G versus 2G
• Hotmail - attachment size, Hotmail claims to allow 10M attachments as the maximum, whereas Gmail claims 10M for the attachment and message combined. (Can anyone confirm the marketing is true?)
• Gmail - Free POP support
• Tie - I know Gmail has no graphic ads and some text ads and someone is claiming Hotmail has removed graphic ads now too for the free accounts. Can anyone confirm this or provide feedback on the number of ads and the manner they are shown?
• Gmail - Spam, last I heard Gmail was winning the spam battle without the high false positive rate that has been plaguing Hotmail.
• ? - interface. Any interface designers with a clue taken a look at both of these?
• Gmail - prestige. We interviewed a person with a Gmail address the other day and someone commented that she probably has a clue in technology. At an old job someone made the opposite comment with regard to an applicant with a Hotmail address.
• Gmail - cross platform support. The e-mail functions of Gmail works the same way with Safari and Opera, while Hotmail degrades to the old interface in them. Gmail's supported browser list is much more extensive.
• Gmail - language support. Gmail claims to support 41 unique languages (not variants) versus Hotmail's 31.
• ? address book import/export - Gmail supports CSV import and export. Hotmail is unknown?

Re:Hotmail Vs. Gmail

[Constantine XVI]

On the ads, Gmail certainly does have ads, they're just cleverly hidden in the news ticker and the side of your mails. I know they exist, but I don't see them unless I look for them.
I'd definitley say Gmail wins out on the interface if WinLive Hotmail is anything like Outlook Web Access. Gmail has a nice clean design, but OWA definitley feels as if they tried to shove a desktop app into a web browser, with little success.

Re:Hotmail Vs. Gmail

[A_Non_Moose]

Does anyone have any other comparative features or info or corrections for the above list?

Only got my gmail account now (webmail wise) and haven't had hotmail for about a year.

Spam: Gmail doesn't spam like hotmail does, IIRC. Hotmail announcements and crap like that you can't block.
I mean, really. I don't give a fuck, and don't wanna see that trash. I think I had a filter that moved them
to trash, but sometimes they'd still be in the inbox for one reason or another.

Uptime/Access: Main reason I don't have hotmail is I checked it once every 3 weeks, and hit the "system down
for maint" blather several times over the past several years (can't recall how long I had it, but I hated
the interface after MS's purchase...that's how long). All it took was forgetting for 30.1 days, and all the
mail was gone and account still active. You gotta be kidding me...fucking assholes.
Gmail, IIRC, allows for 9months before action such as above. 30days vs 9months.

(Is it odd that I just now notice MS's time frame is a menstrual cycle, and Gmails is a human's gestation
cycle? Oddly says a lot about MS Hotmail, doesn't it? Considering how often MS is plugging holes...ok
I'll stop now)

Folders vs tagging/labels/conversations: Personally I'd like folders in gmail, to sort conversations in a less
confusing way...heck I had to explain to a gmail user how to use "conversations/threads/whatever they call them"
a while back...they're like folders, but they're not. Say you have a few listservs that you pay attention to.
Seperate folders for each vs "listserv tag(s)". IIRC, you can make subfolders, but not sub"tags" say for
win/lin administration. Folders are easy for sorting, not so much filtering, but the opposite is true for
labels/convo's (IOW "thread view").
All 3 together would rock the email world, I think.

Easy way to archive: Gmail wins, IMO. Pop, Thunderbird and (text).mbx format vs OE integration/tricks and outlook's binary format (not easily shifted to other clients).
See uptime/access time; granted I didn't lose anything I would miss terribly (now ex-gf's email included, for
amusement only/reminder/spank bank material) but the principle of the thing; Short sighted, tight fisted,
unyielding rules they'll blast your mail away in a heartbeat, vs 3/4 of a year? If you can't think to
check email more than once every 3/4 of a year, stick with snail mail and DVD/USB thru the post.

Prestiege/Spam(again): No kidding, the gmail invites *increased* the desire and heightend the profile.
Hotmail, in addition to spamming itself was spamming everyone else and the spam was increased by the
likes of aol/yahoo/msn and such. Before spam filtering in hotmail was added (much less worth a damn)
the first thing I did was use the regular filters to send *.yahoo.com, *.aol.com and *.msn.com and
the like to the spam, and then whitelist the one or two people with those addresses that I'd care
to hear from.

It all comes down to what if I lost my account for either?

Hotmail: Mumbled "Fucking assholes" and moved on, not even bothering to reinstate the account/name.

Gmail: Would not be happy, but would think similar to what I stated above. MY FAULT for waiting more than
3/4 of a year, barring coma, abduction, or being stuck on an island with a bunch of fedex packages, there'd
be no excuse that would not sound hollow.

Re:Hotmail Vs. Gmail

[ssstraub]

One absolutely HUGE feature that puts Gmail on top IMO, is the FREE option to forward all your mail to any other email address permanently. I know Yahoo makes you pay to do this, as this gives them vendor lock-in. I believe Hotmail does the same.

Some people would rather walk over hot coals than change their email address (or phone number for that matter), but Gmail makes it painless and free to do so. To me that means they've chosen to compete on features instead of lock-in.

Re:Hotmail Vs. Gmail

[logixoul]

google mail will soon reach 3 gigs. If by soon you mean in an year (do the math) ;)

Re:Hotmail Vs. Gmail

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Gmail - Free POP support: It blows and no IMAP support. Used to be really buggy, I kind of doubt they put the effort to fix it.

POP is the only way I ever access my Gmail account and I've never noticed a problem with it. How does it "blow?" Also, don't you think free POP support and no IMAP support is better than Paid POP support and no IMAP support? This is a comparison of the two.

Gmail - prestige: Perhaps only for someone non-technical trying to judge. That's pretty sad to have an effect on your hiring practices.

Interesting assertion about the non-technical users, but I don't know of any support for it. Google is a more highly regarded brand according to most surveys in recent years. As for our hiring practices, it does make sense in a way. The types of technical decisions people make and their awareness of new technologies is pertinent to the job. A person with a Gmail account either just got it or has been beta testing it (cutting edge). A person with a Hotmail account may well be one of those people who chose something on its merits long ago and has not looked to see what the state of the art is. In any case, while it was probably not at all relevant to our final decision, you definitely should be aware of the impression your e-mail address makes professionally. If you have a silly name at an AOL account, be prepared to be regarded as technically incompetent. If you have a prestige account, like one associated with a cool OSS or research project, it definitely helps your chances.

Gmail - cross platform support: Google sure as hell doesn't like Opera. Perhaps only recently does Gmail work with it, though I had to degrade the interface previously. I know that many Google apps still complain and some will even boot you out if they detect Opera (colleage recently found that out when he tried changing browsers).

We're talking about Gmail, not Google in general. This is a comparison of two services, not everything done by their respective companies, or the old versions of products they used to have. Gmail lists Opera as a supported browser. Is there something specifically that does not work? MS lists Opera as an unsupported browser and provides it with the old, deprecated interface that this article talks about the replacement of. I'd say that is a win for Gmail, unless you have some specifics as to how Gmail is less useful than that.

Re:Hotmail Vs. Gmail

[massysett]

Yeah, they're competing on features, but I think Google realized something entirely different. Yahoo and MS were in the business of extracting cash from the user base. That's why they charged for disk space upgrades, extra filters, POP access, and so forth.

Google realized they're in the business of extracting cash from advertisers. To do that, Google mines data. They scan emails and search for patterns so they can sell ads to those who are most likely to want to see them. In order to mine this data, it benefits Google if they see as much email as they possibly can. I think that's what explains the original 1GB size limit while others were doling out a measly 2-4MB: with all that space, you're encouraged to horde mail, and Google is free to mine information from it.

Same goes for your mail forwarding. Google sees every single message that is forwarded through their servers. They can keep that data and use it for marketing. Even if you're not using Gmail and seeing those ads, they might one day use that data to give you ads in another context.

Perhaps this is not a bad bargain, but few seem to realize that Google's goals are not altruistic here.

Re:Hotmail Vs. Gmail

[3choTh1s]

I have a Live Hotmail, a Gmail, and a Yahoo! Mail account. Lets all realize that these are all free normal webmail accounts. Usually this means for regular non business uses. So lets get real here.

• I'm currently using 60 MB in Gmail(highest out of all of them). And that's because I store some programs on it, thanks to Gspace. Most users wouldn't really care about the extra .6 GB.
• The max attachment size I've used was 3MB so I'm still not sure or care what the max size is.
• Gmail actually has text ads. I like it. They still get their revenue and I don't get anything intrusive. The contextual stuff sucks but I guess that's why it's still in beta.
• Spam is handling in Hotmail sucks ass. They need a major update to the way they are handling it. But I've currently have it set up that only people in my address book go to my inbox and that seems to do just fine.
• Interface - Actually I like the Live Hotmail interface the best out of the three. And it's what the user likes that is the most important right? It's about as fast as gmail but with all the goodies of Yahoo! Mail(drag and drop support,...). And this is on my god awful slow P3-700.
• Prestige is something that's very temporary. Hotmail used to be the webmail to get, but it's been long since that title has been passed on. I'll tell you the truth when I say that I will never ever give a professional contact my hotmail address. But that could be temporary
• Cross platform support - Yeah Gmail has better support(discounting Live Hotmail Classic). But lets be serious here. Both Opera and Safari have less than 1/4 the adoption that firefox has. Which is to say a very very small number. And since Live Hotmail works in Firefox, it's not going to be a huge item on their todo list
• As long as they support English I'm good.
• Live Hotmail does have CSV import and export. It's under Options.

This is not an argument just a helpful guide to those looking in.

Re:Hotmail Vs. Gmail

[doombob]

works the same way with Safari and Opera, while Hotmail degrades to the old interface in them

This is my favorite Hotmail feature while using Opera!

Re:Hotmail Vs. Gmail

[laffer1]

Gmail: Everyone can send you email.
Hotmail: Legit mail is blocked before you can get it.

There's spam filtering and then there's ridiculous blocking of email.

mod?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

How is a discussion of the interface to Hotmail with regard to Apple's standard mouse configurations, offtopic for an article about the new interface to Hotmail?

Re:From the article

[Virgil Tibbs]

I'm really amazed other sites/clients have not implemented that yet.
Google probably patented it.

Re:From the article

[macraig]

"...at some point, everyone will be unilaterally migrated over to Windows Live Hotmail"

What? How dare they! When did Google and Yahoo give 'em permission to do that?

Pretty slick!

[lpangelrob]

Looks pretty slick after 5 seconds of using it. My hotmail account is at least 5 years old by now, and some things have changed. For starters, the "Silver" theme looks better when used on a Mac...

Google copy

[wift]

Just switched my MSN account over to it and it just looks like a copy of what Google does. Customized page, drag n'drop, AJAX interface. They still take you to the next message when you delete within an email instead of directly back to the inbox.

Re:Google copy

[larry bagina]

I wish google would take you to the next message when you delete a message. I've never used a real email application that didn't work that way. I don't want to go back to the fucking, I want to read the next message.

Where's the POP?

[FalleStar]

After implementing all these changes to try to match Gmail they somehow overlooked POP? That's why I'll stick w/ Gmail as my primary service & keep my Hotmail around only for signing up for services which are likely to send a bunch of unwanted spam.

Tabbing, grouping? Gmail is broken...

[subbuk]

We've had multi-level threads, in elm and mutt for decades now. Gmail gives you one thread per conversation but not real threads -- mutt for instance gives you as many threads as there really are, ie two replies to mail #1, each spawns a new thread both linked to the first one. Just like outlook. Even IMDB or slashdot discussion boards ahve better threading than gmail threads. Also with gmail how do I get to a non-threaded mode? For all my mail? Or use threading by reply-to rather than by subject so that when someone changes the subject it doesn't start a new thread? For a long time user of mutt, gmail is pretty much unusable. yahoo and hotmail and the rest are just abominations in terms of UI.

Re:Did they change their 'delete everything policy

[SEMW]

There's no free email accounts which *don't* do this; Hotmail, Yahoo, even Gmail (though the latter does give you 3 times as long before they delete your emails and give your account name to someone else). If you want a permanent email address or have any business-critical emails, don't use free email accounts, period. You get what you pay for.

I've tried this

[Maxo-Texas]

It just didn't work right in Firefox.

I know... "duh".

But the OLD hotmail does work correctly.

And it was an awesome party!

[CrimsonScythe]

Oh, it was certainly upscale, too! He was even paid handsomely by some of the attendees; several Nigerian princes and other government officials. I bet you haven't had such awesome guests at any of your parties! Not only that, but there were all kinds of drugs, sexual arousal aides, and not a single person were slowed down by their erectile dysfunction! What's with the party, you say? Well, you've gotta celebrate the new mortgage, refinancing, and awesome returns on your stock trading somehow!!!

Hotmail let's all the cool kids in! Don't hate just because your lame email client -- dare I say Pine? -- can't even manage to arrange a mediocre geriatric boccia tournament...

Re:Sounds a bit pornographic don't you think?

[junglee_iitk]

From when did hot possible naked dudes become porn?

MOD PARENT UP

[ronocdh]

Thank you for realizing this. Gmail's numbers are at least actual people. My e-mail addresses have NEVER seen spam from a Gmail address, but I've seen hoards from Yahoo alone. Please don't swallow those inflated statistics without choking.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[redcane]

Just because the spam *says* it comes from yahoo, doesn't mean it does. You know, the whole forged From field thing and all that. (forging is too strong a word, since all it requires is for you to state that is where it's from and many email servers take it at face value). Hell, I can telnet to my nearest SMTP server and send you an email from "billgates@yahoo.com" right now.

Hotmail Vs. Gmail - Update

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

The list updated with misc additions for others who replied:

• Gmail - disk space of 2.8+G versus 2G
• Hotmail - attachment size, Hotmail claims to allow 10M attachments as the maximum, whereas Gmail claims 10M for the attachment and message combined. (Can anyone confirm the marketing is true?)
• Gmail - Free POP support
• Tie - I know Gmail has no graphic ads and some text ads and someone is claiming Hotmail has removed graphic ads now too for the free accounts. Can anyone confirm this or provide feedback on the number of ads and the manner they are shown?
• Gmail - Spam, last I heard Gmail was winning the spam battle without the high false positive rate that has been plaguing Hotmail. No undeletable spam messages from the service provider
• ? - interface. Any interface designers with a clue taken a look at both of these?
• Gmail - prestige. We interviewed a person with a Gmail address the other day and someone commented that she probably has a clue in technology. At an old job someone made the opposite comment with regard to an applicant with a Hotmail address.
• Gmail - cross platform support. The e-mail functions of Gmail works the same way with Safari and Opera, while Hotmail degrades to the old interface in them. Gmail's supported browser list is much more extensive.
• Gmail - language support. Gmail claims to support 41 unique languages (not variants) versus Hotmail's 31.
• Gmail? - address book import/export - Gmail supports CSV import and export. Hotmail is unknown? Gmail can use POP as an export mechanism.
• Gmail - free forwarding to another account
• Gmail - 3 months inactive before disabling, versus 1 month for Hotmail
• ? - folders/labels, we have one vote for Gmail labels being easier to use, but this may be more of a personal preference thing unless there is a real consensus.

Some of the stupidity of Hotmail

[vorpal22]

I'm just baffled at how bad the design of the new Hotmail was done. For example, say I want to read a message in my junk folder. To do so, I click on the junk folder and select the message. This brings the header information onto the screen. A yellow bar at the top of the e-mail informs me:

Messages in the Junk folder never get opened automatically.

and invites me to click an "Open message" link to have the message load in full. I do so. This presents the message, but any links contained therein are disabled. This is indicated by another yellow bar at the top of the e-mail saying:

Attachments, pictures, and links in this message have been blocked for your safety.

with a link saying "Show content", which finally brings about the message how I desired it, which should have happened in the first place when I clicked on it.

I don't like being treated like I'm a severely brain damaged five year old.

When they eat their own dogfood...

[tupletuple]

When hotmail runs %100 on exchange on windows, I'll give a damn about hotmail. As long as I have to suffer with their crap, they had better be.

firefox 2?

[DohnJoe]

I can't seem to get it working with full version on Firefox 2.0 although they say 1.5 is supported so I'd expect it to work for 2.0, it has been out for ages now... it's even included in Debian stable ;)

I just switched

[joe 155]

but it looks crap because of a huge block of solid colour at the top, which reduces the viewable screen by quite a lot - which makes the whole thing look rubbish. I'm assuming that this is either a linux/firefox thing; which makes me wonder why they didn't test it - it's not like Bill hasn't got a copy he could lend to Steve...

FWIW I use GMail exclusively now

[Dutchmang]

It's simple, I can now connect it to my own POP server and use their nice Web interface. I don't even use Evolution/Thunderbird anymore because they've just made it too easy for me not to. Much better than my ISP-provided NeoMail/Horde/Squirrelmail UIs.

Oh and BTW I don't see any ads at all in my GMail.

Re:FWIW I use GMail exclusively now

[neminem]

But... I actually like google's ads. No, really. They're unobtrusive, they're as out of the way as you could want, and really, I only even notice them when I get the suspicion that an email might provide amusing responses from its filtering system. I've gotten some pretty great ones.

Re:"POP" goes your credability

[instagib]

"which work on Windows only"

Which means it's NOT free, neither in the beer nor the freedom sense.

Spam?

[illuminatedwax]

How about they fix their Spam filter or at least allow me to block a lot more domains? A mail provider with approved spam just isn't the way to do things.

OT: customizegoogle.com

[vic-traill]

Oh and BTW I don't see any ads at all in my GMail.

Hey, thanks for the lead on this extension. Coolest ff extension I've seen in a while.

And the demo has the goofiest muzak I've heard in about the same amount of time - +1 Cheesy.

Right clicking can be efficient

[gd2shoe]

Right-clicking should never, ever be the only way to get to some functionality.

(emphasis added)

I was ticked at your post until I reread it. This much is absolutly true. I think this is the part that other posters missed.

Right-clciking and selecting a menu option is a lot slower and less learnable than a button

That is absolutly NOT true. Compare classicly styled spell checkers with the ones offered by current versions of Word and Open Office. You right click on a specific word and are instantly given a list of available spellings. Yes, there should be another way to also reach the spell checker, but it is SLOWER and LESS LEARNABLE. Perhaps it's the exception, and not the rule. You were painting with a pretty broad brush. Besides, when someone starts learning to use a computer on a Windows box, they will start right clicking on everything to learn their options. I suspect it's harder when you transition from a Mac.

Most of the rest of your post stands on it's own merit.

Re:Right clicking can be efficient

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

That is absolutly NOT true. Compare classicly styled spell checkers with the ones offered by current versions of Word and Open Office. You right click on a specific word and are instantly given a list of available spellings.

Actually, the procedure for using it is: highlight the word (usually by double clicking), then right click, then select correct spelling from the provided list, then release the button. In general, the workflow of highlighting a word, then hitting a button and navigating a dialogue in a standard location is faster for new users and slower for expert users, in that instance, but you're failing to account for the fact that it is a special case where there are very, very few options in the contextual menu. As the number of items in the contextual menu gets larger, the operation becomes slower and slower, while the traditional button option remains the same speed. Now this is partially mitigated on a WebUI because the buttons are not always in a persistent location.

As to "learnability" contextual menus are a nonstandard interface item compared to buttons, and one that has no persistent clue. If you don't know you can right click on something, looking at the screen provides you with no clue to that, whereas just looking at the screen a user can see a button for the same function, and may, thus, experiment or investigate and learn what that button does, thus learning to use the feature.

Besides, when someone starts learning to use a computer on a Windows box, they will start right clicking on everything to learn their options.

For some advanced groups of users this is true, but it is not even close to true for average users in usability tests. The number one usability issue encountered with average users is they don't understand right and left clicking. Some will ask for every button/clickable every time. Some choose randomly. Some always click both buttons simultaneously with somewhat random results. In general, novice users do not ever find and intentionally avoid features in right-click contextual menus. For those reasons such a usage is very inappropriate for a Web mail client that is going to be rolled out to the general public including very novice users.

Re:Right clicking can be efficient

[gd2shoe]

Before I get into this rebuttal, I would like to point out that I believe your confusion originated because you learned computing on a Macintosh. I apologize if this statement is incorrect. It has been said repeatedly that the operating system that you learn on first is normally the one that you will be most comfortable with. I think there are studies stating such, but I haven't read them.

That is absolutly NOT true. Compare classicly styled spell checkers with the ones offered by current versions of Word and Open Office. You right click on a specific word and are instantly given a list of available spellings.

Actually, the procedure for using it is: highlight the word (usually by double clicking), then right click, then select correct spelling from the provided list, then release the button.

Please correct me when I'm wrong, and not when I'm right. The precise procedure is as follows:

• Notice that a word is flagged as misspelled.
• Move the mouse to that word.
• Right click.
• Locate the correct spelling in the menu.
• Move the mouse to that location.
• Left click.

You do not need to highlight the word first. Note that this is the same between Word 2002 and Open Office 2.

In general, the workflow of highlighting a word, then hitting a button and navigating a dialogue in a standard location is faster for new users and slower for expert users, in that instance, ...

You're right, but you have set up the dichotomy wrong. The comparison really should be between new users and the so-called computer literate. You do not even need to be close to expert for the context menu to be faster, in this case. It will be faster for (very nearly) anybody who knows it's there. Let's run your example:

• Notice that a word is flagged as misspelled.
• Move the mouse to that word.
• Left click so the cursor will be in the word (so the spell check knows where you want to start).
• Move the mouse all the way to the toolbar where the button resides.
• Click the spell check button.
• Examine the dialog box for the correct spelling.
• Move the mouse to that possition (typically a much greater distance than to a context menu).
• Double click the word (a shortcut as hidden as a context menu).

Several of these steps are longer or more involved than the context menu counterpart. Note that in this case you do need to double click to highlight the word in question for Open Office. Word 2002 wont even give you that much, as it starts it's spell checking at the beginning regardless. These are peripheral problems, though, and related directly to the word processor.

By the way, I'm breaking up a run-on sentence here for you.

...but you're failing to account for the fact that it is a special case where there are very, very few options in the contextual menu.

It is a special case, but not as special as you would like to believe. It's mostly special because it is a novel use of dynamic context menus (This may be an oxymoron, since it dynamically changes to match context...). Most context menus don't have too many options.

As the number of items in the contextual menu gets larger, the operation becomes slower and slower, while the traditional button option remains the same speed.

I'll agree that context menus should be kept as small as reasonable. Often, they aren't. And yes, they become annoyingly slow to navigate when they grow too big. The "traditional button option" is slow for it's own reason. It typically requires selecting something, and then moving across the screen to the button. This is faster and easier than a large and unwieldy context menu. It can also be done in constant time (I dare, tentatively, to propose that context menus are O(n) ).

Re:Right clicking can be efficient

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Before I get into this rebuttal, I would like to point out that I believe your confusion originated because you learned computing on a Macintosh.

Umm, I did not learn computing on a Macinstosh. I Learned on a Commadore64, then an Apple2C, then a variety of computers in school. In fact, the first computer I ever owned personally was a hybrid machine containing both a 66Mhz PPC chip and a 66Mhz 486, which had a built in KVM. I think this actually makes me one of the very few people to have started off with no mac or PC bias as I spent a lot of time instantly able to switch between the two OS's. The input devices I used were the keyboard and a four button track ball (the olde fashoined kind, like from centipede).

The precise procedure is as follows:

That does not work in my version of OpenOffice. You have to highlight the word first. As I mentioned, I don't have a Hotmail account for testing, but you seem to have missed the point. The difficulty that arises is not in the step where one must highlight the word, but where one must either hold down the button while scrolling down the list, or, use both the right and left buttons for the same procedure.

You're right, but you have set up the dichotomy wrong. The comparison really should be between new users and the so-called computer literate. You do not even need to be close to expert for the context menu to be faster, in this case.

It is not a dichotomy. What a given person considers an "expert" is very relative. Since this software (hotmail) is targeting the general populace, I'll ask you a question, "have you ever watched a usability study where the users were the general public?" If you have, you would probably not consider the use of and learning of the right mouse button to be a non-issue. It is the single, number one, most common usability issue in every computer usability study with the general public I've personally seen, and in almost every one I've read.

Let's run your example:

I actually did not give an example, but I did mention use of a button. The point I was bringing up is that for the general user, there are methods that are as fast if not faster, when actually used, rather than in the theoretical use cases you show. For example, you fail to account for people selecting the wrong word, or hitting the wrong mouse button when trying to use your context menu, which is a common case and which slows overall usage. You did not account for users who will click both buttons simultaneously all the rime, but who tend to unconsciously hit the left button more commonly. You did not account for users who will not find this function at all and who will go get a dictionary and correct by hand.

I mentioned a button because it usually results in static behavior. You don't have a menu that will go away if you accidentally click. There is also the use case of a spelling checker that is run on command and which asks the user about each misspelled word. In some cases, this is actually faster.

My point is, context menus are for expert users in front of a Windows box. If you're targeting the general public (like hotmail) it should not be the primary interface for a function and it should certainly not be the only interface.

Granted, but I don't care. I know that you started by replying in regards to hotmail. I, on the other hand, am not here to extol the virtues (or berate the faults) of hotmail. I'm here because you made a very broad incorrect declaration: "Right-clciking and selecting a menu option is a lot slower and less learnable than a button".

I made that in the context of a discussion about hotmail and with regard to a class of users. Right-clicking is almost always going to be less learnable in the general case than a button, except for very particular user groups. As for speed, that depends entirely upon the use case and there was one under discussion.

One cav

Re:Come to the UK

[jellomizer]

What type of stuff are you teaching your young. If they choose hotmail over the other services they must be doing something wrong.

Who gives a crap?

[Zeikzeil]

Just get yourself FreePops and stop being bothered by the interface...

Re:Coming Soon: Microsoft's internal spam

[Macthorpe]

Why is the $3 OS suite supposed to compete with OLPC, seeing as OLPC will now run Windows and the suite?

You know, it's perfectly possible for them to *shock* CO-EXIST?!