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

[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

[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

[SleepyHappyDoc]

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

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.

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.

Hotmail features

[sakdoctor]

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

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...

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.

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.

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.

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: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?

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: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."

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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

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

[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: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?