Hotmail users bitch and moan about new interface Many Hotmail users are up in arms at Microsoft after it decided to shelve the “classic” interface in its free email service. The software giant said it redesigned Hotmail to make it “much, much faster that the old ‘full’ experience”. But users have vehemently complained about the revamp. “This format is terrible! I wonder …
What is much more frustrating than moany users is trying to create nice pretty HTML formatted emails which will show correctly in Hotmail and Outlook 2007, as well as sensible email clients. Both reject basic, common W3C standards that even IE5 could cope with - stuff like CSS in the header, the 'padding' spacing variable, background images... basically we're back to designing pages with tables, and even then having to play around with them constantly to get round Outlook's foibles.
For some reason, Microsoft have decided to use the dunderheaded Word rendering engine rather than IE - this means Outlook 2007 can't even display emails that Outlook 2000 could.
The new Hotmail engine is almost as bad - bizarre really, as you'd think it would rely on the user's browser to do basic rendering. But no, Microsoft see fit to randomly remove useful HTML and CSS :(
Pretty HTML formatted E-Mails... WTF are you doing?
Rule 1 Never, I repeat NEVER use HTML in an E-Mail and expect it to look the same on the recipients computer as it did on the senders system.
Rule 2 Don't forget blind people will probably be using a 'screen reader', loads of HTML = fail, plain text will work just fine.
Rule 3 Don't use E-Mail until you really understand Rule 1
As for Hotmail stripping HTML code out before rendering - maybe this is a security measure... oh no wait this is Hotmail!
If you're a chrome user, you can't create email (unless it's just me!).
Hit reply and you get a blank message that you can't type into with the recipient's addresses at the top.
Hit "New" message and you get a similar blank page that you can't type into and address/subject that you can type into.
The font / format buttons are disabled as well.
Is it just me or has anyone else noticed this?
Hmm why does this not surprise me that the New Hotmail interface doesn't reneder correctly in anything other than IE..
Yeah I do hate how it drops random CSS rules at will.
I also hate that there is no "mark as READ" option like well practically every other web based e-mail service..
Also I just want to see the message headers if I wanted to see the e-mail I'd open it..
THAT's how people get infected by E-mail from duff sources.. the "Preview" as it's basically opened the e-mail and ran the scripts..
If you try either Firefox or Konqueror from Kubuntu, or Firefox from Ubuntu, MS won't provide the necessary bits to let the message creation page accept the cursor focus and actually write something.
The only way I've seen to fix this is is to remove 'Ubuntu' from the user agent vendor.
And I won't hear the argument 'shouldn't be using Hotmail anyway'; I've been a user a long time, since before MS got their grubby little paws on it and started breaking it, and I want it to work exactly as any properly compliant web-page should: irrespective of browser or OS.
Just had the forced migration. Horrible. When the browser isn't full screen (which is my normal), the folder options and "Other places" merge into and over each other. And they took away the "empty folder" options previously placed next to junk and deleted, so now you have to go into that folder to have the option to empty it all, which is a pain in the arse.
But it's free and I like my address, so I guess I'll suck it up. It's not like MS get any money out of me using it (click on adverts? HA!) so I guess I don't really have any leverage...
I had the new interface inflicted on me this week (I didn't even know it was going to be changed!) and I agree it is actually worse than the old one. The worst bit for me is that because I long ago gave up paying for the privilege of an account M$ now see fit to use a quarter of the screen for adverts, which just makes the rest of it a pain to use. Just so you understand, I'm not complaining adverts as such, I know that I have to pay for free some how. But come on! Google manage it much nicer with Gmail!
I have to admit I'm also fed up with M$ deliberately breaking the service on anything that isn't IE.
Ah well, more impetus to move away from them then.
My main complaint about hotmail is is the fact that the new look is shit. and it keeps 'swallowing' legitimate emails, not even putting them in the junk folder.
My two main complaints about hotmail is fact that the new look is shit and it keeps 'swallowing' legitimate emails, not even putting them in the junk folder. and increasing amounts of junk mail keeps making it to me inbox.
My three...
>Why complain about something you get for nothing. If you don't like it switch to another, or if email >is critical for you, get a proper paid for email service.
Because it's Microsoft and they're so serious about having great online services but time and time again they prove they don't have a clue as to what end users want.
When visiting with an iPhone you get the "Upgrade your browser" message.
And the options they give: IE, Firefox, Safari. Hey, isn't that what I'm using?
The old interface worked with an iPhone, not with the new one due to the way they edit messages.
What's the rules about accessibility? Don't rely on a particular browser. Degrade gracefully. Fail. Twats.
But then again, what does one expect for free?
It was a bit of a shock when they changed it...
Things that you would expect to be there are not anymore
- Check email button
- Mark as read/unread (as someone's already mentioned)
Yes, its quicker to load... A lot slower to use tho!
Another Hotmail/Microsoft EPIC FAIL!
And I too have been using Hotmail since well before MS got their mitts on it!
GMail... Here I (possibly) come!
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I was pro-Microsoft when they acted normal.
Decided to cut sales for XP, the OS that users know and love? Not Normal.
Decided to stop listening to their users? Not Normal.
Sure, it might be normal for some companies to act like this -- Apple for instance -- but I'm bummed that Microsoft has turned the corner.
More annoying than anything, it doesn't work in Opera AGAIN (the buttons do nothing but give a javascript error). It's almost as if Hotmail have got a personal grudge against the Opera people because they've only just brought out 9.62. I never cared for the non-Classic look anyway - even the renaming of things like "Inbox" to "Mail" annoyed me.
However, the situation was easily resolved - I switched all my email forwarding to a GMail account instead. Never give out an @hotmail address... just buy a £2 throwaway domain and use that to forward instead - change ISP, change provider, who cares, you just re-forward the email. I wonder how many people have done the same.
It took about ten seconds to change my setting. Two or so hours for the change to propogate worldwide and now all I get is spam in the Hotmail account. Fortunately, I'm a user of MSN Messenger (using Pidgin), so my account will always stick around in case someone does try to use the @hotmail.com address.
Shame, because before they got rid of the Classic Interface last time around I was actually a "Hotmail Plus" subscriber and would have stayed on it out of sheer laziness if they hadn't caused me all this hassle before. After that, I no longer paid, I just used it as an email for casual acquaintances and because it was easy to log into from anywhere in the world. Now everyone is using my forwarded addresses so they haven't even noticed the difference, and I get an MSN "ping" if I do get anything important into that account anyway.
Oh, and Hotmail support (especially "Live Support") are the most stupid people you will ever meet. You spend half an hour explaining the problem and they say things like "Well, Opera isn't supported. Goodbye". YES, I know, but I also told you that I'd tried IE, Firefox, Netscape, Mosaic, Lynx on every operating system known to man.
No big loss for me. Big loss, I suspect, for MSN.
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But the fonts on the left hand side with the folders list, reminds me far too much of Comic Sans.
Anyone, and I sincerely mean ANYONE, using Comic Sans for anything more than a homemade Christmas card to a 6 year old relative deserves to be urinated on by a herd of stampeding cows then thrown into a meat grinder.
I’m using Firefox 3, perhaps this is why they look so awful?
Wrong wrong wrong.
"Rule 1 Never, I repeat NEVER use HTML in an E-Mail and expect it to look the same on the recipients computer as it did on the senders system." - There are plenty of services out there including Return-Paths system that allow you to previews all email clients and therefore be sure.
"Rule 2 Don't forget blind people will probably be using a 'screen reader', loads of HTML = fail, plain text will work just fine." - That's what the Text Alternate version in Mime Email is for. Clients using screen readers will use that.
"Rule 3 Don't use E-Mail until you really understand Rule 1" - What? You just wanted to come up with three points but could only muster 2?
Alas I used to use opera to view my email, and nothing works in Opera now, links don't respond, pages don't change, it's like it's a picture of my mail. I like firefox, but I just used opera for my email because it was quicker to load and use. alas now my opera will sit quietly on the side. I wouldn't care so much if it actually worked, but it's M$ so they had to crap it up somehow.
Oh and having to scroll your folders when you didn't have to before, and not having the quick empty on your junk/trash folders unless you open them up first.. they haven't sped up hotmail so much as removed all the functionality so you can't do anything. maybe as people leave they can claim it's faster for the leftover users?
I'll stick with it for now but it's certainly one major I now have to switch email services, there aren't many left that I like though.
"There are plenty of services out there including Return-Paths system that allow you to previews all email clients and therefore be sure." - indeed there are plenty but not all, which is the original point of AC, for maximum compatibilty, plain is the way to go.
"That's what the Text Alternate version in Mime Email is for. Clients using screen readers will use that." - Indeed, but most of us live in the real world where a lot of people don't fill in the Alt text whether they have a legal obligation too or not. Again plain text solves that issue
"What? You just wanted to come up with three points but could only muster 2?" - You couldn't be bothered to come up with a point 3 better than the original made (nope neither could I ;))
playing CS:S/DOD:S whilst testing a $ for play service and still the brats would complain wether it be reg or some other issue that probably just isnt that important!!!
Its F-R-E-E deal with it! But no doubt if you shout load enough they might decide to hear you.. but like someone else has already commented.... ITS FREE!!!
Okay so no point 3 I can live with that ;-)
I don't agree with your basic premise about plain text being the better option. I own an ESP (Email Service Provider) business. The stats just don't add up in your favour. Typically we receive a much higher click through rate for HTML emails.
Oh and before you ask, no I am not a spammer. These are all opt-in lists for my clients newsletters etc. We force them to use the text alternative too! (It also helps for spam filters)
My original point was that Ian Furgason was talking as a creator of email templates, not talking about sending an ordinary email. Plain text isnt the way to go.
I have no problems with rendering in FF 2.0.0.17 on XP, looks almost exactly the same as IE6.
However, girly pastel shades have been the only thing that MS has been pushing for a few years now.
We also want functionality not lock-ins any more. Really p!$$ed off since they cut off access to hotmail with Outlook...actually does work if you get a free officelive account and get a live.com address, you also get Outlook Connector.
Don't like google mail either. Neither Zoho. Guess that web 2.0 is a load of hype sh!t at the end of the day. Yes I want good connectivity and online access, storage etc, but not the cr@p interfarces that today's designers insist on.
Actually Zimbra looks half-decent, but yet to find a good value hosted account with lots of storage, to include calendar and contacts.
Actually, comcast didn't even give us a comparison period to allow you to use the new or the old. One day, without warning, mail stops working and you don't get it back without restarting into the new crap. No going back. At all. Ever. Tough Love. Most people also experienced comcast's servers going out for half a day as well, making a customer service nightmare. Bully for them.
I really don't mind comcast's new look but they dropped functionality which is extremely painful. I have 3 accounts but can only use one at a time. In order to have full use of each account's folders, send & receive, I have to log out and log back in. The old format supported a mailbox manager which made this very easy & painless.
They claim they are working on it but I have my doubts. I am in the process of migrating to another mail service so this will just accelerate that process.
Yeah, as others noted, same here with K/Ubuntu plus Firefox. It complains.
In the old version, clicking on "continue blah blah" was fine and everything worked, as far as I could tell. In the new one, which I just went to see (since I don't really use my Hotmail account, it's just a junk account), clicking on the "continue" link seems to work... but doesn't. Try to compose a message, no go. Everything below the subject line is disabled (formatting toolbar and text area).
Using the user agent switcher in FF (I put IE 7, Vista ) takes care of that but then clicking the "To:" button to get addresses does not work. It all means, I believe, that it's not a problem with either OS or browser per se. Instead it's deliberate breaking of the site for some users. Or just complete incompetence, but this is MS, so what would you expect?
BG is gone, can't we have a Ballmer one now?
At the other end of things, I noticed that Hotmail is not accepting abuse complaints for spam again. Why? Because the spam complaint contains spam, of course. Back into my blacklist they go. You'd think MS would want to know if spammers were using MS Hotmail's servers to sell cracked MS products.
Well, I've been using their revamped "interface" since they first released it as a "beta". BTW, it does have "mark as read", but that's done with the right-button context menu (yes, they're trying to do some kind of Web Outlook interface.) It isn't that bad, but I do hate its IE-centric insistence.
The funny thing is why I opted in for this in the first place: it was to jump from 250Mb to 2Gb inbox space. Hotmail is the only service I know of that strayed behind a lot on Inbox quotas.
Yahoo offered 25Mb, Hotmail 2Mb.
Yahoo ups to 100Mb, Hotmail 2Mb.
Gmail comes up, offers 1Gb; Yahoo ups to 250Mb .... Hotmail's *still* stuck at 2Mb.
Hell, when Hotmail decided to up themselves to 250Mb, they did it *by region*; meaning all non-US users were still stuck with 2Mb. Fortunately, a temporary change I had made in 1998 left my Hotmail addy with a US RL address, so I got the upgrade. The only thing MS got, was that most of their non-US users suddenly "moved" to Beverly Hills; Hotmail asks for a Zip Code, and well, there's that early 90's show with a zip code for its title!!
So basically, Hotmail ceased to be the main option for most because Gmail, and even Yahoo! were giving giant inboxes, while Hotmail stuck to 2Mb's for way too long (2004?), which given Hotmail's spam volume meant that your inbox was filling up in a matter of hours. Those of us who still have Hotmail addys, have them only because of MSN Messenger. Otherwise, I'd hint Hotmail would be dead for quite a while by now...
Absolute bollocks.
Has anyone tried to refresh their inbox page? takes about 30seconds to do... faster my ass.
Even worse, Microsoft seem to have fogotten what we actually use hotmail for. I dont want my page taken up with nothin but tabs and folder options, I want to see the email I am reading/writing. Why have they put the folder options to take up half the screen when I am writing an email??
Flame them, Flame them good!
It wouldn't work for me in Opera either a few days ago - Everything I clicked was dead.
But then I clicked on 'Check for updates' on the Tools menu, which also looks for updates to Opera's default user Javascript file and then it all worked again!
Well done to Opera for including this feature out of the box and for updating the Javascript patches for Hotmail so quickly! It's just a shame there isn't an option to push out 'emergancy' updates for important sites like Hotmail. Normally the Javascript file is checked for updayes once per week.
So, if you're having trouble with Opera on the new Hotmail, try doing that and see if it helps you too.
What the hell are people complaining for??? Its a free service for god's sake,if you dont like the new hotmail, then don't start whinging and whining about it, move to a new email provider!!!! i for one like the new hotmail, because it works a lot more like outlook,
i wonder when the groups on facebook will start - "Bill Gates Said If I Get 1,000000000 People To Join He Said..."
get a life......
It doesn't matter if it is free or not, it should still work, and if it doesn't, people have a right to complain. To me, it looks just like they did with Hotmail what they did with Office 2007, and totally F**ked it up. After using Word 2007 for 2 months, I still haven't figured out how to do a "Save As" or "Print" so I can select a different printer if I wanted to. The only reason I was able to use Office 2007 was because I new the DOS keyboard shortcuts. It's pretty bad when you have to use things from 20 years ago to get your new fancy dancy interfaces to work. What's this have to do with Hotmail. Simple, you have people whining the people are complaining how they broke a free product, well, they did it with their commercial product as well, so by their logic I'm allowed to complain.
GG> I also hate that there is no "mark as READ" option like well practically every other web based e-mail service..
Strange it's not there for you - there is on mine - a drop down menu 'Mark as' just above the list of emails with options 'Read' 'Unread' 'Phishing scam'.
GG> Also I just want to see the message headers if I wanted to see the e-mail I'd open it..
Switch off the preview in the Options menu then - you get a choice of where the preview goes, or no preview at all, so all you get is the list of Sender, Title and Date (or time for recent emails) and you can delete the spam and viruses to your heart's content without ever opening them.
Still unless I've missed it somewhere, it's a pity you can't view the full headers if you want them - bonus! points! to! Yahoo! mail! on! that! one!
Its impossible to create an email from a mozilla/seamonkey/firefox browser under either win98 or winME. The main email body edit control does not appear. There is a sense (?) you can tab to it as the curser/caret disappears, but you cannot type anything.
You can address the email and add a subject though. They've clearly done a classic M$oft and coded it to only work reliable on IE+Windows/Latest. With a bit of grudging support for XP. Which is even more stupid than usual since its an in-browser interface and any sane person would atleast try to be platfom nostic.
Paris - cos of the disappearing carot and as you cannot touch the body... She has shown more more talent (!) than any microsoft developer is allowed to.
I mainly use Hotmail because of Messenger, and my 100 plus contacts, but even that's been suffering delusions of adequacy recently, with messages just not being delivered, bouncing, or being delivered several times over, or even delivering my IM's to me via Hotmail.
Perhaps that's the M$ strategy... that way they can tell everyone that the number of-emails being sent by Hotmail is increasing!
people STILL use that piece of shite? Really?
it's only good for spam and signing up for msg boards
having worked for a few smarty-pants companies, one of the more common criteria for dismissing someone's resume is a hotmail address. As one bigwig put it: "Having a hotmail address just shows how stupid you are. We don't want dinosaurs here."
Paris: cuz she definitely has a hotmail address
I agree with Steve, the biggest change is that you can't scroll away from the header advert. So there is less screen for my thoughts and more screen for some crappy marketing morons idea of flash. I uninstalled the beta last week for that reason, and then had it imposed on me again. Plus the evening they imposed the change my emails were delayed. I'll probably just redirect my mail from that account, even free it isn't worth it.
Seems to me that M$ is just trying to prove what it has always maintained: you get what you pay for. Fee web browser (Internet Exploiter), free web mail (NotSoHotMail), anybody who voluntarily relies on them is being punished for their ignorance.
Oddly, though, the competition don't seem to get the hint. They do insist on supplying a service or product that actually does a good job.
I quite like it (superficially) but:
1 - Constantly having to resize the page just to be able to check if there is anything in the Junk Mail box is not convenient.
2 - Constantly having to mark emails from a friend as "not junk" but knowing that this instruction is never remembered is not encouraging.
3 - Option to mark a potential phisching email has been removed so the only option now is to constantly junk/delete unwanted crap or to add yet another rule to ignore anything from the domain yahoo.fr (etc) which is just bloody ignorant.
...and, as an afterthought, after installing "live" the email inbox page has a lovely little link for "So, what do you think" ... the funniest thing is - all it does is open the page to download and install "live" ... what a fekkin arse.
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Daniel,
your 2mb limit must be due to your customer profile?
my hotmail has a 5GB inbox, currenly with 15% usage... so plenty of head room.
ok, its not the best, its better than yahoo my "other" main account is GMail.
the only reason i keep the hotmail is continuity..... ui have had a hotmail account since @1998 ... so everyone knows it and doesnt have to keep changing every 5 minute!
When the new design came out it was VERY slow. It's now up to speed, and although I STILL say the old interface was way quicker I like the new interface and find it much more friendly. Maybe I like it becasue I use outlook express and it resembles it's layout, although if I recall I had to set up how the panes were displayed.
Give it time and I've very sure most people will come round.
Am I the only person having trouble with the new Hotmail in Firefox (and Opera!)? If I load my mail in Firefox then sometimes when I select 'Reply' the window that appears with the rich text editor is 'inactive' and text cannot be entered in it. Then, when I tried to load the same thing in Opera then the text window works but is formatted to a tiny window in the top-left of the available space on the message pane.
What a crock of rubbish. I wish all my friends would send me e-mails to Gmail...
For those who liked Hotmail with Outlook Express, there is Windows Live Mail to replace it. Seems a bit slower to start up, but does seem to be more robust.
Also, I use a tablet PC, and found that when I start to reply I have to open the input panel manually at the bottom of the screen, rather than an icon appearing next to the cursor.
A minor thing, but very annoying as the old version worked, and I can't get back!
Some people, maybe most people, will never be happy with change. In this instance I think the complaints are entirely justified.
Firstly, unless I am mistaken, it is now longer possible to display more than 25 messages per page. That is not an improvement and by itself makes the 'new and improved' version inferior to it's previous incarnation.
Secondly, it's hideous. Not a matter of opinion, a matter of fact.
In order for the page to be displayed as it was intented, clear-type fonts are a necessity. If like me you don't want to, or can't, use clear-type than it is really, really bad. Not just that I don't like it, but that it is obvioulsy not supposed to appear how it actually does appear. Try disabling clear-type, including windows and browser settings, and you'll see what I mean.
I am guessing that the rules for the number of times messages can be forwarded have changed. I used to use a forwarding account list to send messages to and just recently all of the messages forwarded to Hotmail accounts have been bounced with the "Unable to deliver message to the following recipients, because the message was forwarded more than the maximum allowed times. This could indicate a mail loop." message. I have tried complaining to Microsoft, but so far it seems to have fallen on deaf ears (no surprise there).
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