11 ms·

The new desktop Outlook is a bad idea

LorenDB 3y ago
The main problem is that Microsoft is trying to use a WebView. If they really want a single cross-platform app, they should develop a native framework that will work everywhere instead of shoving everything into a web engine.
- Zelphyr 3y ago
  All Microsoft needed to do is look to the Apple Music app to know how bad an idea building it on WebView is. But, yeah, I wholeheartedly agree that they should either develop or use a native framework (Flutter perhaps?) rather than trying to shoehorn a technology that has never been very good for application development.
  - hulitu 3y ago
    > All Microsoft needed to do is look to the Apple Music app to know how bad an idea building it on WebView is. Teams.
    - jupp0r 3y ago
      Teams is just a horrible product overall. It wouldn't be better with a completely native app.
      - D13Fd 3y ago
        I really don't get the Teams hate. Or lure organization uses Teams every day to great effect. None of its competitors have apps worth equivalent functionality at a similar price point. It absolutely has bugs and issues, but what it does and what it costs seem to easily outweigh those.
        Atotalnoob 3y ago
        Mattermost?
        hulitu 3y ago
        > I really don't get the Teams hate Yesterday i lost 5 minutes to change my picture profile in Teams. So good hidden. + other small antiuser features all over.
    - Zelphyr 3y ago
      Coming back to this a week late but, MY GOD YES!
- adamrezich 3y ago
  it's one thing when third parties do this, and quite another when it's the operating system manufacturer. it's as though Microsoft doesn't want Microsoft Windows users to feel good about being Microsoft Windows users when they use their Microsoft software from within Microsoft Windows.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    Microsoft appears to have stopped caring about how Windows users feel about using Windows quite a long time ago.
- gochi 3y ago
  They already have MAUI. I don't have direct professional experience with it, but the message I'm getting from those who have used it, is that it's cumbersome. With people instead just sticking with XF/Uno/Avalonia (Avalonia being closer to Flutter in how it doesn't actually tap into the platform's native frameworks).
  - francisl 3y ago
    Even if its cumbersome, it's still a win-win for them to use it. The outlook app will be native desktop and mobile (except linux for now). Plus it will give the maui project more credibility, help grow its userbase. Make the framework better by providing a real world project for the maui team to benchmark, highlighting pain point, provide in-house feedback, feature request.
    - gochi 3y ago
      I would be interested to know from anyone at the Office/Outlook team why they went with what they did, and if they had any awareness of MAUI happening at all. Fully agree with the noted benefits, so any non-MAUI team insight would be really interesting
      - happymellon 3y ago
        Has the Office team ever paid that much attention to what Windows was actually recommending? All the releases that I can think of shunned the standard UI toolkits for their own homegrown UI. Presumably to show the Windows folks that the Office team is it's own little empire.
        danzk 3y ago
        Excel even had its own custom C compiler.
      - wvenable 3y ago
        My guess would be that they're looking for parity with web apps. I have teams installed on my corporate desktop but I just use the web application any other time and it's... identical. If you want an identical experience with identical code across the Web, iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Linux then there is only one solution.
- jupp0r 3y ago
  vscode is an Electron app and is great and more responsive than its "native" competitor apps from JetBrains.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    That's damning with faint praise, though, isn't it?
    - jupp0r 3y ago
      Is it? I'm pretty happy with vscode. I realize that if you actually measure responsiveness there are better options, but subjectively I'm happy while other "IDEs" are completely unusable for me (Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, Eclipse, ...).
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        VSCode isn't an IDE, really, so there is a bit of apples and oranges here. But that said... I meant that comparing VSCode to the likes of JetBrains products and Eclipse isn't meaningful because JetBrains and Eclipse are fairly terrible in terms of performance and system load. Comparing to native programs is more appropriate. Visual Studio is a native program, true, but I think it's a terrible one. All that said, the IDE product space has become awful overall, and I struggle to find a modern good one. So, yeah...
  - wrapperup 3y ago
    JetBrains' IDEs are very heavyweight, it's apples to oranges. And while there is some native code in them, they're still driven by the JVM mostly. There is fleet, but it's not an improvement to vscode at all IMO. How about vscode vs sublime, neovim, or any other native text editor with LSP support? vscode is slow comparatively.
  - skydhash 3y ago
    VS Code is primarily an editor, while JetBrains's products are IDEs. You can add extensions to make VS Code more an IDE. And I'd like to see benchmarks proving your point. If you're using VS Code as an editor, others like Sublime Text, Notepad++, Kate and TextMate make it seem very slow.
- Wojtkie 3y ago
  PowerBI's UI runs off of WebView and it's the most frustrating thing. That whole software feels like someone mashed together different colors of play-doh and called it a new one. There are multiple ways to do the same thing within the software, but they have differing levels of efficiency. It's a Frankenstein's Monster of technologies bundled up into this lacking visualization software.
  - smodo 3y ago
    Don’t most Microsoft products feel that way? I’m occasionally forced to use a windows machine the office gave me. Windows 11 is a new kind of janky and it also packs all the fun stuff from earlier versions. Anyway, they don’t care. Nadella has us all by the monthly subscripted balls.
    - Wojtkie 3y ago
      >Don't most Microsoft products feel that way? They really do. A lot of their products feel like a "too many cooks" situation where there's too many things being packed into a UI that can't exactly handle it. To make matters worse, the errors you get when something fails aren't too helpful and they are used across various Microsoft platforms. You have to always ensure you're looking for help on PowerBI vs PowerBI developer or PowerQuery.
- meepmorp 3y ago
  What I don’t understand is why the Electron-based desktop application is so bad, but the web client isn’t. Somehow they can make a usable web app but their all-webview client is trash.
- bitwize 3y ago
  Name a native UI framework that enables seamless cross-platform deployment without extensive testing on each platform. Go ahead, I'll wait.
  - Alifatisk 3y ago
    I’ll try, Flutter?
    - jeremycarter 3y ago
      Flutter doesn't use native UI. It recreates similar UI.
      - Alifatisk 3y ago
        Oh right.
  - sharikous 3y ago
    Tauri is quasi-native in that it uses native WebViews. It ought to be the best of both worlds once we accept that web-based UI is the only way now
  - BaseballPhysics 3y ago
    Sure. Electron or similar tech are doing a very simple thing: they're externalizing development costs by transferring them to the individual users in the form of storage costs, performance costs, and user experience costs, to name a few. Meanwhile, Microsoft is a behemoth. Your argument makes total sense for a small shop with limited bandwidth to test. Companies like Microsoft don't get that excuse. They're simply padding their bottom line at our collective expense, and they can do it because they have extremely sticky services in a lot of areas (in this case, corporate email infra).
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 3y ago
    Does webui not require testing on each platform+browser combo? Or are we just accepting that sometimes it is going to break and not allowing the same consideration for native GUI frameworks?
- wvenable 3y ago
  The web browser is a native cross-platform GUI framework that works everywhere -- including on the web. It's the best and most used cross-platform GUI framework that has ever existed. Why should Microsoft roll their own solution? Nobody has ever been able to make this work outside of the web browser.
  - LorenDB 3y ago
    Wrong - I can use Qt and QML to make an app that compiles and runs, unmodified, on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and others. It can even run on web with WASM. And I wouldn't call web apps "native" or "the best".
    - wvenable 3y ago
      Developers want to take their web applications and turn them into desktop applications, not the other way around. The web is the master platform. Qt has had decades to win over this space and failed. Github slapped Chromium together with Nodejs and took over the entire market of cross platform GUI development overnight. I might not like it but I understand it completely.
    - tredre3 3y ago
      > I can use Qt and QML to make an app that compiles and runs, unmodified, on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and others. As someone who is currently working on several QT apps that also work on mobile: That's an absolute lie. You need a lot of extra work to get it to work on both the desktop and mobile. Realistically you have to build the UI twice, QML is nowhere near as "responsive" as html/css. It's also prone to sluggishness. I stick with Qt because I enjoy working in C++, it's just simpler to have the whole app in one language. My users also told me they dislike electron like you. But it's very disingenuous to tell people that Qt is "just as easy" to build desktop/mobile hybrid apps, they'll be sorely disappointed if they take your word.
      - LorenDB 3y ago
        That may be your experience, but for the right kind of app (e.g. simpler apps) I can confirm from experience that apart from setting up the Android app manifest, Qt apps don't need modifications to port, especially if you design convergence in from the get-go.
ano-ther 3y ago
The new outlook also shows other Office365 apps in an icon column on the left — which I really don’t need because I already have them in the Windows task bar.
- LordShredda 3y ago
  I honestly don't think the windows devs even use windows
thesuperbigfrog 3y ago
"In April 2023, Microsoft started pushing an option to Microsoft 365 users to switch their desktop Outlook programs to the New Outlook as well. This has been optional for Insiders for a while, but now everyone gets a taste of the New Outlook. One of the key benefits appears to be full support for 3rd party e-mail and calendars, such as the very popular GMail. No doubt that many home users will welcome this option, but if Microsoft 365, which shares its code base with perpetually licensed Microsoft Office packages, loses Outlook, this will be one less reason for Microsoft to keep improving it." All the Microsoft Office seems to be going to web programming for use on the Microsoft 365 websites and a unified codebase for PWAs / "native" clients that are WebViews or similar. This leads me to believe that the future of Windows is as a ChromeOS-like thin client with everything happening in Azure to maximize Azure use, enable Copilot / AI, and increase subscription revenues.
WeylandYutani 3y ago
I acquired Office 21 LTSC because I really hated the new design so now I'm safe for the next 5 years. Realize there are probably hundreds of UI designers working at MS who need to look busy.
- KronisLV 3y ago
  > I acquired Office 21 LTSC because I really hated the new design so now I'm safe for the next 5 years. I'm personally using various free alternatives to Microsoft's offerings - Thunderbird for mail, LibreOffice for office work, something like Nextcloud for cloud file storage etc. While things aren't always great, it's still surprising to me how viable this alternative path is nowadays, especially when it feels like control over the software we use is getting taken away from us (for a variety of reasons). Either way, software that meets the users and their needs where they are is great! Someone will benefit from cloud based software, someone else with local software that's very popular, whereas others will just be happy to get by for free. Of course, it's also great that we even have those options and alternatives in the first place!
  - mxuribe 3y ago
    > ...While things aren't always great, it's still surprising to me how viable this alternative path is nowadays, especially when it feels like control over the software we use is getting taken away from us (for a variety of reasons)... You said it best right there! I've also been using open source alternatives for many, many years...and have plenty of scars to prove it...but nowadays the options are so great. I also admit, there's still room for improvement. Funny enough, i think Google Docs opened the opportunity for products like LibreOffice, etc. to make some headways...because people who have simpler use-cases see that the previously more limited features of an online tool like google docs served the user good enough (not great, just good enough)...that office productivity tools became less a strategically essential tool, with obvious exceptions for niche cases, or cases where someone is using an excel file as a full database when they should not. So, i think this gave products like Libreoffice a chance to catch up, and users with non-niche use cases felt that this offereing is good enough, though of course nowadays its so much better! As you rightly stated: "it's also great that we even have those options and alternatives"!!
_8j50 3y ago
Been using outlook web only for several years now. No messing with outlook pst/ost/sync issues and one less app hogging resources.
- vb6sp6 3y ago
  [dead]
- nikau 3y ago
  pst/ost/sync issues sounds like a janky setup - if its exchange server with decent space allocation none of that is an issue.
2devnull 3y ago
What a terrible ad laden website.
- fnordlord 3y ago
  That's what I was thinking. Funny to read criticism about usability and aesthetics from a website covered in popups and banner ads.
- jupp0r 3y ago
  I did not see any ads. Must be my adblock.
  - happymellon 3y ago
    There was lots of whitespace from the ad placeholders having unique names though.
- LimeLimestone 3y ago
  Try disabling Javacript for this website and it's gonna be perfect
tenebrisalietum 3y ago
> businesses might stop purchasing newer versions of Microsoft Office if it doesn't come bundled with traditional Outlook. I can't imagine someone who needs Excel dealing with non-Microsoft equivalents because Outlook is making its webapp its official app like Teams - and you could see the writing on the wall there for a long time.
jupp0r 3y ago
Can it inline quote emails properly on MacOS? The regular outlook client was still unable to do so in 2022, last time I tried. I have no idea why people would like Outlook, it's an inferior experience compared to other email clients and calendar applications in my opinion. I can't even have my personal gmail calendar imported into my work calendar so nobody can schedule meetings for me when I'm picking up kids from a school event or have a dentist appointment. I have to sync calendars by hand.
- ubermonkey 3y ago
  Outlook + Exchange is the best example of email/calendar integration and group scheduling I've ever used, and I say this as a pretty devoted hater of MSFT. I mean, my daily environment is OSX, and I read most of my mail in the native Mac mail client, but I keep Outlook running in a VM to deal with calendaring and scheduling because it's so good at it. There definitely ARE limits to it -- I've never tried to merge personal stuff into my work cal, as you seem to want to do -- but for what it does, it's the best I've seen.
- themadturk 3y ago
  This is the best question, and has kept me from using Outlook as a personal email client since forever. I used the new Outlook just long enough to see it was horrible at using existing rules and making new ones and just didn't try anything else. But I can't imagine why they would fix one little thing like properly handling inline quoting when they wrecked the remainder of what had been a decent corporate email app.
snowwrestler 3y ago
At work I switched from the Outlook client app to the web version as soon as we migrated our email from on-prem Exchange to MS365 (cloud hosted). Specifically, I get my email at outlook.office.com. Works great in Safari and Chrome on Mac. Searching old emails is way faster and easier in the web version. It takes up no space on my machine, and there are not thousands of potentially sensitive emails sitting on the hard drive of a laptop I carry around. Way better all around. I also run Teams in a Chrome tab instead of the Mac app. It runs way more efficiently that way for some reason.
- procarch2019 3y ago
  Occasionally I find myself somewhere I need to access email but have no network connection. No local cache means a big ol’ screw me
- grudg3 3y ago
  > Searching old emails is way faster and easier in the web version. It takes up no space on my machine, and there are not thousands of potentially sensitive emails sitting on the hard drive of a laptop I carry around. Way better all around. Do Mac computers not encrypt their drives? Like Bitlocker on Windows? Having sensitive information on your laptop should not be a worry if your IT team does their job right.
  - xcdzvyn 3y ago
    They do, it's enabled by default I believe. macOS also wipes the private key from memory whenever the laptop is asleep, rather than keeping it around like LUKS or BitLocker.
odux 3y ago
That article should be one line long: The new Desktop outlook is a bad idea because it supports only Office 365 and not on-prem exchange. (Which itself is a speculative claim with no substantiation except one anecdote)
- optimus_slime 3y ago
  Couldn't have agreed more. What a waste of 5 minutes.
  - senectus1 3y ago
    the lack of feature parity and the real showstopper is NO OFFLINE SUPPORT, are also good points for why its a bad idea.
mrcsharp 3y ago
I've switched to Thunderbird after hearing about this a couple of weeks ago. I simply do not want yet another WebView/Electron-based application on my machine. They feel slow and out of place compared to native applications. Microsoft, in the past 10 years, have failed to provide a good UI option for developers. WinForms is legacy. WPF is legacy. WinRT is dead. UWP is dead. MAUI is a mess. WinUI looks to be either abandoned or not getting enough attention to make it a viable option. From the above, it is understandable why teams in MS are building new products with Web tech. The Windows team should consider this a failure because Windows now has no good, viable option for GUI development.
- tmikaeld 3y ago
  The native views of thunderbird are wonderfully performant, especially when browsing thousands of e-mails in lists and sorting through them. I'd never be able to go back to scrolling with "skeleton rows" that's the web default because it can't render fast enough..
  - 5e92cb50239222b 3y ago
    What's funny is that Thunderbird UI is not native. It uses XUL which is Mozilla's version of something like Electron that has existed since before Electron was even conceived as an idea. That it feels like a native application shows just how really shit Electron is.
    - tonyarkles 3y ago
      I think the interesting part about XUL and why I really enjoyed it back in the day is that it's what HTML-for-applications could have been. It's still a "document" in the way any XML is a "document", but the markup is way more application-focused than document-focused. But instead we keep using a markup language that's designed for documents and try our best to make it usable in a very not-a-document way. Edit: one detail I don't recall is what XUL actually uses for rendering components on-screen.
  - codethief 3y ago
gr33nq 3y ago
We had a few users try it out before we had a chance to block it using Group Policy. It was an abysmal experience for those who opted-in, and I can't imagine it ever replacing the native client without massive backlash in its current state. It clearly caters to a subset of basic users who only send/receive individually. Shared calendars, shared mailboxes, rule management, plugins, etc. were all absent and are features that a majority of our users rely on day to day. There's clearly a huge gap between the folks working on this new version and the native app's userbase — and sadly, as we've all observed, that's becoming the norm with a lot of releases coming out of Redmond lately.
- chaostheory 3y ago
  It’ll be fine. It’s a lot more stable than native outlook. Native outlook has a ton of sync issues to name one of many problems with it
donatj 3y ago
I would love if instead of replacing Windows Mail they just FIXED its email rendering. Windows Mail’s UI is far more touch screen friendly, decent and clean, VASTLY moreso than the new Outlook. However the number of times I need to log into Gmail to see my email because it doesn’t render correctly in Windows Mail is just too dang high. My intuition tells me Windows Mail is using the old pre-Blink Edge engine and if they could just switch that to new Blink Edge then that would make me so very happy.
CommieBobDole 3y ago
I tried it, and it's not great. Probably OK for light home or school use, but I have work to do, and as terrible as desktop Outlook is, it's powerful and terrible.
rickcarlino 3y ago
In 2023 it seems like no one wants to use anything other than JS and CSS to build a native desktop application. I would be interested in seeing a desktop environment that just cuts to the chase and makes the entire desktop a web view so that developers don’t need to package things into extra layers. Weren’t there a few failed mobile OSes that tried this in the early 2010s?
- rektide 3y ago
  Palm Pre's webOS (2009) is the most famous. After an acquisition by HP (2010-2013), it was acquired by LG's (with patents going to Qualcomm). The only other major entrant, Firefox, was short lived (2014-2015). Chrome OS (2011-) only sort of counts; I don't think the OS chrome is using Chrome, just the same underlying drawing libraries, but it does run webapps. Before that was a neat Linux project Pyrodesktop (2007) which was an x11 window manager using Firefox guts to render. There was also a trend of trying to mate Javascript technologies to gnome back then, with efforts like gjs seeing some adoption. I don't know how popular it is, but a spinoff of css was/is used for styling in GNOME for a while. These days there's tons of web desktop projects. https://github.com/syxanash/awesome-web-desktops https://github.com/syxanash/awesome-web-desktops . Only sort of in the spirit but i quite adore Greenfield, an html5 Wayland desktop/compositor. https://github.com/udevbe/greenfield https://github.com/udevbe/greenfield I absolutely think there is all-in potential for the web. I think we're missing a visible rallying point, where a stronger community of app makers can cooperatively advance beyond-the-web capabilities. Project Fugu & WICG help a lot but are also working with Safari (and sort of Firefox) handcuffed to them.
  - johnny22 3y ago
    css is still used in gtk (but a very minimal version) and javascript is used to write gnome extensions.
- hundchenkatze 3y ago
  There were a couple posted on HN recently. Capyloon https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36262627 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36262627 Kera https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36260589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36260589
RamblingCTO 3y ago
What are some usable alternatives on macOS you folks use? I also need the calendar thing. Outlook is quirky and I essentially pay for it. If this ships, this will only become worse.
jmaker 3y ago
Microsoft has been dismantling the desktop UX for me over the past few years. I think they’re migrating the entire UI into the browser. The Office macOS UI appears and feels substantially worse to me than its Windows counterpart. I had to migrate from Windows to macOS because I was no longer feeling comfortable on Windows. My UX with the Apple office suite is by far better. Put formally, the set difference between the features of Word and Excel and the features of Pages and Numbers is empty for my use cases. Same with PowerPoint and Keynote. Outlook used to be good, a proper PIM, it never had been excellent, but it used to be good, even a decade ago. The only thing I regret now is that I’d extended my Microsoft 365 by three years before I realized what they’re up to.
- donmcronald 3y ago
  > Microsoft has been dismantling the desktop UX for me over the past few years. I think they’re migrating the entire UI into the browser. I think it's more about trapping you in the MS365 silo than anything. They want all your data in the cloud because it makes it makes it non-portable. I think the big push they'll make after the desktop apps are replaced will be about data governance because it let's them increase lock-in. First they'll make a 100% online workflow a possibility. Next they'll convince businesses to abandon local files because it's "too risky". Then they'll start locking down everything that could be used for "data theft", including copy / paste. At that point they effectively own your data. And it's not far fetched for them to lock down things like copy / paste. I think that's why there's been a big push for TPM and things like Passwordless. It's a solid base for authenticated / authorized actions. Yeah, they'll use it for authenticating to websites first, but there's no reason a similar system can't be used to support signed / authorized actions between apps. So, when you copy text, it doesn't go straight onto the clipboard. Instead, the office app uses a TPM managed key to send a signed request to MS365. The TPM will have a key enrolled for office apps and will only encrypt/sign for trusted (think code signing) office apps, so Microsoft knows the request came from an official office app. You'll be logged in, so MS can check if you're authorized to copy the content to the clipboard. The public half of your TPM managed key will be stored in your MS365 account. If you're authorized to copy content to the clipboard, MS will encrypt it with your public key and send it back. Your clipboard will have an encrypted copy of the text. When you go to paste, the receiving app will need to ask the TPM to decrypt the payload and (remember) the TPM will only let the key be used for a specific set of trusted apps, so the copied text will never touch an app that's not authorized. Think of taking Passwordless, adding a TPM as a requirement, and using it for a workflow of app actions rather than auth actions. That's where we're headed IMO.
cmos 3y ago
We use MS365 at work. Outlook for the web is ok until you try to use the 'groups' feature. I need to hold a 10 minute tutorial on the backwards UI for the group view within outlook. The 'groups' functionality is decent.. so sad they hide buttons and kinda just stopped working on it.
PTOB 3y ago
Business user here. I remember how much work I could get done in Outlook 2007 using a 1024x768 monitor on a crap workstation with 1GB RAM. I admit that this performance was often chilled by the many pitfalls of on-premise Exchange setups, lack of interop with non-Exchange services, and lack of standards-compatible email formats. Today's Outlook is less buggy, but slower. This new version gives me the chills. I can understand the platform change. I can begrudgingly learn to live with oversized UI elements, fat content spacing, etc. I shuddered when finding that from an efficiency and automation standpoint it's a real downgrade. Things I experienced in one day of "Try the new Outlook": - Keyboard shortcuts (some changed, some missing entirely) - Context menu key did not work - No single key operations in context menu (e.g. right click, d for Delete, a for Archive, etc) - Limited view customization - Janky UI reaction speed - Window and component refresh lag / jank - Reduced rule functionality - There were a few more, but the traumatic experience wiped them out of my memory
- deleted 3y ago
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- tanseydavid 3y ago
  When there are problems with fundamental features like this, it ends up feeling the software is "gaslighting" me. Context menu key does nothing? That's weird -- I must need a new keyboard.
  - DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
    Companies can’t ever admit mistakes. It dehumanises them.
- kjellsbells 3y ago
  Amen. Another feature I miss: offline working. Classic outlook lets you explicitly disconnect in the app, work on things, and then sync later. It also lets you download only headers on a slow connection. If you spend any time working on a plane, you know what a godsend that is. Generally I worry about the creeping consumerization of Office apps and what it means for power users. We're still out here, and we need power tools that work for us. Have the big space eye candy if you like, but please give us the option to turn the bling off and get down to work!
deleted 3y ago
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lencastre 3y ago
I hate the new outlook more than the old outlook. The insider beta version of the desktop version sometimes doesn’t render properly and search is painful to use, granted the new version is missing million features from the desktop version so I use both. I use the web version when I need only my “online” inbox, to check email and answer quickly, like a first parse including flagging, categorizing, and replying quickly. Because hotkey shortcut combos are different or non-existent and access to local mailbox PST files is not available I use the desktop version for the archiving, filing, and eventual researching and answering with attachments, etc. I make extensive use of categories and the search folders feature of the desktop version and I made my workflow into just two archive folders INBOX and SENT where every single message that was saved is properly categorized. The new outlook cannot access my archive and it’s also horrible at search, like it’s desktop brethren. Finally, I use Outlook because it is m365 and mandated by IT. For personal email I use Gmail and mailspring.
cheapliquor 3y ago
They literally said "ah yes let's change our iconic industry standard UI that everyone has been familiar with for 20+ years to a terrible standalone desktop version of the Outlook Web App"
JimtheCoder 3y ago
I was using the new Outlook. For unrelated reasons, I found myself in a state of rage and removed the Edge browser from my Windows installation in it's entirety. Outlook no longer works...I guess you need Edge, or maybe some components are shared... I am now using Thunderbird. I just felt like sharing...
tanseydavid 3y ago
I seriously thought they were silently abandoning the desktop version of Outlook. I have not been able to get it working again for more than a year, after setting up O365 account. The attempts to get it working again involve MS-developed special utility program(s) -- but this has never fixed the problem for me. I gave the problem to our IT support people. They tried but ultimately gave up and asked if I would just use the web-based Outlook instead. What was I going to do? Say, no?
senectus1 3y ago
I just turned this off for our 10k fleet yesterday. (via reghack script and GPP) utterly ludicrous that MS would make this available to everyone and not offer an official way to turn it off for a couple of months AFTER the release to public. So sick of MS pulling this stunt.
dexterlagan 3y ago
No less than 3 (THREE) pop-ups, huge banner ads everywhere, VIDEO pop-up. Writers make less and less money with writing; advertisers are getting desperate; readers frustrated and information lost - leaking from a pipe riddled with holes. And we pretend to be capable of making contact with a new form of intelligent life? This consciousness is watching us, molding us, and we do not know if it is attempting to co-exist with us or change us for its own purpose. We have a lot to learn. There needs to be a revolution of the mind.
dgellow 3y ago
Just curious, would people here pay for a Windows native mail client focused on offering a great user experience? I work on multiple Windows projects and had in mind to create my own mail client since a while, but I’m skeptical people would pay for one given the number of free options already available (even if they all kind of suck IMHO). Or asked another way, what would make you pay for an outlook alternative?
- mike_hearn 3y ago
  It doesn't make much sense to talk about Windows native GUI these days. There's no such thing anymore. Win32 is no longer viable due to using controls and APIs that haven't been updated for years (decades?), ropey support for hidpi displays and other basics. WinUI, the official replacement, has problems and isn't used by large parts of Windows itself anyway. That's OK though. If you look at this thread, you can see there's been a shift in what people mean when they say "native". It used to be well defined: Win32 on Windows, Cocoa on OS X/iOS, GTK or Qt on Linux, app written in a C-derived language. Nowadays people are using it to mean "not web". Why has this occurred, well, most people don't really care what exact libraries or languages an app uses. What they care about is the user experience. People are using the word native to mean stuff like, works offline, works with files, isn't too laggy, consumes reasonable amounts of RAM, integrates well with the OS. And above all - uses a sophisticated GUI toolkit. A big part of the native vs web experience gap is that although HTML has a lot of styling functionality it's a seriously impoverished UI toolkit, barely reaching Win 3.1 standards out of the box. So people roll their own widget toolkits that they layer on top, but none of them are all that good and the modern culture of conflating widget toolkits with design systems means they are constantly being tossed out and redone from scratch (this isn't unique to the web, Jetpack Compose has the same issue). The result is that many widgets taken for granted by Windows 95 users like splitters, menu bars, status bars, pervasive keyboard accelerators, virtualized and editable table views, tree views, customizable toolbars, draggable tabs, floating tool windows etc are just gone and power users are the first to notice this. You can therefore satisfy people's desire for native apps by providing that sort of UX regardless of what actual tools you use to do so.
  - 3y ago

The main problem is that Microsoft is trying to use a WebView. If they really want a single cross-platform app, they should develop a native framework that will work everywhere instead of shoving everything into a web engine.

Zelphyr 3y ago
All Microsoft needed to do is look to the Apple Music app to know how bad an idea building it on WebView is. But, yeah, I wholeheartedly agree that they should either develop or use a native framework (Flutter perhaps?) rather than trying to shoehorn a technology that has never been very good for application development.
- hulitu 3y ago
  > All Microsoft needed to do is look to the Apple Music app to know how bad an idea building it on WebView is. Teams.
  - jupp0r 3y ago
    Teams is just a horrible product overall. It wouldn't be better with a completely native app.
    - D13Fd 3y ago
      I really don't get the Teams hate. Or lure organization uses Teams every day to great effect. None of its competitors have apps worth equivalent functionality at a similar price point. It absolutely has bugs and issues, but what it does and what it costs seem to easily outweigh those.
      - Atotalnoob 3y ago
        Mattermost?
      - hulitu 3y ago
        > I really don't get the Teams hate Yesterday i lost 5 minutes to change my picture profile in Teams. So good hidden. + other small antiuser features all over.
  - Zelphyr 3y ago
    Coming back to this a week late but, MY GOD YES!
adamrezich 3y ago
it's one thing when third parties do this, and quite another when it's the operating system manufacturer. it's as though Microsoft doesn't want Microsoft Windows users to feel good about being Microsoft Windows users when they use their Microsoft software from within Microsoft Windows.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Microsoft appears to have stopped caring about how Windows users feel about using Windows quite a long time ago.
gochi 3y ago
They already have MAUI. I don't have direct professional experience with it, but the message I'm getting from those who have used it, is that it's cumbersome. With people instead just sticking with XF/Uno/Avalonia (Avalonia being closer to Flutter in how it doesn't actually tap into the platform's native frameworks).
- francisl 3y ago
  Even if its cumbersome, it's still a win-win for them to use it. The outlook app will be native desktop and mobile (except linux for now). Plus it will give the maui project more credibility, help grow its userbase. Make the framework better by providing a real world project for the maui team to benchmark, highlighting pain point, provide in-house feedback, feature request.
  - gochi 3y ago
    I would be interested to know from anyone at the Office/Outlook team why they went with what they did, and if they had any awareness of MAUI happening at all. Fully agree with the noted benefits, so any non-MAUI team insight would be really interesting
    - happymellon 3y ago
      Has the Office team ever paid that much attention to what Windows was actually recommending? All the releases that I can think of shunned the standard UI toolkits for their own homegrown UI. Presumably to show the Windows folks that the Office team is it's own little empire.
      - danzk 3y ago
        Excel even had its own custom C compiler.
    - wvenable 3y ago
      My guess would be that they're looking for parity with web apps. I have teams installed on my corporate desktop but I just use the web application any other time and it's... identical. If you want an identical experience with identical code across the Web, iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Linux then there is only one solution.
jupp0r 3y ago
vscode is an Electron app and is great and more responsive than its "native" competitor apps from JetBrains.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  That's damning with faint praise, though, isn't it?
  - jupp0r 3y ago
    Is it? I'm pretty happy with vscode. I realize that if you actually measure responsiveness there are better options, but subjectively I'm happy while other "IDEs" are completely unusable for me (Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, Eclipse, ...).
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      VSCode isn't an IDE, really, so there is a bit of apples and oranges here. But that said... I meant that comparing VSCode to the likes of JetBrains products and Eclipse isn't meaningful because JetBrains and Eclipse are fairly terrible in terms of performance and system load. Comparing to native programs is more appropriate. Visual Studio is a native program, true, but I think it's a terrible one. All that said, the IDE product space has become awful overall, and I struggle to find a modern good one. So, yeah...
- wrapperup 3y ago
  JetBrains' IDEs are very heavyweight, it's apples to oranges. And while there is some native code in them, they're still driven by the JVM mostly. There is fleet, but it's not an improvement to vscode at all IMO. How about vscode vs sublime, neovim, or any other native text editor with LSP support? vscode is slow comparatively.
- skydhash 3y ago
  VS Code is primarily an editor, while JetBrains's products are IDEs. You can add extensions to make VS Code more an IDE. And I'd like to see benchmarks proving your point. If you're using VS Code as an editor, others like Sublime Text, Notepad++, Kate and TextMate make it seem very slow.
Wojtkie 3y ago
PowerBI's UI runs off of WebView and it's the most frustrating thing. That whole software feels like someone mashed together different colors of play-doh and called it a new one. There are multiple ways to do the same thing within the software, but they have differing levels of efficiency. It's a Frankenstein's Monster of technologies bundled up into this lacking visualization software.
- smodo 3y ago
  Don’t most Microsoft products feel that way? I’m occasionally forced to use a windows machine the office gave me. Windows 11 is a new kind of janky and it also packs all the fun stuff from earlier versions. Anyway, they don’t care. Nadella has us all by the monthly subscripted balls.
  - Wojtkie 3y ago
    >Don't most Microsoft products feel that way? They really do. A lot of their products feel like a "too many cooks" situation where there's too many things being packed into a UI that can't exactly handle it. To make matters worse, the errors you get when something fails aren't too helpful and they are used across various Microsoft platforms. You have to always ensure you're looking for help on PowerBI vs PowerBI developer or PowerQuery.
meepmorp 3y ago
What I don’t understand is why the Electron-based desktop application is so bad, but the web client isn’t. Somehow they can make a usable web app but their all-webview client is trash.
bitwize 3y ago
Name a native UI framework that enables seamless cross-platform deployment without extensive testing on each platform. Go ahead, I'll wait.
- Alifatisk 3y ago
  I’ll try, Flutter?
  - jeremycarter 3y ago
    Flutter doesn't use native UI. It recreates similar UI.
    - Alifatisk 3y ago
      Oh right.
- sharikous 3y ago
  Tauri is quasi-native in that it uses native WebViews. It ought to be the best of both worlds once we accept that web-based UI is the only way now
- BaseballPhysics 3y ago
  Sure. Electron or similar tech are doing a very simple thing: they're externalizing development costs by transferring them to the individual users in the form of storage costs, performance costs, and user experience costs, to name a few. Meanwhile, Microsoft is a behemoth. Your argument makes total sense for a small shop with limited bandwidth to test. Companies like Microsoft don't get that excuse. They're simply padding their bottom line at our collective expense, and they can do it because they have extremely sticky services in a lot of areas (in this case, corporate email infra).
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 3y ago
  Does webui not require testing on each platform+browser combo? Or are we just accepting that sometimes it is going to break and not allowing the same consideration for native GUI frameworks?
wvenable 3y ago
The web browser is a native cross-platform GUI framework that works everywhere -- including on the web. It's the best and most used cross-platform GUI framework that has ever existed. Why should Microsoft roll their own solution? Nobody has ever been able to make this work outside of the web browser.
- LorenDB 3y ago
  Wrong - I can use Qt and QML to make an app that compiles and runs, unmodified, on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and others. It can even run on web with WASM. And I wouldn't call web apps "native" or "the best".
  - wvenable 3y ago
    Developers want to take their web applications and turn them into desktop applications, not the other way around. The web is the master platform. Qt has had decades to win over this space and failed. Github slapped Chromium together with Nodejs and took over the entire market of cross platform GUI development overnight. I might not like it but I understand it completely.
  - tredre3 3y ago
    > I can use Qt and QML to make an app that compiles and runs, unmodified, on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and others. As someone who is currently working on several QT apps that also work on mobile: That's an absolute lie. You need a lot of extra work to get it to work on both the desktop and mobile. Realistically you have to build the UI twice, QML is nowhere near as "responsive" as html/css. It's also prone to sluggishness. I stick with Qt because I enjoy working in C++, it's just simpler to have the whole app in one language. My users also told me they dislike electron like you. But it's very disingenuous to tell people that Qt is "just as easy" to build desktop/mobile hybrid apps, they'll be sorely disappointed if they take your word.
    - LorenDB 3y ago
      That may be your experience, but for the right kind of app (e.g. simpler apps) I can confirm from experience that apart from setting up the Android app manifest, Qt apps don't need modifications to port, especially if you design convergence in from the get-go.

ano-ther 3y ago

The new outlook also shows other Office365 apps in an icon column on the left — which I really don’t need because I already have them in the Windows task bar.

LordShredda 3y ago
I honestly don't think the windows devs even use windows

thesuperbigfrog 3y ago

"In April 2023, Microsoft started pushing an option to Microsoft 365 users to switch their desktop Outlook programs to the New Outlook as well. This has been optional for Insiders for a while, but now everyone gets a taste of the New Outlook. One of the key benefits appears to be full support for 3rd party e-mail and calendars, such as the very popular GMail. No doubt that many home users will welcome this option, but if Microsoft 365, which shares its code base with perpetually licensed Microsoft Office packages, loses Outlook, this will be one less reason for Microsoft to keep improving it." All the Microsoft Office seems to be going to web programming for use on the Microsoft 365 websites and a unified codebase for PWAs / "native" clients that are WebViews or similar. This leads me to believe that the future of Windows is as a ChromeOS-like thin client with everything happening in Azure to maximize Azure use, enable Copilot / AI, and increase subscription revenues.

WeylandYutani 3y ago

I acquired Office 21 LTSC because I really hated the new design so now I'm safe for the next 5 years. Realize there are probably hundreds of UI designers working at MS who need to look busy.

KronisLV 3y ago
> I acquired Office 21 LTSC because I really hated the new design so now I'm safe for the next 5 years. I'm personally using various free alternatives to Microsoft's offerings - Thunderbird for mail, LibreOffice for office work, something like Nextcloud for cloud file storage etc. While things aren't always great, it's still surprising to me how viable this alternative path is nowadays, especially when it feels like control over the software we use is getting taken away from us (for a variety of reasons). Either way, software that meets the users and their needs where they are is great! Someone will benefit from cloud based software, someone else with local software that's very popular, whereas others will just be happy to get by for free. Of course, it's also great that we even have those options and alternatives in the first place!
- mxuribe 3y ago
  > ...While things aren't always great, it's still surprising to me how viable this alternative path is nowadays, especially when it feels like control over the software we use is getting taken away from us (for a variety of reasons)... You said it best right there! I've also been using open source alternatives for many, many years...and have plenty of scars to prove it...but nowadays the options are so great. I also admit, there's still room for improvement. Funny enough, i think Google Docs opened the opportunity for products like LibreOffice, etc. to make some headways...because people who have simpler use-cases see that the previously more limited features of an online tool like google docs served the user good enough (not great, just good enough)...that office productivity tools became less a strategically essential tool, with obvious exceptions for niche cases, or cases where someone is using an excel file as a full database when they should not. So, i think this gave products like Libreoffice a chance to catch up, and users with non-niche use cases felt that this offereing is good enough, though of course nowadays its so much better! As you rightly stated: "it's also great that we even have those options and alternatives"!!

_8j50 3y ago

Been using outlook web only for several years now. No messing with outlook pst/ost/sync issues and one less app hogging resources.

vb6sp6 3y ago
[dead]
nikau 3y ago
pst/ost/sync issues sounds like a janky setup - if its exchange server with decent space allocation none of that is an issue.

2devnull 3y ago

What a terrible ad laden website.

fnordlord 3y ago
That's what I was thinking. Funny to read criticism about usability and aesthetics from a website covered in popups and banner ads.
jupp0r 3y ago
I did not see any ads. Must be my adblock.
- happymellon 3y ago
  There was lots of whitespace from the ad placeholders having unique names though.
LimeLimestone 3y ago
Try disabling Javacript for this website and it's gonna be perfect

tenebrisalietum 3y ago

> businesses might stop purchasing newer versions of Microsoft Office if it doesn't come bundled with traditional Outlook. I can't imagine someone who needs Excel dealing with non-Microsoft equivalents because Outlook is making its webapp its official app like Teams - and you could see the writing on the wall there for a long time.

jupp0r 3y ago

Can it inline quote emails properly on MacOS? The regular outlook client was still unable to do so in 2022, last time I tried. I have no idea why people would like Outlook, it's an inferior experience compared to other email clients and calendar applications in my opinion. I can't even have my personal gmail calendar imported into my work calendar so nobody can schedule meetings for me when I'm picking up kids from a school event or have a dentist appointment. I have to sync calendars by hand.

ubermonkey 3y ago
Outlook + Exchange is the best example of email/calendar integration and group scheduling I've ever used, and I say this as a pretty devoted hater of MSFT. I mean, my daily environment is OSX, and I read most of my mail in the native Mac mail client, but I keep Outlook running in a VM to deal with calendaring and scheduling because it's so good at it. There definitely ARE limits to it -- I've never tried to merge personal stuff into my work cal, as you seem to want to do -- but for what it does, it's the best I've seen.
themadturk 3y ago
This is the best question, and has kept me from using Outlook as a personal email client since forever. I used the new Outlook just long enough to see it was horrible at using existing rules and making new ones and just didn't try anything else. But I can't imagine why they would fix one little thing like properly handling inline quoting when they wrecked the remainder of what had been a decent corporate email app.

snowwrestler 3y ago

At work I switched from the Outlook client app to the web version as soon as we migrated our email from on-prem Exchange to MS365 (cloud hosted). Specifically, I get my email at outlook.office.com. Works great in Safari and Chrome on Mac. Searching old emails is way faster and easier in the web version. It takes up no space on my machine, and there are not thousands of potentially sensitive emails sitting on the hard drive of a laptop I carry around. Way better all around. I also run Teams in a Chrome tab instead of the Mac app. It runs way more efficiently that way for some reason.

procarch2019 3y ago
Occasionally I find myself somewhere I need to access email but have no network connection. No local cache means a big ol’ screw me
grudg3 3y ago
> Searching old emails is way faster and easier in the web version. It takes up no space on my machine, and there are not thousands of potentially sensitive emails sitting on the hard drive of a laptop I carry around. Way better all around. Do Mac computers not encrypt their drives? Like Bitlocker on Windows? Having sensitive information on your laptop should not be a worry if your IT team does their job right.
- xcdzvyn 3y ago
  They do, it's enabled by default I believe. macOS also wipes the private key from memory whenever the laptop is asleep, rather than keeping it around like LUKS or BitLocker.

odux 3y ago

That article should be one line long: The new Desktop outlook is a bad idea because it supports only Office 365 and not on-prem exchange. (Which itself is a speculative claim with no substantiation except one anecdote)

optimus_slime 3y ago
Couldn't have agreed more. What a waste of 5 minutes.
- senectus1 3y ago
  the lack of feature parity and the real showstopper is NO OFFLINE SUPPORT, are also good points for why its a bad idea.

mrcsharp 3y ago

I've switched to Thunderbird after hearing about this a couple of weeks ago. I simply do not want yet another WebView/Electron-based application on my machine. They feel slow and out of place compared to native applications. Microsoft, in the past 10 years, have failed to provide a good UI option for developers. WinForms is legacy. WPF is legacy. WinRT is dead. UWP is dead. MAUI is a mess. WinUI looks to be either abandoned or not getting enough attention to make it a viable option. From the above, it is understandable why teams in MS are building new products with Web tech. The Windows team should consider this a failure because Windows now has no good, viable option for GUI development.

tmikaeld 3y ago
The native views of thunderbird are wonderfully performant, especially when browsing thousands of e-mails in lists and sorting through them. I'd never be able to go back to scrolling with "skeleton rows" that's the web default because it can't render fast enough..
- 5e92cb50239222b 3y ago
  What's funny is that Thunderbird UI is not native. It uses XUL which is Mozilla's version of something like Electron that has existed since before Electron was even conceived as an idea. That it feels like a native application shows just how really shit Electron is.
  - tonyarkles 3y ago
    I think the interesting part about XUL and why I really enjoyed it back in the day is that it's what HTML-for-applications could have been. It's still a "document" in the way any XML is a "document", but the markup is way more application-focused than document-focused. But instead we keep using a markup language that's designed for documents and try our best to make it usable in a very not-a-document way. Edit: one detail I don't recall is what XUL actually uses for rendering components on-screen.
- codethief 3y ago

gr33nq 3y ago

We had a few users try it out before we had a chance to block it using Group Policy. It was an abysmal experience for those who opted-in, and I can't imagine it ever replacing the native client without massive backlash in its current state. It clearly caters to a subset of basic users who only send/receive individually. Shared calendars, shared mailboxes, rule management, plugins, etc. were all absent and are features that a majority of our users rely on day to day. There's clearly a huge gap between the folks working on this new version and the native app's userbase — and sadly, as we've all observed, that's becoming the norm with a lot of releases coming out of Redmond lately.

chaostheory 3y ago
It’ll be fine. It’s a lot more stable than native outlook. Native outlook has a ton of sync issues to name one of many problems with it

donatj 3y ago

I would love if instead of replacing Windows Mail they just FIXED its email rendering. Windows Mail’s UI is far more touch screen friendly, decent and clean, VASTLY moreso than the new Outlook. However the number of times I need to log into Gmail to see my email because it doesn’t render correctly in Windows Mail is just too dang high. My intuition tells me Windows Mail is using the old pre-Blink Edge engine and if they could just switch that to new Blink Edge then that would make me so very happy.

CommieBobDole 3y ago

I tried it, and it's not great. Probably OK for light home or school use, but I have work to do, and as terrible as desktop Outlook is, it's powerful and terrible.

rickcarlino 3y ago

In 2023 it seems like no one wants to use anything other than JS and CSS to build a native desktop application. I would be interested in seeing a desktop environment that just cuts to the chase and makes the entire desktop a web view so that developers don’t need to package things into extra layers. Weren’t there a few failed mobile OSes that tried this in the early 2010s?

rektide 3y ago
Palm Pre's webOS (2009) is the most famous. After an acquisition by HP (2010-2013), it was acquired by LG's (with patents going to Qualcomm). The only other major entrant, Firefox, was short lived (2014-2015). Chrome OS (2011-) only sort of counts; I don't think the OS chrome is using Chrome, just the same underlying drawing libraries, but it does run webapps. Before that was a neat Linux project Pyrodesktop (2007) which was an x11 window manager using Firefox guts to render. There was also a trend of trying to mate Javascript technologies to gnome back then, with efforts like gjs seeing some adoption. I don't know how popular it is, but a spinoff of css was/is used for styling in GNOME for a while. These days there's tons of web desktop projects. https://github.com/syxanash/awesome-web-desktops https://github.com/syxanash/awesome-web-desktops . Only sort of in the spirit but i quite adore Greenfield, an html5 Wayland desktop/compositor. https://github.com/udevbe/greenfield https://github.com/udevbe/greenfield I absolutely think there is all-in potential for the web. I think we're missing a visible rallying point, where a stronger community of app makers can cooperatively advance beyond-the-web capabilities. Project Fugu & WICG help a lot but are also working with Safari (and sort of Firefox) handcuffed to them.
- johnny22 3y ago
  css is still used in gtk (but a very minimal version) and javascript is used to write gnome extensions.
hundchenkatze 3y ago
There were a couple posted on HN recently. Capyloon https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36262627 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36262627 Kera https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36260589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36260589

RamblingCTO 3y ago

What are some usable alternatives on macOS you folks use? I also need the calendar thing. Outlook is quirky and I essentially pay for it. If this ships, this will only become worse.

jmaker 3y ago

Microsoft has been dismantling the desktop UX for me over the past few years. I think they’re migrating the entire UI into the browser. The Office macOS UI appears and feels substantially worse to me than its Windows counterpart. I had to migrate from Windows to macOS because I was no longer feeling comfortable on Windows. My UX with the Apple office suite is by far better. Put formally, the set difference between the features of Word and Excel and the features of Pages and Numbers is empty for my use cases. Same with PowerPoint and Keynote. Outlook used to be good, a proper PIM, it never had been excellent, but it used to be good, even a decade ago. The only thing I regret now is that I’d extended my Microsoft 365 by three years before I realized what they’re up to.

donmcronald 3y ago
> Microsoft has been dismantling the desktop UX for me over the past few years. I think they’re migrating the entire UI into the browser. I think it's more about trapping you in the MS365 silo than anything. They want all your data in the cloud because it makes it makes it non-portable. I think the big push they'll make after the desktop apps are replaced will be about data governance because it let's them increase lock-in. First they'll make a 100% online workflow a possibility. Next they'll convince businesses to abandon local files because it's "too risky". Then they'll start locking down everything that could be used for "data theft", including copy / paste. At that point they effectively own your data. And it's not far fetched for them to lock down things like copy / paste. I think that's why there's been a big push for TPM and things like Passwordless. It's a solid base for authenticated / authorized actions. Yeah, they'll use it for authenticating to websites first, but there's no reason a similar system can't be used to support signed / authorized actions between apps. So, when you copy text, it doesn't go straight onto the clipboard. Instead, the office app uses a TPM managed key to send a signed request to MS365. The TPM will have a key enrolled for office apps and will only encrypt/sign for trusted (think code signing) office apps, so Microsoft knows the request came from an official office app. You'll be logged in, so MS can check if you're authorized to copy the content to the clipboard. The public half of your TPM managed key will be stored in your MS365 account. If you're authorized to copy content to the clipboard, MS will encrypt it with your public key and send it back. Your clipboard will have an encrypted copy of the text. When you go to paste, the receiving app will need to ask the TPM to decrypt the payload and (remember) the TPM will only let the key be used for a specific set of trusted apps, so the copied text will never touch an app that's not authorized. Think of taking Passwordless, adding a TPM as a requirement, and using it for a workflow of app actions rather than auth actions. That's where we're headed IMO.

cmos 3y ago

We use MS365 at work. Outlook for the web is ok until you try to use the 'groups' feature. I need to hold a 10 minute tutorial on the backwards UI for the group view within outlook. The 'groups' functionality is decent.. so sad they hide buttons and kinda just stopped working on it.

PTOB 3y ago

Business user here. I remember how much work I could get done in Outlook 2007 using a 1024x768 monitor on a crap workstation with 1GB RAM. I admit that this performance was often chilled by the many pitfalls of on-premise Exchange setups, lack of interop with non-Exchange services, and lack of standards-compatible email formats. Today's Outlook is less buggy, but slower. This new version gives me the chills. I can understand the platform change. I can begrudgingly learn to live with oversized UI elements, fat content spacing, etc. I shuddered when finding that from an efficiency and automation standpoint it's a real downgrade. Things I experienced in one day of "Try the new Outlook": - Keyboard shortcuts (some changed, some missing entirely) - Context menu key did not work - No single key operations in context menu (e.g. right click, d for Delete, a for Archive, etc) - Limited view customization - Janky UI reaction speed - Window and component refresh lag / jank - Reduced rule functionality - There were a few more, but the traumatic experience wiped them out of my memory

deleted 3y ago
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tanseydavid 3y ago
When there are problems with fundamental features like this, it ends up feeling the software is "gaslighting" me. Context menu key does nothing? That's weird -- I must need a new keyboard.
- DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
  Companies can’t ever admit mistakes. It dehumanises them.
kjellsbells 3y ago
Amen. Another feature I miss: offline working. Classic outlook lets you explicitly disconnect in the app, work on things, and then sync later. It also lets you download only headers on a slow connection. If you spend any time working on a plane, you know what a godsend that is. Generally I worry about the creeping consumerization of Office apps and what it means for power users. We're still out here, and we need power tools that work for us. Have the big space eye candy if you like, but please give us the option to turn the bling off and get down to work!

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lencastre 3y ago

I hate the new outlook more than the old outlook. The insider beta version of the desktop version sometimes doesn’t render properly and search is painful to use, granted the new version is missing million features from the desktop version so I use both. I use the web version when I need only my “online” inbox, to check email and answer quickly, like a first parse including flagging, categorizing, and replying quickly. Because hotkey shortcut combos are different or non-existent and access to local mailbox PST files is not available I use the desktop version for the archiving, filing, and eventual researching and answering with attachments, etc. I make extensive use of categories and the search folders feature of the desktop version and I made my workflow into just two archive folders INBOX and SENT where every single message that was saved is properly categorized. The new outlook cannot access my archive and it’s also horrible at search, like it’s desktop brethren. Finally, I use Outlook because it is m365 and mandated by IT. For personal email I use Gmail and mailspring.

cheapliquor 3y ago

They literally said "ah yes let's change our iconic industry standard UI that everyone has been familiar with for 20+ years to a terrible standalone desktop version of the Outlook Web App"

JimtheCoder 3y ago

I was using the new Outlook. For unrelated reasons, I found myself in a state of rage and removed the Edge browser from my Windows installation in it's entirety. Outlook no longer works...I guess you need Edge, or maybe some components are shared... I am now using Thunderbird. I just felt like sharing...

tanseydavid 3y ago

I seriously thought they were silently abandoning the desktop version of Outlook. I have not been able to get it working again for more than a year, after setting up O365 account. The attempts to get it working again involve MS-developed special utility program(s) -- but this has never fixed the problem for me. I gave the problem to our IT support people. They tried but ultimately gave up and asked if I would just use the web-based Outlook instead. What was I going to do? Say, no?

senectus1 3y ago

I just turned this off for our 10k fleet yesterday. (via reghack script and GPP) utterly ludicrous that MS would make this available to everyone and not offer an official way to turn it off for a couple of months AFTER the release to public. So sick of MS pulling this stunt.

dexterlagan 3y ago

No less than 3 (THREE) pop-ups, huge banner ads everywhere, VIDEO pop-up. Writers make less and less money with writing; advertisers are getting desperate; readers frustrated and information lost - leaking from a pipe riddled with holes. And we pretend to be capable of making contact with a new form of intelligent life? This consciousness is watching us, molding us, and we do not know if it is attempting to co-exist with us or change us for its own purpose. We have a lot to learn. There needs to be a revolution of the mind.

dgellow 3y ago

Just curious, would people here pay for a Windows native mail client focused on offering a great user experience? I work on multiple Windows projects and had in mind to create my own mail client since a while, but I’m skeptical people would pay for one given the number of free options already available (even if they all kind of suck IMHO). Or asked another way, what would make you pay for an outlook alternative?

mike_hearn 3y ago
It doesn't make much sense to talk about Windows native GUI these days. There's no such thing anymore. Win32 is no longer viable due to using controls and APIs that haven't been updated for years (decades?), ropey support for hidpi displays and other basics. WinUI, the official replacement, has problems and isn't used by large parts of Windows itself anyway. That's OK though. If you look at this thread, you can see there's been a shift in what people mean when they say "native". It used to be well defined: Win32 on Windows, Cocoa on OS X/iOS, GTK or Qt on Linux, app written in a C-derived language. Nowadays people are using it to mean "not web". Why has this occurred, well, most people don't really care what exact libraries or languages an app uses. What they care about is the user experience. People are using the word native to mean stuff like, works offline, works with files, isn't too laggy, consumes reasonable amounts of RAM, integrates well with the OS. And above all - uses a sophisticated GUI toolkit. A big part of the native vs web experience gap is that although HTML has a lot of styling functionality it's a seriously impoverished UI toolkit, barely reaching Win 3.1 standards out of the box. So people roll their own widget toolkits that they layer on top, but none of them are all that good and the modern culture of conflating widget toolkits with design systems means they are constantly being tossed out and redone from scratch (this isn't unique to the web, Jetpack Compose has the same issue). The result is that many widgets taken for granted by Windows 95 users like splitters, menu bars, status bars, pervasive keyboard accelerators, virtualized and editable table views, tree views, customizable toolbars, draggable tabs, floating tool windows etc are just gone and power users are the first to notice this. You can therefore satisfy people's desire for native apps by providing that sort of UX regardless of what actual tools you use to do so.
- 3y ago