my  block

where uzairs roam

Yay, the invite for Windows Live Mail (WLM) Beta finally popped up. I knew I was in for some surprises when I couldn’t click the ‘Join Now’ button in Firefox, but nothing prepared me for what I was see… (cue circus music)

Signup was as simple as visiting their webpage and agreeing to the EULA. Signing in to Hotmail again (same URL, same login page), brings one to a set of configuration pages, where you can choose whether you want the new WLM interface, or one that more closely resembles the standard Hotmail one. Since the whole point is to replace Hotmail with a better mail client, I didn’t hesitate to pick the WLM interface…

The next page allows you to pick basic options like whether sent messages should be saved and, more interestingly, a choice of colour schemes. This is really nice, since the old blue Hotmail colour scheme (which no one seemed to find too bad) was truly the most odious part of using Hotmail. I picked the white-on-blue scheme, since that’s the default offered and since I have liked the screenshots of it that I’ve seen. There’s an orange one that reminded me of Outblaze, but that’ll have to wait for another time…With that, you’re done! On to WLM…

First of all, the colour scheme is indeed beautiful and clean. The layout is quite nice, distinctly Outlook-Web-Access-ish. As in Outlook 2003, you have your folders on the left, your reading pane on the right, and your messages listed in the middle. Microsoft has really done a nice job of it, with goodies like responsive drag-n-drop, action-packed context menus and a fairly effective search tool.

Unfortunately, they’ve messed up in ways that obstruct these fine features. Advertising is all over the place. Not only have they put a massive banner ad right at the top, which takes about 18% of the vertical space above the pagefold on my 1024×768 display, but they’ve also squeezed a vertical banner on the right side of the reading pane. Windows Live Mail, the actual application, is banished to a squashed, inadequate frame that is incredibly difficult to use freely. I don’t understand this at all: instead of the Beta being a showcase for the new WLM interface, it is a showcase for the overgrown banner ads staring at you from everywhere.

Second, the interface simply won’t load in Firefox. I’m not talking about poor rendering; Microsoft’s servers simply redirect you to classic Hotmail if you access them using Firefox. STUNNING. There were chuckles about Atlas and Microsoft’s horrible standard conformance record on the script.aculo.us list when it was first announced, and I shudder to think how much fun those guys are having (and I’m missing out on) with Microsoft’s tacit refusal to produce a cross-browser library. This is truly mindblowing, not just in the context of WLM, but also of the developer experience in general that Atlas offers. Notwithstanding this, how are developers to have confidence they won’t have to build two versions of their sites?

Those are my two major complaints; other minor irritants include the fact that WLM uses the antiquated ‘folder’ paradigm for classifying messages instead of more flexible ‘tags’. There’s also the fact that Microsoft (in what I imagine was either a spurt of Web 2.0 enthusiasm or greed for advertising-revenues) decided it didn’t want the WLM page to scroll vertically, so you don’t have the option of scrolling down to give the WLM interface more room.

Dang, I’ve worked myself up into a froth here. It’s a massive shame Microsoft’s let advertising rule on what promised to be an upgrade even from Gmail. I think there are a few simple things Microsoft can do to address the problems: * Remove the large banner ads (728×90!!) from the front page. At most, there should be a couple of small (80×80 max) banners on the front page. These could be squeezed around the WLM interface, instead of squeezing the interface out of view. * Get WLM to work with Firefox! * Move the bulk of the advertising from the front page of the WLM interface to the pages on which individual messages are displayed. So, for example, when you signed in, you would get a clean view of the interface, with minimal advertising. You would see more advertising if you chose to open/send/reply-to a message.

Paul Thurrott had a fairly strongly-worded article a few days ago about how Windows Vista disappoints. I would hate to see WLM fall into the same pile. Microsoft has a strong product here, but not such a strong one that it can afford to completely disregard common sense and insist on placing advertising revenues ahead of users.