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The redesign effort, even its more ambitious aspects, is not a total wash, however.
Both the classic and full modes sit atop a far more modern engine, the internal part of the mail system. With Hotmail, Microsoft was at the end of its development rope. Every new feature basically had to be "hacked" into the code.
The new code can support multiple interfaces, not just Hotmail's classic and full modes, and can support sending mail information to other Microsoft properties as well as potentially to third parties.
Already, Microsoft has said it will use the new mail engine to power Office Live mail accounts as well as a new Windows Live @ Edu effort, in which Microsoft is trying to get universities and public-school systems to allow it to power their mail.
December 1997
Microsoft acquires Hotmail and its 8 million users.
December 1998
Hotmail tops 30 million users.
December 1999
Hotmail hits 52 million users.
April 2004
Google announces Gmail.
July 2005
Microsoft demos improved Hotmail (code-named Kahuna) at a conference for financial analysts. It starts public testing of the product.
September 2005
Yahoo launches a limited U.S. beta of its improved Yahoo Mail service with features like drag-and-drop organization and a built-in RSS reader.
November 2005
Microsoft announces Windows Live, including plans to rename Hotmail as Windows Live Mail.
October 2006
Amid pushback from users, "classic" mode is made the default for the revamped Hotmail.
November 2006
Windows Live Mail drops its beta tag in the Netherlands but remains in testing in the United States and elsewhere.
February 2007
Microsoft announces that a Web mail initiative called Windows Live Hotmail.
May 2007
Windows Live Hotmail loses its beta tag worldwide.
For those who really want a more Outlook-like experience, Microsoft has another option: Outlook. Microsoft plans to make available in a couple of weeks a new test version of its Outlook connector software that will enable anyone with a copy of Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007 to use the software to access Windows Live Hotmail messages and contacts.
Microsoft also plans to offer a separate Windows program, Windows Live Mail, which is similar to the Windows Live Mail desktop program that the company has been testing. That software, set to run on Windows XP and Windows Vista, is designed to work with Hotmail as well as e-mail accounts from rivals. It will feature contextual advertising tied to the contents of users' e-mail, though users will be able to turn off the "active search" feature.
Windows Live Mail will be one of Microsoft's first desktop programs to include advertising, though the company is considering making other consumer programs available in an ad-supported fashion.
Kevin Doerr, the Windows Live general manager in charge of the redesign, likens Microsoft's lesson of going too far with the Hotmail redesign to that of New Coke. In 1985, Coca-Cola changed the formula of its namesake soda, only to find that most people hated the new taste. The company was forced to revert to the old formula, which became known as Coca-Cola Classic.
"Even in software, you can go broke underestimating how little change people want to experience," Doerr said.
Microsoft isn't alone in its challenges trying to get Web mail right. Yahoo's redesigned mail is still in beta, as is Google's Gmail. Yahoo plans to drop the beta moniker in the coming months, while Google would not say just when it will move out of beta.
Yahoo has also found that some users want to use check boxes, adding back the boxes in its most recent test version, which is being rolled out to current users.
"We thought it would be a natural enough experience for users that they would be able to drag and drop, and use keyboard shortcuts," Yahoo spokeswoman Karen Mahon said. "The feedback we heard from our users is, they were lost without the check boxes, so we put them back."
In some ways, Microsoft's failures worked to its advantage. Few workers would have been excited by the prospect of building a new mail engine rather than leaving the interface largely unchanged. It might have also proved a tougher sell to get the resources needed for a ground-up rewrite.
Even Sim, who joined the Hotmail effort in August 2004, said it might have been a tougher sell for him, had he known how much would have to stay the same.
"I came thinking I would change the way people would communicate online," Sim said.
Indeed, that's the same draw Gmail product manager Keith Coleman sees in his job. "It's really exciting to do that because you can change the way people's lives work," he said. "The risk, of course, is something like what it sounds like Hotmail is seeing. If you take too big a leap, people get lost."
The Hotmail team believes that, despite taking a circuitous route, it has found a happy medium. But it doesn't plan on staying in the realm of the comfortable forever.
"That doesn't mean you shouldn't continue pushing," Doerr said. "It means you need to understand that and honor that and figure out a way to transition them from where they are today to where they should be."
No forwarding allowed
What will now become the primary interface for hundreds of millions of Web mail users was originally designed as a fallback.
The first version of what is now Windows Live Hotmail's default "classic" view was rushed out to offer a better option than what some beta users were getting--an error message saying the new Hotmail didn't work with their browser.
"We just shipped immediately anything we could ship," program manager Ellie Powers-Boyle said. "You could view mail. You could send mail. You couldn't forward mail because we didn't have time to add that button."
Not too much later, Microsoft decided that it needed not only something for older browsers, but also an option for those who didn't want as radical a makeover as the new Web 2.0-style mail program.
Months later, it decided that there were more of those people than those who wanted the new version. The company shifted the bulk of its engineers to work on the classic mode, completing its transformation from Hotmail's stepchild to its poster child.
And, yes, the Forward button works just fine.
--Ina Fried
Images
Hotmail goes retro
Just a basic version at the start, "classic" mode has become the default for the redesigned e-mail program.
May 7, 2007
Extreme makeover
As Microsoft gets set to launch its revamped Web mail service, here's a peek at how its look evolved. May 7, 2007
Web mail repairman
Microsoft's Mike Schackwitz works under the hood on the veteran Hotmail service.April 26, 2006
Related stories
Microsoft still trying to answer Google's wake-up call
Yahoo opens up e-mail APIs to outsiders
Yahoo Mail to offer unlimited storage
Microsoft sticks with Hotmail name
Hotmail's replacement is going Dutch
Microsoft to bring Hotmail onto the desktop
Windows Live beta is delivered
News from around the Web
Windows Live Hotmail to debut Monday
Microsoft's Hotmail brand will live on
Thousands fall for Hotmail prank
Yahoo blows roof off e-mail storage
Google ratchets up Gmail storage
Gmail opens its doors to the world
Maybe you should back up your own e-mail
Credits
Editors: Anne Dujmovic, Mike Ricciuti
Design: Andrew Ballagh
Production: Jessica Kashiwabara
- It is very slow and memory consuming. Not just doing things inside the page, but also maximizing and minimizing the window itself. It?s a webmail, how hard can it be?
- Cutting and pasting into word 2000 doesn?t work. MS owns both programs, so come on?
- When changing from the old hotmail, the contact list was messed up, it created duplicates of most entries.
And finally an old grief:
I?ll never forget sometime in around 1999 when Hotmail suddenly erased all ?sent? messages that were older than 30 days. My Sent box contained lots of personal messages, it was a kind of diary. I couldn?t believe what kind of an evil company would do that to me just to save a few hundred kilobytes of disc space. It made me sceptical of online applications for life.
Still I keep my account. That?s lock-in for you.
Holding your button down on something and moving it just isn't obvious. People see mouse buttons as buttons. And people know intuitively that you click shallow buttons quickly. They don't understand that you hold them down unless you're playing Starcraft. And Windows itself isn't set up to use drag'n'drop in most software. That was my number one adjustment when I borrowed an apple laptop - you drag and drop software to install it. Talk about unintuitive! It took me a long time to figure out what the little picture on the Firefox install file meant. Of course, it was easy as pie once I figured it out and windows should work this easy and clean, but it doesn't. So email shouldn't try to train its users in the mac way. It's an uphill battle not worth fighting, esp. for MS!
Second, it doesn't seem to me that anyone did an analysis of the previous product to see what things people didn't like, and what things they wanted to see. Nor does it seem that they did an ergonomic review of how the product was actually used.
Which ties into my third point. With human interfaces, you will eventually reach a plateau that you cannot improve on. For an interface that runs on a visual displace controlled by mouse and keyboard, your classic Hotmail interface may be as good as it gets. You'd need to change the entire paradigm to a different method (eye movement, touchscreen, brainwave, etc) before you can start seeing improvements over the current method.
Right now I'm not willing to move away from downloading Hotmail into Outlook because I prefer my mail on my hard drive where I can easily back it up and archive it just in case MS messes up. My backups and Outlook saved me from the disruption mentioned by another poster when Hotmail stopped retaining Sent messages for longer than 30 days. That is because messages Sent through Outlook via Hotmail simply do not save to the web-based Hotmail Sent folder (and vice versa). They remain safely on the Hard Drive and on my USB Flash Drive.
I'm a gmail user now and I've never been happier. I still get spam, but only people I use my email address to sign up for stuff and 99.9% of that spam gets caught and thrown away, so it never hits my inbox. I can use email and not have a super complicated email filter in place.
Why would I want to go back to hotmail, just cause they have a 'classic' look?
1. Tabs
2. Pop out feature read/reference multiple messgaes/compose multiple messages.
Yahoo has both 1 and 2.
Mahurshi Akilla
It is not just because it is slow at all. The story in CNET only looked at the speed factor and was therefore a incomplete report.
The new Hotmail beta was poorly designed for usability. It is clear that Microsoft is designing using the GM and FORD methods, that is arrogantly specifying what users will like and what they will use.
I have read interviews of Microsoft project managers indicating that VISTA and OFFICE 2007 had recorded use of more than 5 million users (their data NOT mine).
The problem is that they then go and make the most stupid assumptions on what the users will want and think, as if the 5 million users data tells them the whole story. Very stupid indeed. Vista is not what I want to use. I bought an new computer and was frustrated with the whole experience with Vista (I actually felt cheated and I am a proud computer geek). I am now back to XP. Office 2007 is in my computer for the better graphics, which was long due. The whole ribbon thing makes me click 2 times more than I did when using Office 2003. It is full of dumb assumptions, unlike what is stated on the adverts.
They just do not get it.
Hotmail also has big flashy banner ads. Yuk.
Most people I know who had Hotmail accounts have switched to Gmail. Gmail also links to Google Docs and spreadsheets and other great services like Picasa.
Microsoft offers similar services but as applications that you need to pay for. Big boxes containing CDs to install bloated Microsoft applications that cost too much is so yesterday.
But that explains why it is so slow today. It runs on Windoze.
Truth is that the new user interface is faster, easier to use and more extensible than the old interface.
What MS will do is too create a hotmail version that is built on the new technology but looks and behaves exactly like the old.
I have used the new interface since the first beta and it is much, much better.
Remeber what allof the DOS people complained about when Windows came out.
Remember that the same thing happend when Apple built the Lisa.
If the users ran the computer industry we would still be using punch cards.
My e-mail software is set to block any e-mail coming from a HotMail address.
99% of the spam I get is from Hotmail addresses, so I no longer accept ANYTHING from Hotmail anymore.
Only loosers use Hotmail
But if you ask me,,i really love its interface,the speed is enough for me,,well its 1000s of times better than stupid gmail and yahoo interface is just stupid...
So i am with the new one without any complaints...
integration with other products. I prefer the interface of Hotmail to both Gmail's and Hotmail's ,and I do not find loading time to be much of an issue (at least for me). Overall it is not that bad of an offering for M$, at least they're trying. With a little more innovation Hotmail 2 could develop into a leading webmail client.
They have changed their filters and now drop legitimate emails without warning. Their server accepts the emails from the sender, do not generate non-delivery notifications, and don't even place the emails in the "junk mail" folder.
However, if I reply to a message they have sent to me, then that message goes through. Go figure.
So, to me, hotmail/msn users live in a different universe and they will unkowingly miss out on important emails. (like a funeral announcement where half the distant family didn't receive because they are on microsoft's email franchise).
Too bad they didn't have the common sense to consult those 6 million users before stabbing them in the back.
Sorry MS, but no deal. I'll use the classic style, which works well on the same Solaris/Firefox box. I don't care what's wrong or who's fault it is, if I actually cannot use it, what choice do I have but to not use it?
considering ending that relationship unless they get it together. In
the past week, I have been unable to log in at least 50% of the
time. Probably because I am on a mac, but still.
- Give us a REAL Sent box.
- by rondaleroi December 21, 2007 12:41 AM PST
- One that doesn't delete messages after 30 days.
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(40 Comments)And make it so that Sent messages go there automatically instead
of having to remember to check the box to save a Sent message.
Yahoo! does both and now has unlimited storage. Come on,
Microsoft. Get with it.