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Digg this By Ina Fried
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
May 7, 2007 4:00 AM PST
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Microsoft had been tinkering with Windows Live Mail for months, but testers still weren't happy.
The program was too slow to load, too different and, well, just not like the old Hotmail it was intended to replace.
It was a painful realization for the more than 100 managers and developers on the project. In banking on a snazzy Web 2.0 application to try to catch up to rivals Yahoo and Google, Microsoft had dramatically overshot its audience.
But Mike Schackwitz, one of the program managers on the mail redesign, had an idea.
Months earlier, a small team had started working on a second version of Windows Live Mail. At first, it was just a very limited program designed for people whose browsers wouldn't run the new program. But in recent weeks, the team had decided to add a few tricks to it and turn it into a "classic" version that felt more like the old Hotmail.
What if that version was the new Hotmail, or at least the default option for most people, Schackwitz thought.
In October, he approached a few colleagues with the idea. Although such a move would be counterintuitive, key leaders on the project quickly realized that he was right. Bowing to its users, and despite grumblings from the developers, Microsoft shifted much of the team away from the "full" version and onto classic.
On Monday, Microsoft took the beta tag off the Hotmail redesign, and its classic mode took center stage. The full version with its Outlook-like look and feel is still there for those who want it, but it's not the default interface.
The change was hard on many levels. It pushed the product behind schedule. It meant less time spent on the fancier Web 2.0 client that competes most directly with Gmail and Yahoo's new mail program. And it raised the question of whether Hotmail will ever move beyond its reputation as the Web mail program for the technologically challenged.
The legacy problem
It's a situation Microsoft has often faced in other parts of its business, particularly Windows. It has a tougher time making radical shifts, even necessary ones, because it has a large user base it can't afford to leave behind.
Hotmail's new address
While Microsoft was building out the classic mode, Yahoo was adding other features, most recently building instant messaging directly into the new mail program. Google was refining its integration of chat, as well as building ties between Gmail and its online spreadsheets-and-documents program.
The shift to make classic mode the view most users will see was also painful from a morale perspective.
"A lot of the team felt dejected at this point," product planner Richard Sim acknowledged.
But the move was clearly necessary. Despite months of work, the main version of Windows Live Mail was still way too slow for many users' taste. It was particularly slow over dial-up connections, still used by roughly a third of Hotmail users, particularly outside the United States.
Microsoft had designed Windows Live Mail to feel more like a desktop program than a traditional Web page. To do so, however, such Web applications have to download a significant chunk of code before they can open a single message. Classic mode, which loads like a traditional Web page, doesn't allow things like drag-and-drop editing, but it feels much faster on a slow connection.
Classic mode wasn't the only bitter pill the development team had to swallow. Even in the full version, it turned out that many customers still wanted to select messages using check boxes rather than a mouse click or keyboard shortcut, much to the dismay of Microsoft's programmers.
"They were digging in their heels," Sim said.
Another popular feature in desktop e-mail programs is the "reading pane" that shows the top of an e-mail before it is opened.
But Sim's sister was among the significant group of Web mail customers who didn't want it. "It makes me feel vulnerable if I have this preview pane," Sim said she told him. The preview pane is still there in full mode, though Microsoft no longer opens the first message automatically in it.
Even changing the Hotmail name proved to be too much of a shift. What was once Windows Live Mail is now Windows Live Hotmail, a reflection of the fact that much of the venerable Web mail program has remained.
Microsoft also is holding back from quickly forcing its users onto the new version. Although those who sign up for Hotmail will automatically be taken to Windows Live Hotmail, existing users will still have to opt in, though Microsoft does hope to move all users over in a period of months.
The Match.com effect
If you open Windows Live Hotmail and notice that your first message doesn't automatically open in the preview pane, you can blame Match.com.
Initially, Microsoft figured people would like to see their first message. But, it turns out that many people don't necessarily want their co-workers or anyone else to see that Victoria's Secret special offer or the update from their online-dating service.
"They hated the fact that when you launched the product, it would automatically select the first message in the reading pane," program manager Ellie Powers-Boyle said. "They thought it was an invasion of their privacy."
Product planner Richard Sim said feedback was echoed loudly when he did field tests where he went to watch people in their homes to see how they used their e-mail.
"No. 1, I was just surprised that so many people use Match.com," Sim said. "When we were there, and the first message would show up in the reading pane, and it would be a Match.com e-mail, and they would get really embarrassed, we took that to heart."
--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.