{"id":418,"date":"2006-01-22T23:38:00","date_gmt":"2006-01-23T07:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wiredatom.com\/blog\/2006\/01\/22\/new-windows-live-mail-beta-aka-hotmail-30\/"},"modified":"2006-01-22T23:45:53","modified_gmt":"2006-01-23T07:45:53","slug":"new-windows-live-mail-beta-aka-hotmail-30","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wiredatom.com\/blog\/2006\/01\/22\/new-windows-live-mail-beta-aka-hotmail-30\/","title":{"rendered":"New Windows Live Mail Beta (aka Hotmail 3.0)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I finally got accepted to test Microsoft&#8217;s latest improvement over its Hotmail. It now sports an <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ajax_%28programming%29\" target=\"_blank\">AJAX<\/a> interface which updates information on a web page without it ever having to refresh. It tries to act like a desktop mail client but fails pretty badly on its first attempt.<\/p>\n<p>First of all, none of the browsers I used worked fully with all of its features. Microsoft, in all its endless wisdom, decided they&#8217;d make the site compatible to Microsoft Internet Explorer first and foremost (and <i>maybe<\/i> make it compatible with other &#8220;things&#8221; later). This is a drastic contrast to Google&#8217;s philosophy of trying to make its Gmail work with all major browsers.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/windows_live_mail_beta.png\" width=\"400\" height=\"238\" class=\"centered\" alt=\"Windows Live Mail Beta\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I also found the site refreshing more than it should. This new &#8220;free upgrade&#8221; supposedly comes with increased 2GB of email space. But I couldn&#8217;t find any option to see the usage anywhere. Maybe that&#8217;s one of the features only available for IE users for now.<\/p>\n<p>All in all, I&#8217;d rate Windows Live Mail &#8220;C-&#8221; for effort, &#8220;F&#8221; for look and feel, &#8220;D&#8221; for functionality and technical implementation. What kind of jackass AJAX implementation works with only one type of browser nowadays? This site was the first I encountered where most AJAX functionalities were not compatible to other browsers.<\/p>\n<p>While I am on a rant rampage, a word about Yahoo&#8217;s up-and-coming revamp of ITS web mail system. I applied to be a beta user back in November (or maybe early December). I never heard from them again. Then in mid-December, I got an email saying that I was <i>almost there<\/i>. While this was happening, I applied for Microsoft&#8217;s Live Mail Beta and started using it within a few weeks. It seems like everytime I deal with Yahoo, the company becomes less and less attractive in many ways. It&#8217;s become a me-too company from the media sensation and tehnology innovator that it was in 2000. But that aside, Yahoo&#8217;s new webmail is going to be pretty crazy in terms of functionality (since it mirrors features and look and feel that rival a true desktop application, which in turn begs the question &#8212; where&#8217;s the innovation in that? (especially given the fact that the company bought another company to get that&#8230; it&#8217;s not like they came up with it)).<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/yahoo_mail_beta_invite.png\" width=\"400\" height=\"283\" class=\"centered\" alt=\"Yahoo's 'almost there' email\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I finally got accepted to test Microsoft&#8217;s latest improvement over its Hotmail. It now sports an AJAX interface which updates information on a web page without it ever having to refresh. It tries to act like a desktop mail client but fails pretty badly on its first attempt. First of all, none of the browsers &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wiredatom.com\/blog\/2006\/01\/22\/new-windows-live-mail-beta-aka-hotmail-30\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;New Windows Live Mail Beta (aka Hotmail 3.0)&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,10,12,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-day-to-day-life","category-geek-stuff","category-no-logo","category-rant"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p54IqZ-6K","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredatom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredatom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredatom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredatom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredatom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredatom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredatom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredatom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredatom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}