15 ms·

Introducing Outlook.com - Modern Email for the Next Billion Mailboxes

426 points by kaelspencer 14y ago

munaf 14y ago
Finally, someone gets rid of the "Compose" button.
mladenkovacevic 14y ago
Sounds like a lot of interesting innovative features that a lot of people might use: social, quick-views, select-all-messages-from-sender..etc I kind of have a problem with their design though. I guess it is all part of the Metro initiative which can look nice in some of their efforts (mobile) .. but here it just shouts at me something to the effect of: "I'm so new and cool and fresh that I don't need subtlety or pleasant earthy colors. Mail, People, Calendar, SKYDRIVE.. I dare you to click EVERYTHING!" Maybe I'm getting too old in my 30th year of life but that intimidates me more than it excites me.
primigenus 14y ago
This looks really nice, but what's up with the URL? https://dub002.mail.live.com/default.aspx?id=64855&owa=1&owasuffix=owa%2f#!/ https://dub002.mail.live.com/default.aspx?id=64855&owa=1... Doesn't look like outlook.com to me.
- kooshball 14y ago
  looks like they haven't migrated all the boxes to the new outlook.com domain yet
matthewlyle 14y ago
It says "Modern experience for modern browsers and devices.". Is that just an empty sentence or are they using a better engine? The paragraph after just talks about pixels and white space. EDIT: More of the same, apparently: http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft-outlook/archive/2012/07/31/introducing-outlook-com-modern-email-for-the-next-billion-mailboxes.aspx http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft-outlook/archive/2012/07/...
jawns 14y ago
So: Email integrated with social network feeds? That's kinda cool.
yoblin 14y ago
Signup captcha appears to be case sensitive (or something??). After try number 6 I give up. Nice work, Microsoft.
- IanDrake 14y ago
  Captchas everywhere are starting to get impossible for humans. MS should have solved this problem better though, they have the talent.
- bcrescimanno 14y ago
  I've tried about a dozen of them; no luck so far in getting it right.
- yesimahuman 14y ago
  I came here to also complain about the CAPTCHA. I almost gave up after the 4th try but I really wanted to see what this was all about. I don't know what they are thinking with that monstrosity.
  - seshagiric 14y ago
    it is likely the email id you are trying to use is already taken up. If you scroll up a bit, there may a error mark near the email field (I had this issue and but was trying to change the captcha).
    - knz 14y ago
      The first couple of times I tried the error message wasn't even being shown, but when I changed the username it worked.
    - yesimahuman 14y ago
      That did happen initially but then it only complained about the captcha
- sigkill 14y ago
  Well I'm not sure about you, but my hotmail id works with this. Unless, you don't have a hotmail id in the first place... in which case, ignore this comment.
briandear 14y ago
The reason Outlook is the world's most used mail client is because people are often forced to use it to access their company email. While anecdotal, I don't know a single person that uses outlook because they choose to. However, hopefully, outlook.com can introduce some innovation in the space, although, I'm skeptical as I am with most Microsoft 'innovation.'
- deleted 14y ago
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- gecko 14y ago
  To give a counterpoint, I not only know maybe a half dozen people who voluntarily use Outlook; I know at least two who voluntarily use Outlook on a Mac. I think the fact that few developers enjoy using Outlook is causing you to overgeneralize. Most people who don't care about things like whether their email is in mbox format, or who don't want to learn how to use Mutt or notmuch, find Outlook surprisingly easy to use and powerful. I poked around on outlook.com, and I don't see anything particularly innovative, other than it looks and works nearly exactly like Outlook 2013. But I wouldn't assume its lack of anything novel dooms it to obscurity, either. Outlook, unlike Notes, is a positive brand-name in some circles. I wouldn't be surprised to see this get a relatively large amount of traction right off the bat.
  - Uchikoma 14y ago
    That would be me with a Mac.
  - CodeCube 14y ago
    I use outlook on a mac to access my employer's email account ... and I'm a developer :)
  - beagledude 14y ago
    Outlook on the Mac is actually a very decent client, and I prefer it over the other options.
    - 14y ago
stove 14y ago
The promo video heralds it as email without 'creepy ads', but I signed up and without doing anything it displays 5 ads from restaurants in my town.
- saurik 14y ago
  It can pull that off without reading your mail, which has been Microsoft's primary marketing complaint re Gmail.
  - nickpresta 14y ago
    I understand the distinction, but if you're going to target me with ads solely based on where my IP says I'm from, you might as well just scan my mail and give me relevant ads.
  - laconian 14y ago
    It's still copying strings and passing them between functions, which is still a type of "reading" if you want to play by the fast and loose definitions of Microsoft's marketing teams.
- alexvay 14y ago
  It's a pwn at GMail, by Microsoft. :)
- mc32 14y ago
  In my old account accessed via outlook.com, I see no ads. In a new account I just created I see ads from Restaurant.com. Not sure what gives.
nell 14y ago
Its definitely faster than the gmail interface.
- IanDrake 14y ago
  Perhaps. I have 10K emails in my gmail account and 3 in my outlook.com account. We'll have to see how it goes in the long run. But I'm seriously thinking about making the switch for a while.
- rocky1138 14y ago
  Are you archiving emails in gmail? I've found that keeping my inbox clean helps the performance of the site.
- mladenkovacevic 14y ago
  I'm sorry have to disagree with this. Just signed up for a fresh, empty outlook account and every time I click on anything there is a noticeable 0.5-1 second lag not including the little slidey animations (I'll admit I AM on a rather ancient computer here at work). But at the same time I have over a gig of e-mail in my Gmail and almost every action is nearly desktop-fast (the speed with which emails come up after doing a search is faster than a file-search on windows)
idm 14y ago
I think it will be a hard fight for mindshare, but Microsoft brings a ton to the plate. The Skype play could really gain them some ground. As I think about it, Office was sortof like the original mashup (but applied to the desktop space). When they started integrating everything into Office (including the OS and the web browser) it started falling apart. What I see with outlook.com is another mashup concept, but this time it is a very natural fit: the web is basically meant for this sort of thing. And another thing: I use Skype. I am typing this on a mac, but I do have that one MS-owned property installed (Skype). This could be a vector that MS uses towards greater mindshare.
- rhplus 14y ago
  The comments on their Facebook announcement page[1] are surprisingly positive. I think it's worth remembering that while Hotmail and SkyDrive might not have 'mindshare' in Silicon Valley or even across the US, there's a large population of new and global users who have not yet formed opinions on the matter and, more importantly, are willing to try Hotmail out, especially when it's presented in a fresh and modern way like this. [1] https://www.facebook.com/#!/media/set/?set=a.10151004534113721.424349.20528438720&type=1 https://www.facebook.com/#!/media/set/?set=a.101510045341137...
debacle 14y ago
cross-post from another thread because HN tends to bury things: Wow. Very interesting. At first glance, the interface looks very mobile friendly and also very simple. I'm incredibly impressed. The only feedback I would give is that the buttons in the top bar could stand out a bit - maybe a different shade of blue or a slight border. It wasn't immediately clear to me where 'send' was. The ads are a bit more obtrusive than Google Mail ads, though I think that would just take a bit of getting used to. I'm impressed as fuck, though. I can't explain how impressed I am.
ndcrandall 14y ago
This actually makes we want to use my hotmail account a lot more. For the longest time I used hotmail for junk emails and random signups to shield my true email address. Interesting how UI/UX can completely change your attitude toward a service (I never expected to change from Gmail until right now).
brown9-2 14y ago
This preview features screenshots that you can not zoom in on or open the full version. That seems a bit self-defeating.
halite 14y ago
I created two aliases for my account and I can no longer sign-in to my account. I tried my original id, and two new aliases and nothing works. Hope I haven't lost everything in this migration!
jaybill 14y ago
Precious $DIETY, take my $APPENDAGE. Please let the next version of OWA look like this.
deleted 14y ago
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saurik 14y ago
Microsoft really doesn't care about branding: once I logged in to my new @outlook.com Inbox using Outlook.com, I was redirected to live.com where I had a single message pre-sent to me from the "Hotmail Team" welcoming me to Microsoft Live Hotmail.
- MatthewPhillips 14y ago
  Hotmail is their Email service, Outlook is their email client.
- kooshball 14y ago
  hm... that's interesting because I got an email subjected "Welcome to the Outlook.com preview" http://i.imgur.com/UNhny.png http://i.imgur.com/UNhny.png are you sure you're using the new outlook.com account and not an old hotmail/live one? if you have a password manager with autologin you might have gotten signed into a wrong account
  - saurik 14y ago
    I am not even certain I know my Hotmail password: I have not logged into that account in many years, and certainly not from my iPhone (which is where I just created that account). Yeah, verified: here is a copy/paste from the message. From: Hotmail Team <member_services@live.com> To: <saurik@outlook.com> Subject: Getting started with Hotmail Date: Tue 7/31/12 9:51 AM
- masonhensley 14y ago
  Outlook's url seems to be on the live.com domain... confusing at best. Let's make a comparison of url's from the "home" view: New Outlook (wtf): https://bay002.mail.live.com/default.aspx https://bay002.mail.live.com/default.aspx Gmail (better, could be cleaner): https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox
  - manojlds 14y ago
    Did you miss that it is still a preview?
jimmyjazz14 14y ago
Just tried it out and from my initial experience gotta say this isn't bad. The UI feels pretty clean and easy to read (which I always found to be an issue with gmails web interface). Doesn't look like you can use IMAP with it though so I doubt I will use it for my main email address anytime soon.
- esharef 14y ago
  I sort of disagree. The UI is clean but things aren't where you expect them to be and it makes it confusing. For instance, I didn't know where to put the subject when I was sending my first email -- it's huge but it's weirdly placed and unintuitive. I also couldn't find the Send button at first because it's on the Nav bar -- not where I expected. I also agree with the post below re: branding. I went to "Help" to see what they had and it took me to a windows.com page saying "This page doesn't exist" followed by "Hotmail Help". Nice.
  - kaelspencer 14y ago
    I noticed that about the subject. It doesn't stand out. I get the same feeling from the Mail app for Windows 8. About halfway through this article there is a screenshot of a message being composed. The subject there seems equally hidden. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/06/14/building-the-mail-app.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/06/14/building-the-m...
  - manojlds 14y ago
    Yes, things aren't where you would expect, but it quickly grows on you. It sure did on me. Sent 5 emails already ( just to my accounts :) and liking the UI
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
  - v33ra 14y ago
    +1 on the send button placement. Also when I clicked on the emotiocons, I was expecting a popup to open right below the icon. But the emoticons panel opened up in the left sidebar, totally hiding the to list. But, I do like the Metro UI, though. Clean!
peterbe 14y ago
What. An. Awesome. Video!! I wish I could (afford to) make videos like that.
- forgotusername 14y ago
  Pretty sweet job considering it's advertising an e-mail app, although I was somewhat disappointed by the absence of unicorns.
cwbrandsma 14y ago
More interesting that this is a Microsoft project and they are hosting their videos from YouTube. Haven't they built their own video streaming service?
- manojlds 14y ago
  Why should they? It is good that they are embracing youtube rather than try to start promoting something of their own.
xfax 14y ago
It'd be nice if Microsoft worked on their spam technology along with upgrading the UI. Just logged in to my @live.com account - 4814 messages in my Inbox, 17 in my Spam folder. Guess how many in my Inbox are legit messages? None.
akshxy 14y ago
Yeah ! It doesn't look like outlook anymore. The UX/ UI is so fucking amazing. Microsoft's target is to reach with 1 billion users around the world with newly invented Hotmail which I believed so far will never going to hit. But with a new brand and some impressive features, Microsoft's Web email service might finally be cool again.
moron 14y ago
Seems a lot nicer than the dumb old Outlook Web Access I have to use for work.
coffeejunk 14y ago
"Your password can't be longer than 16 characters." really?
sync 14y ago
Captcha problems aside, it actually looks pretty slick. It's nice to be able to grab sync@outlook.com too.
jdelsman 14y ago
How is this innovative or modern? They don't even sprite their icons. Microsoft: don't waste my time.
laconian 14y ago
Besides the Metro thing, what's so modern/different about this versus Hotmail?
- manojlds 14y ago
  The integration with other services like Facebook, Twitter, I believe?
  - laconian 14y ago
    Can't it be Hotmail v2? There looks to be vestiges of Hotmail/Live Mail everywhere. So, a better question is: is this just added features and a reskinning on top of Hotmail?
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
MatthewPhillips 14y ago
Google is asleep at the wheel. This makes them look bad. Gmail blew the doors off every other webmail client when it launched 5 years ago but it's time for a rewrite. The fact that they used Gmail mobile as their "Gmail Offline" product in Chrome tells me that the current client can't be modernized. I only hope that is what the Sparrow guys are going to be working on, because Microsoft isn't the company you would expect to be leading in HTML5 innovation.
- crescentfresh 14y ago
  outlook.com's DOCTYPE: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
  - MatthewPhillips 14y ago
    What is wrong with using xhtml?
    - Bootvis 14y ago
      That isn't "leading HTML5 innovation" but I got your point ;)
      - MatthewPhillips 14y ago
        Ah, ok, I was talking about their use of CSS3 transitions primarily.
        crescentfresh 14y ago
        CSS3 is not [part of] HTML5. CSS3 is just what came after CSS2.
- MartinCron 14y ago
  it's time for a rewrite That sent a shiver down my spine. Please, Google, don't rewrite gmail. Continue improving incrementally. Thanks.
yaix 14y ago
Nice UI, very light and simple, seems to be running fast even on my netbook. I guess I will start to use my 15 year old hotmail account again, good to finally have an alternative to Gmail. Only one thing: Microsoft, I know its really chiq and en-vogue nowadays to have some element with position:fixed; on every page, but please: don't! There is no reason whatsoever why I would want to see all the time the titlebar. I mean, why would I want to see it? I know I am using Outlook! I know who I am! And it's not very often that I want to access the settings! But, I guess, there is no way around it, position:fixed; is just soooo "modern".
- btilly 14y ago
  I hate position fixed stuff. I scroll a page, then have to scroll back a few lines because what I want to read next, instead of appearing next, is hidden under a titlebar that I really don't care about.
  - dredmorbius 14y ago
    Stylish FTFW. It's a pain maintaining override scripts for multiple sites, but pick your battles and you can make some positive improvements.
- maratd 14y ago
  > But, I guess, there is no way around it There's a ton of ways you can specify your own CSS for a website, depending on what browser you're using.
- jonknee 14y ago
  position:fixed is to make it more app like. Outlook on the desktop (and pretty much every other desktop app) works the same way, if you scroll down your inbox the menu bar doesn't go away.
- MiguelHudnandez 14y ago
  I saw in the video that the "send" button was in the Title bar [1], so I suppose it's important that it be fixed on the screen. [1] at 55 seconds in the video. This link starts a couple seconds before that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDI6Itn7soQ#t=53 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDI6Itn7soQ#t=53
madoublet 14y ago
So, I think the interesting thing here is that it does not seem to work at all with IE8.
robomartin 14y ago
I've been using Outlook by choice, well, forever. I won't bother listing all the reasons for this. It's powerful and it works well. And, if you are a programmer, you can go to town writing your own customizations with VBA. I use Yahoo Mail online for most of my personal stuff. Out of all the online email offerings out there I have found it to be the most "polished" (if I can use that term) and outlook-like. I tried Gmail a couple of years back and just didn't do it for me. As an example, the lack of a real time preview pane was a huge deal breaker for me. Both Outlook and Yahoo Mail have this. Maybe Gmail has this now, I don't know. The other thing about Gmail that scared the crap out of me was to watch as one of our clients had their Gmail account evaporate because their AdSense account got shut down. They were new to the platform and made a couple of dumb and innocent mistakes off the line. Google bots summarily shut-down the account with no recourse or anyone to contact. As their account got suspended so went Gmail. I'll let you venture a guess as to whether or not these people are using any Google products now. Here's a feature I wish email clients would implement: Tabbed accounts. I run more than one company and regularly monitor a dozen email accounts. Outlook and Yahoo Mail allow you to setup rules to deliver email from specific accounts into designated folders. With Outlook you can also choose to store the email in separate files. That's all well and fine, but the whole thing has the risk of becoming cluttered and difficult to use after a while. There's an Outlook hack that allows you to launch multiple Outlook instances. This works very well as I can launch one instance that opens the email addresses corresponding to one business and another instance with a separate business. Having multiple monitors makes this even handier. What would be even better is if I could do the same thing with tabs. I want one tab per business --or a user-designated category. Each tab would receive and send email from one or many email addresses. They would all be independent while having relevant sharing capabilities (copy and past, drag and drop, etc.). It's about context switching. With something like that I could have a single email client handle all of my business email as well as personal within one application window. That would be slick.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- dlikhten 14y ago
  I find Sparrow does that so incredibly well. I use 2 accounts daily, and have 2 more for "spam" accounts. It works really well at separating and unifying them.
executive 14y ago
still super messy.. switches to hotmail screens in some of the settings pages.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
sazpaz 14y ago
Finally, an alternative to GMail. The only problem is hundreds of different one-time use websites that are registered to that email and send a ton of "spammy" mails.
dlikhten 14y ago
"Your password can't be longer than 16 characters." Well, it failed my test. Sorry. I never trust my emails to small hard to remember passwords. I rather trust them to very large easy to remember/type passwords. Like horses-functional-pickles Also their capcha, I cannot figure out it, i won't spend more than 2 minutes on capcha
- codegeek 14y ago
  "2 minutes on capcha" That is generous. I dont like to spend more than 30 seconds max on capchas.
- sebtoast 14y ago
  Have you tried the audio version? It's even worse.
  - MiguelHudnandez 14y ago
    I tried the audio version because they kept putting "O" or zero in the captcha and it was too much of a guess. If a captcha is going to mangle characters, it must accept any of the possible valid options. It's like they pursued test-driven development on the captcha but the only test was whether bots couldn't pass, not whether humans could pass it. After only three attempts, it told me "You've reached the limit for number of attempts. These limits help us protect against spam from automated programs. You can try again later." The audio captcha was so terrible that I recorded it to share with others. Oddly enough, when I played back my recording of it, it was easier to understand the "valid" words. That is very curious. Oddly enough, I just reloaded the captcha page and it dropped me into an account and just won't let me send anything until I pass a captcha. I try every once in a while but any time I solve the captcha it gives me the rate-limiting message. On a side note, they allowed me to sign in with my passport which does not have a Microsoft-provided e-mail address. The interface seems to presume it's responsible for my other e-mail address.
- 3am_hackernews 14y ago
  Their captcha is _really_ frustrating. I spent well over 2 mins going through atleast 20 of them. This was the only ugly part of the new Outlook experience though.
rickmb 14y ago
We haven't instantly forgotten how Microsoft handles Skydrive, have we?: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4265086 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4265086 I think I'll pass on putting my email through their systems. Although I have to admit this looks way better than GMail. I hope this inspires Google to do something about their interface design.
- blhack 14y ago
  And I'm going to hope and pray that google stops screwing with their interface design. Gmail was perfect.
  - dredmorbius 14y ago
    Good luck with that. SAAS means you're vulnerable to vendor change with every pageload. Though there are getting to be tools which allow you to reverse-engineer sites and design them how you want, but this is subject to a lot of churn keeping up with the SAAS vendor. Still lovin' my mutt.
    - pyre 14y ago
      True, but it would be nice to augment Mutt with things like tags and conversations[1] without having convoluted setups involving hacks with external scripts. Another example, it would be really cool to be able to edit email as Markdown/Textile/reStructuredText and have it converted to a text+html (multipart/alternative) email, but currently there is no way to do that with Mutt without using some sort of sendmail wrapper that does this. [1] I realize that Gmail's threading isn't 'true' threading, but I'm talking about pulling in the entire thread even if it's not part of the current email folder.
      - petercooper 14y ago
        Not pointing this out for any reason other than it might useful for some: http://sup.rubyforge.org/ http://sup.rubyforge.org/ More generally, though, I last used mutt in the late 90s so I have no clue but.. it doesn't allow for a vim-style of extension by third party addons?
codegeek 14y ago
Few posts are bashing Outlook in general but I will take it anyday over the biggest piece of shit we have at work: Lotus Notes. It is one of my biggest pain points at work.
hybrid11 14y ago
I like the new integration with the social networks, and the UI theme. However, I think the UI could benefit from more spacing between items, as it feels very cluttered.
blaines 14y ago
I just signed up and the first thing I see is a bar of bing ads selling me $500 TVs or something. On my gmail (I just checked) I don't even see an ad (does web clip count?). You'd think a billion dollar tech company can afford not to force product on me. The second thing I see is, wow, this looks really nice. But, that was the second thing, first I felt like I was at Best Buy. I don't have a TV and I don't even want a TV, go away!
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  I see at least two ads on my gmail homepage at all times. One line above the inbox, one below. When I'm in an email, there will be one to several contextual ads (sometimes hilariously mistargeted) on the right. Do you not see these?
  - blaines 14y ago
    No, I don't see any! I just checked my gmail, and two apps accounts. Add a screenshot? I would, but there's nothing to see here!
    - waterlesscloud 14y ago
      Do you have paid or non-profit apps accounts that are tied to the gmail? I don't see ads on my non-profit apps/gmail
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- icegreentea 14y ago
  That's because gmail ads typically are not on the mainpage, but they are there when you read individual emails (in the side bar).
  - blaines 14y ago
    Hm I see... Here's some screenshots of the ads... http://cl.ly/image/3n1G3l1F1y2j http://cl.ly/image/3n1G3l1F1y2j http://cl.ly/image/3j2x2Y3j0L1l http://cl.ly/image/3j2x2Y3j0L1l
vhf 14y ago
So I need to give my phone number to send an email or solve a captcha ? I go for the captcha. 20 tries, no luck. Let's try audio. Impossible. [EDIT] And now, a really funny one I just got : We've noticed some unusual activity in your Outlook account. To help protect you and everyone else, we've temporarily blocked your account. To unblock it, please {0}. Well, alright, I'll {0}. http://i.imgur.com/auM4J.png http://i.imgur.com/auM4J.png
sintaks 14y ago
Curious video. While sketching out Google's Gmail UI, they place a sticky over the advertisement area that says, "Creepy ads." Yet what do I see upon logging in to Outlook.com? Crappy ads. I'll take creepy (relevant) over crappy, thanks.
- ivanbernat 14y ago
  So you'll rather have Google read every email and every attachment within your inbox, track you around the web, YouTube etc to give you "relevant" ads - rather just a few ads for other MS products?
ap3rson 14y ago
I don't understand... Why implement picture slideshow using Silverlight? I thought Microsft was abandoning this piece of tech.
ceejayoz 14y ago
I logged in with my Microsoft account, which uses my work e-mail as the e-mail address. It happily presented me webmail for it. That's going to confuse non-technical users. There's no indication that any replies are going to go right where it's supposed to, Google Apps... Plus, when attempting to send, I get a captcha. Filling it out (correctly) gives me a "too many attempts" warning.
eddieplan9 14y ago
And there are no display ads or large search boxes that take up extra space I am wondering what this refers to :)
ya3r 14y ago
It's funny that microsoft uses youtube for their video demos in their blogs!
chris_mahan 14y ago
I got a 403 -- Forbidden from the corporate firewall. I thought microsoft made corporate-friendly products. Must try harder!
option_greek 14y ago
Damn... it directly displays in Hindi language for me. I suppose their thought process is that if you have an indian IP, you must know hindi. What's more, even after I changed the language, some of the labels are still in hindi.
baby 14y ago
I must really want to try this out because the signup took me 5 minutes. Between giving my real number, chosing for an availble nickname and having to retype more than 10 times the antispam code (it just wouldn't take my input???)
- k-mcgrady 14y ago
  Giving your number was optional. You could provide a second email address and security question (you had to click a link just below the email address field to use a security question instead of your number).
sbucher 14y ago
In terms of UI, the differences vs gmail seem trivial and possibly in the wrong direction. The three column format is identical; it is mainly cleaner because it removes useful features: inline email text preview, a prominent search box, navigation to other frequently used services, e.g. drive. On first glance sparse designs look better, but for frequently used software people tend to like the greater data density in practice. I also image that they will introduce l their own navigation bar to other services at some point, so that minor distinction would be temporary. On the hand it is far better than Microsoft's existing offering, and being able to integrate with third party social services rather than g+ is a substantial difference they should continue to run with.
- contextfree 14y ago
  There's a navigation bar to other services (click on the chevron next to the "Outlook" title). It's just less prominent and 2 clicks instead of one. Which I think is the right tradeoff, as wanting to navigate to another service isn't as common as Google would like it to be.
Hominem 14y ago
Wow, this is really nice. It even works in IE8, Gmail no longer works for me in IE8
jsz0 14y ago
I've never been a fan of the GMail web UI so this is a very refreshing change. I've been ready to make the switch away from GMail for a while so it's nice to have another option. I was seriously considering iCloud mail but I have some reservations about how committed Apple is to iCloud.com -- the Mail UI isn't terrible but it lacks features. I really need server side mail rules for example. My only reservation about OutLook is that Microsoft has so much Google envy they might do all the same things that are driving me away from GMail. At least with Apple I know how the game works. I give them money and they give me a product/service. I'm good with that arrangement.
nuttendorfer 14y ago
I just wish there was an open source project as good as GMail and maybe the new Outlook for a browser-based email you can run everywhere. Native clients are nice but they are native, so you can't take them with you (Different devices, operating systems).
sudhirj 14y ago
I haven't used my microsoft ID in a while - open it up now and my profile picture is pornographic. Interesting welcome to a new service.
nilsbunger 14y ago
The ads at the right really bother me. Product ads and deal ads with big $ signs and "% off" feels much more intrusive than a google text ad.
jpxxx 14y ago
I find it baffling Microsoft doesn't support IMAP access to any of their e-mail properties. You're stuck with POP3 or else a webmail client when on the desktop. They do offer Exchange Activesync for mobiles, but without EWS or IMAP you can't really complete the circle and give customers a decent email experience.
- matsur 14y ago
  Outlook 2013 supports EAS.
  - jpxxx 14y ago
    Interesting, thank you! Now to wait for it to come to the Mac. :)
sunir 14y ago
Wow. I love how they baked Skype right into Outlook.com. A great use of an expensive acquisition.
tsurantino 14y ago
I like how in their first chalkboard mock-up "Oldmail" looks identical to Gmail.
kin 14y ago
is anyone else having trouble with the captcha?
- newsreader 14y ago
  Lot's of trouble. Had to validate my account by having them send me a code number via phone and then typing it into their page.
jaspero 14y ago
Suddenly my Gmail looks cluttered and old. Bonus, I got my name@outlook.com. That's a big win. Hope they make good stuff.
msh 14y ago
Seems nice, but unusable for using other than outlook.com addresses as I can only use their SMTP server and they give no information for setting up SPF. That causes other servers to think that email sendt from outlook.com is spam....
troyk 14y ago
Just maxed my captcha failures and have to try again later. Either I'm going blind, I'm dumb, or their captcha is broken. Regardless, I hate captcha's -- there has to be a better way.
- codegeek 14y ago
  Every form if using a capcha should have another checkbox saying "I cannot figure out this stupid capcha and hence I am/can not going forward with this form. You lost a potential customer"
webwanderings 14y ago
I don't see any reason as of yet to go back to my HoTmail. It still looks the same in the new outlook.com.
Afton 14y ago
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/xgjrw/we_are_the_team_behind_the_new_outlookcom_service/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/xgjrw/we_are_the_team_... Disclosure: I work at MS, but not on this product and have no special insight into their workings.
olav 14y ago
Does the new outlook.com support tags in addition to hierarchical folders? This is what I love about GMail. Plus, I generally hate the way the MS WYSIWYG editor has a live of its own and makes quoting of passages from received emails into multi-font nightmares.
b3b0p 14y ago
Initial impressions are positive. It looks feature wise (space, the other Office apps), that's comparable to Gmail for many people. I think I'll play around with it to see if it sticks. It's nice to see some competition and MSFT stepping up and improving this. Props.
olav 14y ago
Does the new outlook.com support tags in addition to hierarchical folders? This is what I love about GMail. Plus, I generally hate the way the MS WYSIWYG editor has a live of its own and makes quoting of passages from received emails into multi-font nightmares. -- Olav
lukejduncan 14y ago
Anything is an improvement to Outlook Web Access
yajoe 14y ago
If you are curious, this is a reskin of hotmail.com. It's still a separate codebase from the Exchange-backed OWA. Check out the preview of Office 365 and compare it to this experience, and you'll notice that the two are subtly different. This is very interesting to see them converge the brands.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
methodin 14y ago
I would hope that if they want to sway people back they'd do what gmail did to the garbage web apps around the time of its launch. I don't see anything groundbreaking in the video/screenshots. Do is it offer anything unique?
- saturdaysaint 14y ago
  The UIs on this and even iCloud's webmail are so much better than Gmail's that I consider them functional improvements. They're clearly designed to make the most common use cases ergonomic and let you focus on the task at hand. Unlike Gmail, whose loud interface has no delineation between functional areas and bombards me with seldom used options. When e-mail is one tab among 12 in my browser, I find this kind of focus and simplicity to be a real advantage.
conductr 14y ago
I love how they give a history of webmail progress but totally understate what Gmail did for webmail and why it is so widely liked. Gmail did more than give a bigger inbox. It changed the game for web interfaces, especially webmail. Looks like Outlook is just imitating the Gmail look & feel.
plasticgun 14y ago
oh dear. i. actually. like. this. Sigh ...
mike-cardwell 14y ago
I can't see an option to disable the loading of external content. It just seems to happen by default. Am I missing something, or does it not exist?
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
lightscalar 14y ago
I tried to send an email from Outlook.com but failed the Captcha four times. I tried the audio and thought maybe I was having a stroke because I couldn't make out a damn word. Clean design though. I'm sure it actually sends email too. I'll try again later.
- Sidnicious 14y ago
  I failed the captcha twice and got locked out with the message that I could “try again later” (but still gave me another captcha to try). Awesome. EDIT: I tried visiting outlook.com again a few minutes later and, hey, it looks like I have an account! Hope I didn’t miss any important welcome steps (like, I never got to pick an outlook.com email address) EDIT: ah, but I get the captcha again when I try to do certain things. Still haven't solved it — can’t tell if I’ve been rate limited. I’m definitely human :)
shortlived 14y ago
I'm just excited that I got a 4 character username!
mhd 14y ago
Does it still do top quoting?
- mhd 14y ago
  Oh dearie, it basically elevated top quoting into a design principle, showing a "conversation view" with the newest message on top (twitter-like). It seems the era of replying to individual bits and pieces of an email is over -- or even in general, long form email writing is a thing of the past.
poweratom 14y ago
TL;DL: Thumbs down. "Unsatisfactory" would be the word I'd use for the new outlook.com. Slow, terrible UI and UX, and I see no improvements on the junkmail filter at all. I really would like to see MSFT getting better at this (or at anything, really; they are the underdog in so many categories of tech now). But they are not. I'm a Mac/Apple fan by choice. But I like competition in the market. And I do wish MSFT the best in getting it right (or somewhat right). But this is so far out there that I just don't know what they are thinking. To use the words "We think the time is right to reimagine email" is simply disingenuous -- the site didn't reimagine anything -- it looked like a re-skinned old hotmail to me in every aspect. I will check it out again in a couple of months. Maybe they'll have time to fix enough problems that I'll change my mind then. But until that point, thumbs down.
tamersalama 14y ago
Slightly OT - Office 365 is one of the worst services to setup I've ever tried. I couldn't recommend for my clients.
etruong42 14y ago
There's a blogpost on HackerNews' "best" links right now that complains that "Apple's new ads look like Microsoft made them" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4313614 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4313614 Interestingly enough, the ads created by Microsoft touting Outlook.com don't have any of these problems the blogpost associates with Microsoft ads. In fact, the ads excites me and compels me to at least try the product.
jeaguilar 14y ago
So, instead of "creepy ads" along the right of the window ("Welcome to Outlook.com", 0:12), we get the exact same creepy ads along the right of the window?
greenpizza13 14y ago
I can't get through the damn CAPTCHA!
darklajid 14y ago
HN: Is this a feature or a bug? My live id is a Gmail address. Went to Outlook.com, wanted to register but the form said 'login if you have a live id'. Did that, ended up on a very ugly hotmail-kind-of site. Hrmpf. Went back to Outlook.com, but logged in now: The web interface lets me compose and send mails as me@gmail?
- geuis 14y ago
  Confirmed. My Live account that I use for xbox live is my gmail account. I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to login to outlook.com with my gmail address. However I am concerned about the ability to send email from outlook.com that is sent as the name of another provider.
  - darklajid 14y ago
    In general that'd be fine. The sender address can be easily spoofed anyway - smtp works that way. The thing is, this seems to be broken by design in my world. Google should (have to check that again) publish a record that lists 'official' mail servers for GMail. This whole setup could work just fine, even if it's a bit weird. But right now I suppose you look like a crappy imposter to any receiver AND you can never receive emails (they .. would end up in your GMail inbox of course).
  - radnor 14y ago
    Try sending yourself an email. It will bounce back to that very same email address with a Delivery Status Notification from Hotmail's postmaster saying it couldn't be delivered.
johnbellone 14y ago
There is currently a bug that I stumbled across that allows for spoofed emails to be sent. If you have a Live account that has an external e-mail address Microsoft allows you to login here, without any additional authentication credentials, and actually will send e-mails using the account's original address. In my case this was my Gmail address. Overall the requirement of Silverlight is a little annoying, but the same as usual for Microsoft. The UI itself doesn't look bad, and I actually prefer it to generic Gmail theme.
- kytmizuno 14y ago
  You might have already verified your Gmail when you first signed up for the Microsoft account.
johnbellone 14y ago
There is currently a bug that I stumbled across that allows for spoofed emails to be sent. If you have a Live account that has an external e-mail address Microsoft allows you to login here, without any additional authentication credentials, and actually will send e-mails using the account's original address. In my case this was my Gmail address. Overall the requirement of Silverlight is a little annoying, but the same as usual for Microsoft. The UI itself doesn't look bad, and I actually prefer it to generic Gmail theme.
FreshCode 14y ago
"Your password can't be longer than 16 characters." Is this from Hotmail?
mythz 14y ago
Starting to see a trend with Metro apps where they're sacrificing UX for candy. The UX for this is a nightmare: - It's not clear that the Subject is editable (doesn't look like it's in a text box nor does the label look like a placeholder). - Clicking on BCC opens a CC box with a drop-down that covers the BCC field. - The Send button looks like a main navigation menu, where I'd expect clicking on it would navigate away from the page (and not send the email) - The Rich text buttons look part of the content, a light shade of grey wouldn't add any pixels but would provide separation between function and content Back to gmail....
dguido 14y ago
People that use Outlook also tend to have more... valuable conversations in their inbox and demand more in terms of security and privacy from their mail providers. I hope that as part of courting this group of users to outlook.com, Microsoft has invested in things like S/MIME, PGP, 2FA, and other security enhancements. I haven't signed up, but can someone who has give an outline of what security features they are advertising?
bunsenhoneydew 14y ago
Seems to be up and down like a yoyo. Also, there's an issue displaying correctly in Chrome on a Mac. I suppose that's not MS's favourite software/hardware combo though.
outside1234 14y ago
wow - it looks fantastic - totally stripped down to the minimal needs and everything is fast (try search). Nice work again, Microsoft. Its almost sort of a trend now (Surface, Azure VMs) - has Microsoft got its act together?
ryanisinallofus 14y ago
This looks so much better than the Metro-ized ribbon disaster of the desktop preview that was released. It's actually looks a bit better that the new Gmail which I like as well. The problem with M$ products of course, which makes us all very skeptical is how well it actually works.
sklivvz1971 14y ago
It's just a rebrand of Live Mail, which is just a rebrand of Hotmail. Which is a service not written by Microsoft, but which they bought. A complete waste of time apart from the fanboys who can gloat at the Window 8 look... ;-)
epynonymous 14y ago
i think microsoft is making a slight comeback, this is not groundbreaking, but it seems to tie together several of their products and make them more cohesive. i see somewhat of a strategy emerging here which is more like the microsoft of old.
savories 14y ago
Is this just a simplified Hotmail? It seems like mostly CSS tweaks. No?
andrewfelix 14y ago
Just tried drag and drop attachments, and no joy. That's a deal breaker for me. Sorry msoft.
epynonymous 14y ago
wait a minute, no support for imap?
dbecker 14y ago
The desktop Outlook application epitomizes everything I hate about enterprise software. I've been forced to use it by my last few employers, and outlook-induced frustration has been a frequent source of conversation among my colleagues. If MS wants to start a new email service, the Outlook name is a sure guarantee that we won't want to use it.
captain_spanner 14y ago
Interesting to note that outlook.com considers foo.bar@outlook.com to be a different account to foobar@outlook.com, unlike gmail
lisper 14y ago
No POP/IMAP. No forwarding. No thsnks.
makecheck 14y ago
I tried going to outlook.com and it immediately kicked me out with a "cookies required" page. How is it sensible for any web site, anywhere, to make this the visitor's first impression? Even if a site does need cookies somewhere, I think it's ridiculous to design something that requires a cookie all the time.
tubbo 14y ago
It's like they forced Facebook and an email client to mate.
iambateman 14y ago
"we remimagined email"..."there are 30% more emails visible." Doesn't sound like a "reimagination". But the visuals are nice
jpdelatorre 14y ago
The only compelling feature for me on this is the Skype integration. I would love to use GTalk/Hangout if only more people use it.
AutoCorrect 14y ago
No thanks, I've had enough of Microsoft monopolies, I'm not helping them build another. As recently as the Skydrive mess they've battered the customer. I'm even moving off of gmail because Google is getting the same way.
ved_a 14y ago
Looks seriously ugly in Firefox. Microsoft MUST embrace other browsers like FF and Chrome to succeed and survive.
nshankar 14y ago
It is terribly slow here in India. I agree, Gmail UI is pathetic. But it win solely because of its speed, almost anywhere.
tjmc 14y ago
The interface is currently broken in Australia where a "ninemsn" logo in the top left corner has pushed the menu bar down to obscure the top of the menu and mail listing panes. Other than that - looks like a big improvement to Hotmail.
- zhwang 14y ago
  If you do a hard refresh it should be fixed. And there's always the option of filtering it `live.com##div.c_htr` :)
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
Craiggybear 14y ago
I've surprised myself by actually liking it. A lot.
haydin 14y ago
1- Get excited. 2- Create account. 3- Provide alternate e-mail address for security during signup 4- Login to the site. 5- See that outlook.com found out your facebook profile picture using your alternate e-mail address and started using it in outlook.com 6- Get turned off immediately. 7- Close browser, to never ever login to outlook.com, ever again
oozcitak 14y ago
Your password can't be longer than 16 characters. ... we provide an inbox with ... rock solid account protection powered by your Microsoft account ... Those two do not chime that well.
dante_dev 14y ago
seem to be gmail with a flat template, with a bit of sparrow style.
itsbits 14y ago
i am reading lot of comments about not to trust Microsoft. Am ready to waste time to read the problems/issues, common people faced while using Microsoft products.
chmars 14y ago
'Your password can't be longer than 16 characters.' The password requirement description only shows '8-character minimum; case sensitive'. Disappointing. And apparently no 2-factor authentication either … :(
error 14y ago
Why do the need to ways to verify that it's me. one is not enough!! Cancel :)
jpalomaki 14y ago
I really like the way they use text in the user interface instead of graphical symbols. When Google introduced their new buttons it took some time to get used to remember which one did what. Google has been probably quite successful in monetizing their web mail. It can be sometimes annoying for users, but I believe in the long run it is better to be using a system that has a viable business model behind it. One thing where Microsoft could compete would be support for third party apps. I think there could be some possibilities for innovation on this area. Something that would strike a balance between security and flexibility. With GMail the options seem to be either gadgets (pretty limited) or giving full IMAP access to 3rd party apps (too much power).
brongondwana 14y ago
Totally broken in Opera. Fail.
tarouter 14y ago
I was happy to see the interface and tried to sign up. Outlook.com would not let me set my password bigger than 16 characters. wtf?
cpearce 14y ago
The comments on that article looks bogus...

426 points by kaelspencer 14y ago

munaf 14y ago

Finally, someone gets rid of the "Compose" button.

Sounds like a lot of interesting innovative features that a lot of people might use: social, quick-views, select-all-messages-from-sender..etc I kind of have a problem with their design though. I guess it is all part of the Metro initiative which can look nice in some of their efforts (mobile) .. but here it just shouts at me something to the effect of: "I'm so new and cool and fresh that I don't need subtlety or pleasant earthy colors. Mail, People, Calendar, SKYDRIVE.. I dare you to click EVERYTHING!" Maybe I'm getting too old in my 30th year of life but that intimidates me more than it excites me.

primigenus 14y ago

This looks really nice, but what's up with the URL? https://dub002.mail.live.com/default.aspx?id=64855&owa=1&owasuffix=owa%2f#!/ https://dub002.mail.live.com/default.aspx?id=64855&owa=1... Doesn't look like outlook.com to me.

kooshball 14y ago
looks like they haven't migrated all the boxes to the new outlook.com domain yet

matthewlyle 14y ago

It says "Modern experience for modern browsers and devices.". Is that just an empty sentence or are they using a better engine? The paragraph after just talks about pixels and white space. EDIT: More of the same, apparently: http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft-outlook/archive/2012/07/31/introducing-outlook-com-modern-email-for-the-next-billion-mailboxes.aspx http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft-outlook/archive/2012/07/...

jawns 14y ago

So: Email integrated with social network feeds? That's kinda cool.

yoblin 14y ago

Signup captcha appears to be case sensitive (or something??). After try number 6 I give up. Nice work, Microsoft.

IanDrake 14y ago
Captchas everywhere are starting to get impossible for humans. MS should have solved this problem better though, they have the talent.
bcrescimanno 14y ago
I've tried about a dozen of them; no luck so far in getting it right.
yesimahuman 14y ago
I came here to also complain about the CAPTCHA. I almost gave up after the 4th try but I really wanted to see what this was all about. I don't know what they are thinking with that monstrosity.
- seshagiric 14y ago
  it is likely the email id you are trying to use is already taken up. If you scroll up a bit, there may a error mark near the email field (I had this issue and but was trying to change the captcha).
  - knz 14y ago
    The first couple of times I tried the error message wasn't even being shown, but when I changed the username it worked.
  - yesimahuman 14y ago
    That did happen initially but then it only complained about the captcha
sigkill 14y ago
Well I'm not sure about you, but my hotmail id works with this. Unless, you don't have a hotmail id in the first place... in which case, ignore this comment.

briandear 14y ago

The reason Outlook is the world's most used mail client is because people are often forced to use it to access their company email. While anecdotal, I don't know a single person that uses outlook because they choose to. However, hopefully, outlook.com can introduce some innovation in the space, although, I'm skeptical as I am with most Microsoft 'innovation.'

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
gecko 14y ago
To give a counterpoint, I not only know maybe a half dozen people who voluntarily use Outlook; I know at least two who voluntarily use Outlook on a Mac. I think the fact that few developers enjoy using Outlook is causing you to overgeneralize. Most people who don't care about things like whether their email is in mbox format, or who don't want to learn how to use Mutt or notmuch, find Outlook surprisingly easy to use and powerful. I poked around on outlook.com, and I don't see anything particularly innovative, other than it looks and works nearly exactly like Outlook 2013. But I wouldn't assume its lack of anything novel dooms it to obscurity, either. Outlook, unlike Notes, is a positive brand-name in some circles. I wouldn't be surprised to see this get a relatively large amount of traction right off the bat.
- Uchikoma 14y ago
  That would be me with a Mac.
- CodeCube 14y ago
  I use outlook on a mac to access my employer's email account ... and I'm a developer :)
- beagledude 14y ago
  Outlook on the Mac is actually a very decent client, and I prefer it over the other options.
  - 14y ago

stove 14y ago

The promo video heralds it as email without 'creepy ads', but I signed up and without doing anything it displays 5 ads from restaurants in my town.

saurik 14y ago
It can pull that off without reading your mail, which has been Microsoft's primary marketing complaint re Gmail.
- nickpresta 14y ago
  I understand the distinction, but if you're going to target me with ads solely based on where my IP says I'm from, you might as well just scan my mail and give me relevant ads.
- laconian 14y ago
  It's still copying strings and passing them between functions, which is still a type of "reading" if you want to play by the fast and loose definitions of Microsoft's marketing teams.
alexvay 14y ago
It's a pwn at GMail, by Microsoft. :)
mc32 14y ago
In my old account accessed via outlook.com, I see no ads. In a new account I just created I see ads from Restaurant.com. Not sure what gives.

nell 14y ago

Its definitely faster than the gmail interface.

IanDrake 14y ago
Perhaps. I have 10K emails in my gmail account and 3 in my outlook.com account. We'll have to see how it goes in the long run. But I'm seriously thinking about making the switch for a while.
rocky1138 14y ago
Are you archiving emails in gmail? I've found that keeping my inbox clean helps the performance of the site.
mladenkovacevic 14y ago
I'm sorry have to disagree with this. Just signed up for a fresh, empty outlook account and every time I click on anything there is a noticeable 0.5-1 second lag not including the little slidey animations (I'll admit I AM on a rather ancient computer here at work). But at the same time I have over a gig of e-mail in my Gmail and almost every action is nearly desktop-fast (the speed with which emails come up after doing a search is faster than a file-search on windows)

idm 14y ago

I think it will be a hard fight for mindshare, but Microsoft brings a ton to the plate. The Skype play could really gain them some ground. As I think about it, Office was sortof like the original mashup (but applied to the desktop space). When they started integrating everything into Office (including the OS and the web browser) it started falling apart. What I see with outlook.com is another mashup concept, but this time it is a very natural fit: the web is basically meant for this sort of thing. And another thing: I use Skype. I am typing this on a mac, but I do have that one MS-owned property installed (Skype). This could be a vector that MS uses towards greater mindshare.

rhplus 14y ago
The comments on their Facebook announcement page[1] are surprisingly positive. I think it's worth remembering that while Hotmail and SkyDrive might not have 'mindshare' in Silicon Valley or even across the US, there's a large population of new and global users who have not yet formed opinions on the matter and, more importantly, are willing to try Hotmail out, especially when it's presented in a fresh and modern way like this. [1] https://www.facebook.com/#!/media/set/?set=a.10151004534113721.424349.20528438720&type=1 https://www.facebook.com/#!/media/set/?set=a.101510045341137...

debacle 14y ago

cross-post from another thread because HN tends to bury things: Wow. Very interesting. At first glance, the interface looks very mobile friendly and also very simple. I'm incredibly impressed. The only feedback I would give is that the buttons in the top bar could stand out a bit - maybe a different shade of blue or a slight border. It wasn't immediately clear to me where 'send' was. The ads are a bit more obtrusive than Google Mail ads, though I think that would just take a bit of getting used to. I'm impressed as fuck, though. I can't explain how impressed I am.

ndcrandall 14y ago

This actually makes we want to use my hotmail account a lot more. For the longest time I used hotmail for junk emails and random signups to shield my true email address. Interesting how UI/UX can completely change your attitude toward a service (I never expected to change from Gmail until right now).

brown9-2 14y ago

This preview features screenshots that you can not zoom in on or open the full version. That seems a bit self-defeating.

halite 14y ago

I created two aliases for my account and I can no longer sign-in to my account. I tried my original id, and two new aliases and nothing works. Hope I haven't lost everything in this migration!

jaybill 14y ago

Precious $DIETY, take my $APPENDAGE. Please let the next version of OWA look like this.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

saurik 14y ago

Microsoft really doesn't care about branding: once I logged in to my new @outlook.com Inbox using Outlook.com, I was redirected to live.com where I had a single message pre-sent to me from the "Hotmail Team" welcoming me to Microsoft Live Hotmail.

MatthewPhillips 14y ago
Hotmail is their Email service, Outlook is their email client.
kooshball 14y ago
hm... that's interesting because I got an email subjected "Welcome to the Outlook.com preview" http://i.imgur.com/UNhny.png http://i.imgur.com/UNhny.png are you sure you're using the new outlook.com account and not an old hotmail/live one? if you have a password manager with autologin you might have gotten signed into a wrong account
- saurik 14y ago
  I am not even certain I know my Hotmail password: I have not logged into that account in many years, and certainly not from my iPhone (which is where I just created that account). Yeah, verified: here is a copy/paste from the message. From: Hotmail Team <member_services@live.com> To: <saurik@outlook.com> Subject: Getting started with Hotmail Date: Tue 7/31/12 9:51 AM
masonhensley 14y ago
Outlook's url seems to be on the live.com domain... confusing at best. Let's make a comparison of url's from the "home" view: New Outlook (wtf): https://bay002.mail.live.com/default.aspx https://bay002.mail.live.com/default.aspx Gmail (better, could be cleaner): https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox
- manojlds 14y ago
  Did you miss that it is still a preview?

jimmyjazz14 14y ago

Just tried it out and from my initial experience gotta say this isn't bad. The UI feels pretty clean and easy to read (which I always found to be an issue with gmails web interface). Doesn't look like you can use IMAP with it though so I doubt I will use it for my main email address anytime soon.

esharef 14y ago
I sort of disagree. The UI is clean but things aren't where you expect them to be and it makes it confusing. For instance, I didn't know where to put the subject when I was sending my first email -- it's huge but it's weirdly placed and unintuitive. I also couldn't find the Send button at first because it's on the Nav bar -- not where I expected. I also agree with the post below re: branding. I went to "Help" to see what they had and it took me to a windows.com page saying "This page doesn't exist" followed by "Hotmail Help". Nice.
- kaelspencer 14y ago
  I noticed that about the subject. It doesn't stand out. I get the same feeling from the Mail app for Windows 8. About halfway through this article there is a screenshot of a message being composed. The subject there seems equally hidden. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/06/14/building-the-mail-app.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/06/14/building-the-m...
- manojlds 14y ago
  Yes, things aren't where you would expect, but it quickly grows on you. It sure did on me. Sent 5 emails already ( just to my accounts :) and liking the UI
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- v33ra 14y ago
  +1 on the send button placement. Also when I clicked on the emotiocons, I was expecting a popup to open right below the icon. But the emoticons panel opened up in the left sidebar, totally hiding the to list. But, I do like the Metro UI, though. Clean!

peterbe 14y ago

What. An. Awesome. Video!! I wish I could (afford to) make videos like that.

forgotusername 14y ago
Pretty sweet job considering it's advertising an e-mail app, although I was somewhat disappointed by the absence of unicorns.

cwbrandsma 14y ago

More interesting that this is a Microsoft project and they are hosting their videos from YouTube. Haven't they built their own video streaming service?

manojlds 14y ago
Why should they? It is good that they are embracing youtube rather than try to start promoting something of their own.

xfax 14y ago

It'd be nice if Microsoft worked on their spam technology along with upgrading the UI. Just logged in to my @live.com account - 4814 messages in my Inbox, 17 in my Spam folder. Guess how many in my Inbox are legit messages? None.

akshxy 14y ago

Yeah ! It doesn't look like outlook anymore. The UX/ UI is so fucking amazing. Microsoft's target is to reach with 1 billion users around the world with newly invented Hotmail which I believed so far will never going to hit. But with a new brand and some impressive features, Microsoft's Web email service might finally be cool again.

moron 14y ago

Seems a lot nicer than the dumb old Outlook Web Access I have to use for work.

coffeejunk 14y ago

"Your password can't be longer than 16 characters." really?

sync 14y ago

Captcha problems aside, it actually looks pretty slick. It's nice to be able to grab sync@outlook.com too.

jdelsman 14y ago

How is this innovative or modern? They don't even sprite their icons. Microsoft: don't waste my time.

laconian 14y ago

Besides the Metro thing, what's so modern/different about this versus Hotmail?

manojlds 14y ago
The integration with other services like Facebook, Twitter, I believe?
- laconian 14y ago
  Can't it be Hotmail v2? There looks to be vestiges of Hotmail/Live Mail everywhere. So, a better question is: is this just added features and a reskinning on top of Hotmail?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

MatthewPhillips 14y ago

Google is asleep at the wheel. This makes them look bad. Gmail blew the doors off every other webmail client when it launched 5 years ago but it's time for a rewrite. The fact that they used Gmail mobile as their "Gmail Offline" product in Chrome tells me that the current client can't be modernized. I only hope that is what the Sparrow guys are going to be working on, because Microsoft isn't the company you would expect to be leading in HTML5 innovation.

crescentfresh 14y ago
outlook.com's DOCTYPE: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
- MatthewPhillips 14y ago
  What is wrong with using xhtml?
  - Bootvis 14y ago
    That isn't "leading HTML5 innovation" but I got your point ;)
    - MatthewPhillips 14y ago
      Ah, ok, I was talking about their use of CSS3 transitions primarily.
      - crescentfresh 14y ago
        CSS3 is not [part of] HTML5. CSS3 is just what came after CSS2.
MartinCron 14y ago
it's time for a rewrite That sent a shiver down my spine. Please, Google, don't rewrite gmail. Continue improving incrementally. Thanks.

yaix 14y ago

Nice UI, very light and simple, seems to be running fast even on my netbook. I guess I will start to use my 15 year old hotmail account again, good to finally have an alternative to Gmail. Only one thing: Microsoft, I know its really chiq and en-vogue nowadays to have some element with position:fixed; on every page, but please: don't! There is no reason whatsoever why I would want to see all the time the titlebar. I mean, why would I want to see it? I know I am using Outlook! I know who I am! And it's not very often that I want to access the settings! But, I guess, there is no way around it, position:fixed; is just soooo "modern".

btilly 14y ago
I hate position fixed stuff. I scroll a page, then have to scroll back a few lines because what I want to read next, instead of appearing next, is hidden under a titlebar that I really don't care about.
- dredmorbius 14y ago
  Stylish FTFW. It's a pain maintaining override scripts for multiple sites, but pick your battles and you can make some positive improvements.
maratd 14y ago
> But, I guess, there is no way around it There's a ton of ways you can specify your own CSS for a website, depending on what browser you're using.
jonknee 14y ago
position:fixed is to make it more app like. Outlook on the desktop (and pretty much every other desktop app) works the same way, if you scroll down your inbox the menu bar doesn't go away.
MiguelHudnandez 14y ago
I saw in the video that the "send" button was in the Title bar [1], so I suppose it's important that it be fixed on the screen. [1] at 55 seconds in the video. This link starts a couple seconds before that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDI6Itn7soQ#t=53 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDI6Itn7soQ#t=53

madoublet 14y ago

So, I think the interesting thing here is that it does not seem to work at all with IE8.

robomartin 14y ago

I've been using Outlook by choice, well, forever. I won't bother listing all the reasons for this. It's powerful and it works well. And, if you are a programmer, you can go to town writing your own customizations with VBA. I use Yahoo Mail online for most of my personal stuff. Out of all the online email offerings out there I have found it to be the most "polished" (if I can use that term) and outlook-like. I tried Gmail a couple of years back and just didn't do it for me. As an example, the lack of a real time preview pane was a huge deal breaker for me. Both Outlook and Yahoo Mail have this. Maybe Gmail has this now, I don't know. The other thing about Gmail that scared the crap out of me was to watch as one of our clients had their Gmail account evaporate because their AdSense account got shut down. They were new to the platform and made a couple of dumb and innocent mistakes off the line. Google bots summarily shut-down the account with no recourse or anyone to contact. As their account got suspended so went Gmail. I'll let you venture a guess as to whether or not these people are using any Google products now. Here's a feature I wish email clients would implement: Tabbed accounts. I run more than one company and regularly monitor a dozen email accounts. Outlook and Yahoo Mail allow you to setup rules to deliver email from specific accounts into designated folders. With Outlook you can also choose to store the email in separate files. That's all well and fine, but the whole thing has the risk of becoming cluttered and difficult to use after a while. There's an Outlook hack that allows you to launch multiple Outlook instances. This works very well as I can launch one instance that opens the email addresses corresponding to one business and another instance with a separate business. Having multiple monitors makes this even handier. What would be even better is if I could do the same thing with tabs. I want one tab per business --or a user-designated category. Each tab would receive and send email from one or many email addresses. They would all be independent while having relevant sharing capabilities (copy and past, drag and drop, etc.). It's about context switching. With something like that I could have a single email client handle all of my business email as well as personal within one application window. That would be slick.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
dlikhten 14y ago
I find Sparrow does that so incredibly well. I use 2 accounts daily, and have 2 more for "spam" accounts. It works really well at separating and unifying them.

executive 14y ago

still super messy.. switches to hotmail screens in some of the settings pages.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

sazpaz 14y ago

Finally, an alternative to GMail. The only problem is hundreds of different one-time use websites that are registered to that email and send a ton of "spammy" mails.

dlikhten 14y ago

"Your password can't be longer than 16 characters." Well, it failed my test. Sorry. I never trust my emails to small hard to remember passwords. I rather trust them to very large easy to remember/type passwords. Like horses-functional-pickles Also their capcha, I cannot figure out it, i won't spend more than 2 minutes on capcha

codegeek 14y ago
"2 minutes on capcha" That is generous. I dont like to spend more than 30 seconds max on capchas.
sebtoast 14y ago
Have you tried the audio version? It's even worse.
- MiguelHudnandez 14y ago
  I tried the audio version because they kept putting "O" or zero in the captcha and it was too much of a guess. If a captcha is going to mangle characters, it must accept any of the possible valid options. It's like they pursued test-driven development on the captcha but the only test was whether bots couldn't pass, not whether humans could pass it. After only three attempts, it told me "You've reached the limit for number of attempts. These limits help us protect against spam from automated programs. You can try again later." The audio captcha was so terrible that I recorded it to share with others. Oddly enough, when I played back my recording of it, it was easier to understand the "valid" words. That is very curious. Oddly enough, I just reloaded the captcha page and it dropped me into an account and just won't let me send anything until I pass a captcha. I try every once in a while but any time I solve the captcha it gives me the rate-limiting message. On a side note, they allowed me to sign in with my passport which does not have a Microsoft-provided e-mail address. The interface seems to presume it's responsible for my other e-mail address.
3am_hackernews 14y ago
Their captcha is _really_ frustrating. I spent well over 2 mins going through atleast 20 of them. This was the only ugly part of the new Outlook experience though.

rickmb 14y ago

We haven't instantly forgotten how Microsoft handles Skydrive, have we?: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4265086 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4265086 I think I'll pass on putting my email through their systems. Although I have to admit this looks way better than GMail. I hope this inspires Google to do something about their interface design.

blhack 14y ago
And I'm going to hope and pray that google stops screwing with their interface design. Gmail was perfect.
- dredmorbius 14y ago
  Good luck with that. SAAS means you're vulnerable to vendor change with every pageload. Though there are getting to be tools which allow you to reverse-engineer sites and design them how you want, but this is subject to a lot of churn keeping up with the SAAS vendor. Still lovin' my mutt.
  - pyre 14y ago
    True, but it would be nice to augment Mutt with things like tags and conversations[1] without having convoluted setups involving hacks with external scripts. Another example, it would be really cool to be able to edit email as Markdown/Textile/reStructuredText and have it converted to a text+html (multipart/alternative) email, but currently there is no way to do that with Mutt without using some sort of sendmail wrapper that does this. [1] I realize that Gmail's threading isn't 'true' threading, but I'm talking about pulling in the entire thread even if it's not part of the current email folder.
    - petercooper 14y ago
      Not pointing this out for any reason other than it might useful for some: http://sup.rubyforge.org/ http://sup.rubyforge.org/ More generally, though, I last used mutt in the late 90s so I have no clue but.. it doesn't allow for a vim-style of extension by third party addons?

codegeek 14y ago

Few posts are bashing Outlook in general but I will take it anyday over the biggest piece of shit we have at work: Lotus Notes. It is one of my biggest pain points at work.

hybrid11 14y ago

I like the new integration with the social networks, and the UI theme. However, I think the UI could benefit from more spacing between items, as it feels very cluttered.

blaines 14y ago

I just signed up and the first thing I see is a bar of bing ads selling me $500 TVs or something. On my gmail (I just checked) I don't even see an ad (does web clip count?). You'd think a billion dollar tech company can afford not to force product on me. The second thing I see is, wow, this looks really nice. But, that was the second thing, first I felt like I was at Best Buy. I don't have a TV and I don't even want a TV, go away!

waterlesscloud 14y ago
I see at least two ads on my gmail homepage at all times. One line above the inbox, one below. When I'm in an email, there will be one to several contextual ads (sometimes hilariously mistargeted) on the right. Do you not see these?
- blaines 14y ago
  No, I don't see any! I just checked my gmail, and two apps accounts. Add a screenshot? I would, but there's nothing to see here!
  - waterlesscloud 14y ago
    Do you have paid or non-profit apps accounts that are tied to the gmail? I don't see ads on my non-profit apps/gmail
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
icegreentea 14y ago
That's because gmail ads typically are not on the mainpage, but they are there when you read individual emails (in the side bar).
- blaines 14y ago
  Hm I see... Here's some screenshots of the ads... http://cl.ly/image/3n1G3l1F1y2j http://cl.ly/image/3n1G3l1F1y2j http://cl.ly/image/3j2x2Y3j0L1l http://cl.ly/image/3j2x2Y3j0L1l

vhf 14y ago

So I need to give my phone number to send an email or solve a captcha ? I go for the captcha. 20 tries, no luck. Let's try audio. Impossible. [EDIT] And now, a really funny one I just got : We've noticed some unusual activity in your Outlook account. To help protect you and everyone else, we've temporarily blocked your account. To unblock it, please {0}. Well, alright, I'll {0}. http://i.imgur.com/auM4J.png http://i.imgur.com/auM4J.png

sintaks 14y ago

Curious video. While sketching out Google's Gmail UI, they place a sticky over the advertisement area that says, "Creepy ads." Yet what do I see upon logging in to Outlook.com? Crappy ads. I'll take creepy (relevant) over crappy, thanks.

ivanbernat 14y ago
So you'll rather have Google read every email and every attachment within your inbox, track you around the web, YouTube etc to give you "relevant" ads - rather just a few ads for other MS products?

ap3rson 14y ago

I don't understand... Why implement picture slideshow using Silverlight? I thought Microsft was abandoning this piece of tech.

ceejayoz 14y ago

I logged in with my Microsoft account, which uses my work e-mail as the e-mail address. It happily presented me webmail for it. That's going to confuse non-technical users. There's no indication that any replies are going to go right where it's supposed to, Google Apps... Plus, when attempting to send, I get a captcha. Filling it out (correctly) gives me a "too many attempts" warning.

eddieplan9 14y ago

And there are no display ads or large search boxes that take up extra space I am wondering what this refers to :)

ya3r 14y ago

It's funny that microsoft uses youtube for their video demos in their blogs!

chris_mahan 14y ago

I got a 403 -- Forbidden from the corporate firewall. I thought microsoft made corporate-friendly products. Must try harder!

option_greek 14y ago

Damn... it directly displays in Hindi language for me. I suppose their thought process is that if you have an indian IP, you must know hindi. What's more, even after I changed the language, some of the labels are still in hindi.

baby 14y ago

I must really want to try this out because the signup took me 5 minutes. Between giving my real number, chosing for an availble nickname and having to retype more than 10 times the antispam code (it just wouldn't take my input???)

k-mcgrady 14y ago
Giving your number was optional. You could provide a second email address and security question (you had to click a link just below the email address field to use a security question instead of your number).

sbucher 14y ago

In terms of UI, the differences vs gmail seem trivial and possibly in the wrong direction. The three column format is identical; it is mainly cleaner because it removes useful features: inline email text preview, a prominent search box, navigation to other frequently used services, e.g. drive. On first glance sparse designs look better, but for frequently used software people tend to like the greater data density in practice. I also image that they will introduce l their own navigation bar to other services at some point, so that minor distinction would be temporary. On the hand it is far better than Microsoft's existing offering, and being able to integrate with third party social services rather than g+ is a substantial difference they should continue to run with.

contextfree 14y ago
There's a navigation bar to other services (click on the chevron next to the "Outlook" title). It's just less prominent and 2 clicks instead of one. Which I think is the right tradeoff, as wanting to navigate to another service isn't as common as Google would like it to be.

Hominem 14y ago

Wow, this is really nice. It even works in IE8, Gmail no longer works for me in IE8

jsz0 14y ago

I've never been a fan of the GMail web UI so this is a very refreshing change. I've been ready to make the switch away from GMail for a while so it's nice to have another option. I was seriously considering iCloud mail but I have some reservations about how committed Apple is to iCloud.com -- the Mail UI isn't terrible but it lacks features. I really need server side mail rules for example. My only reservation about OutLook is that Microsoft has so much Google envy they might do all the same things that are driving me away from GMail. At least with Apple I know how the game works. I give them money and they give me a product/service. I'm good with that arrangement.

nuttendorfer 14y ago

I just wish there was an open source project as good as GMail and maybe the new Outlook for a browser-based email you can run everywhere. Native clients are nice but they are native, so you can't take them with you (Different devices, operating systems).

sudhirj 14y ago

I haven't used my microsoft ID in a while - open it up now and my profile picture is pornographic. Interesting welcome to a new service.

nilsbunger 14y ago

The ads at the right really bother me. Product ads and deal ads with big $ signs and "% off" feels much more intrusive than a google text ad.

jpxxx 14y ago

I find it baffling Microsoft doesn't support IMAP access to any of their e-mail properties. You're stuck with POP3 or else a webmail client when on the desktop. They do offer Exchange Activesync for mobiles, but without EWS or IMAP you can't really complete the circle and give customers a decent email experience.

matsur 14y ago
Outlook 2013 supports EAS.
- jpxxx 14y ago
  Interesting, thank you! Now to wait for it to come to the Mac. :)

sunir 14y ago

Wow. I love how they baked Skype right into Outlook.com. A great use of an expensive acquisition.

tsurantino 14y ago

I like how in their first chalkboard mock-up "Oldmail" looks identical to Gmail.

kin 14y ago

is anyone else having trouble with the captcha?

newsreader 14y ago
Lot's of trouble. Had to validate my account by having them send me a code number via phone and then typing it into their page.

jaspero 14y ago

Suddenly my Gmail looks cluttered and old. Bonus, I got my name@outlook.com. That's a big win. Hope they make good stuff.

msh 14y ago

Seems nice, but unusable for using other than outlook.com addresses as I can only use their SMTP server and they give no information for setting up SPF. That causes other servers to think that email sendt from outlook.com is spam....

troyk 14y ago

Just maxed my captcha failures and have to try again later. Either I'm going blind, I'm dumb, or their captcha is broken. Regardless, I hate captcha's -- there has to be a better way.

codegeek 14y ago
Every form if using a capcha should have another checkbox saying "I cannot figure out this stupid capcha and hence I am/can not going forward with this form. You lost a potential customer"

webwanderings 14y ago

I don't see any reason as of yet to go back to my HoTmail. It still looks the same in the new outlook.com.

Afton 14y ago

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/xgjrw/we_are_the_team_behind_the_new_outlookcom_service/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/xgjrw/we_are_the_team_... Disclosure: I work at MS, but not on this product and have no special insight into their workings.

olav 14y ago

Does the new outlook.com support tags in addition to hierarchical folders? This is what I love about GMail. Plus, I generally hate the way the MS WYSIWYG editor has a live of its own and makes quoting of passages from received emails into multi-font nightmares.

b3b0p 14y ago

Initial impressions are positive. It looks feature wise (space, the other Office apps), that's comparable to Gmail for many people. I think I'll play around with it to see if it sticks. It's nice to see some competition and MSFT stepping up and improving this. Props.

olav 14y ago

lukejduncan 14y ago

Anything is an improvement to Outlook Web Access

yajoe 14y ago

If you are curious, this is a reskin of hotmail.com. It's still a separate codebase from the Exchange-backed OWA. Check out the preview of Office 365 and compare it to this experience, and you'll notice that the two are subtly different. This is very interesting to see them converge the brands.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

methodin 14y ago

I would hope that if they want to sway people back they'd do what gmail did to the garbage web apps around the time of its launch. I don't see anything groundbreaking in the video/screenshots. Do is it offer anything unique?

saturdaysaint 14y ago
The UIs on this and even iCloud's webmail are so much better than Gmail's that I consider them functional improvements. They're clearly designed to make the most common use cases ergonomic and let you focus on the task at hand. Unlike Gmail, whose loud interface has no delineation between functional areas and bombards me with seldom used options. When e-mail is one tab among 12 in my browser, I find this kind of focus and simplicity to be a real advantage.

conductr 14y ago

I love how they give a history of webmail progress but totally understate what Gmail did for webmail and why it is so widely liked. Gmail did more than give a bigger inbox. It changed the game for web interfaces, especially webmail. Looks like Outlook is just imitating the Gmail look & feel.

plasticgun 14y ago

oh dear. i. actually. like. this. Sigh ...

mike-cardwell 14y ago

I can't see an option to disable the loading of external content. It just seems to happen by default. Am I missing something, or does it not exist?

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

lightscalar 14y ago

I tried to send an email from Outlook.com but failed the Captcha four times. I tried the audio and thought maybe I was having a stroke because I couldn't make out a damn word. Clean design though. I'm sure it actually sends email too. I'll try again later.

Sidnicious 14y ago
I failed the captcha twice and got locked out with the message that I could “try again later” (but still gave me another captcha to try). Awesome. EDIT: I tried visiting outlook.com again a few minutes later and, hey, it looks like I have an account! Hope I didn’t miss any important welcome steps (like, I never got to pick an outlook.com email address) EDIT: ah, but I get the captcha again when I try to do certain things. Still haven't solved it — can’t tell if I’ve been rate limited. I’m definitely human :)

shortlived 14y ago

I'm just excited that I got a 4 character username!

mhd 14y ago

Does it still do top quoting?

mhd 14y ago
Oh dearie, it basically elevated top quoting into a design principle, showing a "conversation view" with the newest message on top (twitter-like). It seems the era of replying to individual bits and pieces of an email is over -- or even in general, long form email writing is a thing of the past.

poweratom 14y ago

TL;DL: Thumbs down. "Unsatisfactory" would be the word I'd use for the new outlook.com. Slow, terrible UI and UX, and I see no improvements on the junkmail filter at all. I really would like to see MSFT getting better at this (or at anything, really; they are the underdog in so many categories of tech now). But they are not. I'm a Mac/Apple fan by choice. But I like competition in the market. And I do wish MSFT the best in getting it right (or somewhat right). But this is so far out there that I just don't know what they are thinking. To use the words "We think the time is right to reimagine email" is simply disingenuous -- the site didn't reimagine anything -- it looked like a re-skinned old hotmail to me in every aspect. I will check it out again in a couple of months. Maybe they'll have time to fix enough problems that I'll change my mind then. But until that point, thumbs down.

tamersalama 14y ago

Slightly OT - Office 365 is one of the worst services to setup I've ever tried. I couldn't recommend for my clients.

etruong42 14y ago

There's a blogpost on HackerNews' "best" links right now that complains that "Apple's new ads look like Microsoft made them" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4313614 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4313614 Interestingly enough, the ads created by Microsoft touting Outlook.com don't have any of these problems the blogpost associates with Microsoft ads. In fact, the ads excites me and compels me to at least try the product.

jeaguilar 14y ago

So, instead of "creepy ads" along the right of the window ("Welcome to Outlook.com", 0:12), we get the exact same creepy ads along the right of the window?

greenpizza13 14y ago

I can't get through the damn CAPTCHA!

darklajid 14y ago

HN: Is this a feature or a bug? My live id is a Gmail address. Went to Outlook.com, wanted to register but the form said 'login if you have a live id'. Did that, ended up on a very ugly hotmail-kind-of site. Hrmpf. Went back to Outlook.com, but logged in now: The web interface lets me compose and send mails as me@gmail?

geuis 14y ago
Confirmed. My Live account that I use for xbox live is my gmail account. I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to login to outlook.com with my gmail address. However I am concerned about the ability to send email from outlook.com that is sent as the name of another provider.
- darklajid 14y ago
  In general that'd be fine. The sender address can be easily spoofed anyway - smtp works that way. The thing is, this seems to be broken by design in my world. Google should (have to check that again) publish a record that lists 'official' mail servers for GMail. This whole setup could work just fine, even if it's a bit weird. But right now I suppose you look like a crappy imposter to any receiver AND you can never receive emails (they .. would end up in your GMail inbox of course).
- radnor 14y ago
  Try sending yourself an email. It will bounce back to that very same email address with a Delivery Status Notification from Hotmail's postmaster saying it couldn't be delivered.

johnbellone 14y ago

There is currently a bug that I stumbled across that allows for spoofed emails to be sent. If you have a Live account that has an external e-mail address Microsoft allows you to login here, without any additional authentication credentials, and actually will send e-mails using the account's original address. In my case this was my Gmail address. Overall the requirement of Silverlight is a little annoying, but the same as usual for Microsoft. The UI itself doesn't look bad, and I actually prefer it to generic Gmail theme.

kytmizuno 14y ago
You might have already verified your Gmail when you first signed up for the Microsoft account.

johnbellone 14y ago

FreshCode 14y ago

"Your password can't be longer than 16 characters." Is this from Hotmail?

mythz 14y ago

Starting to see a trend with Metro apps where they're sacrificing UX for candy. The UX for this is a nightmare: - It's not clear that the Subject is editable (doesn't look like it's in a text box nor does the label look like a placeholder). - Clicking on BCC opens a CC box with a drop-down that covers the BCC field. - The Send button looks like a main navigation menu, where I'd expect clicking on it would navigate away from the page (and not send the email) - The Rich text buttons look part of the content, a light shade of grey wouldn't add any pixels but would provide separation between function and content Back to gmail....

dguido 14y ago

People that use Outlook also tend to have more... valuable conversations in their inbox and demand more in terms of security and privacy from their mail providers. I hope that as part of courting this group of users to outlook.com, Microsoft has invested in things like S/MIME, PGP, 2FA, and other security enhancements. I haven't signed up, but can someone who has give an outline of what security features they are advertising?

bunsenhoneydew 14y ago

Seems to be up and down like a yoyo. Also, there's an issue displaying correctly in Chrome on a Mac. I suppose that's not MS's favourite software/hardware combo though.

outside1234 14y ago

wow - it looks fantastic - totally stripped down to the minimal needs and everything is fast (try search). Nice work again, Microsoft. Its almost sort of a trend now (Surface, Azure VMs) - has Microsoft got its act together?

ryanisinallofus 14y ago

This looks so much better than the Metro-ized ribbon disaster of the desktop preview that was released. It's actually looks a bit better that the new Gmail which I like as well. The problem with M$ products of course, which makes us all very skeptical is how well it actually works.

sklivvz1971 14y ago

It's just a rebrand of Live Mail, which is just a rebrand of Hotmail. Which is a service not written by Microsoft, but which they bought. A complete waste of time apart from the fanboys who can gloat at the Window 8 look... ;-)

epynonymous 14y ago

i think microsoft is making a slight comeback, this is not groundbreaking, but it seems to tie together several of their products and make them more cohesive. i see somewhat of a strategy emerging here which is more like the microsoft of old.

savories 14y ago

Is this just a simplified Hotmail? It seems like mostly CSS tweaks. No?

andrewfelix 14y ago

Just tried drag and drop attachments, and no joy. That's a deal breaker for me. Sorry msoft.

epynonymous 14y ago

wait a minute, no support for imap?

dbecker 14y ago

The desktop Outlook application epitomizes everything I hate about enterprise software. I've been forced to use it by my last few employers, and outlook-induced frustration has been a frequent source of conversation among my colleagues. If MS wants to start a new email service, the Outlook name is a sure guarantee that we won't want to use it.

captain_spanner 14y ago

Interesting to note that outlook.com considers foo.bar@outlook.com to be a different account to foobar@outlook.com, unlike gmail

lisper 14y ago

No POP/IMAP. No forwarding. No thsnks.

makecheck 14y ago

I tried going to outlook.com and it immediately kicked me out with a "cookies required" page. How is it sensible for any web site, anywhere, to make this the visitor's first impression? Even if a site does need cookies somewhere, I think it's ridiculous to design something that requires a cookie all the time.

tubbo 14y ago

It's like they forced Facebook and an email client to mate.

iambateman 14y ago

"we remimagined email"..."there are 30% more emails visible." Doesn't sound like a "reimagination". But the visuals are nice

jpdelatorre 14y ago

The only compelling feature for me on this is the Skype integration. I would love to use GTalk/Hangout if only more people use it.

AutoCorrect 14y ago

No thanks, I've had enough of Microsoft monopolies, I'm not helping them build another. As recently as the Skydrive mess they've battered the customer. I'm even moving off of gmail because Google is getting the same way.

ved_a 14y ago

Looks seriously ugly in Firefox. Microsoft MUST embrace other browsers like FF and Chrome to succeed and survive.

nshankar 14y ago

It is terribly slow here in India. I agree, Gmail UI is pathetic. But it win solely because of its speed, almost anywhere.

tjmc 14y ago

The interface is currently broken in Australia where a "ninemsn" logo in the top left corner has pushed the menu bar down to obscure the top of the menu and mail listing panes. Other than that - looks like a big improvement to Hotmail.

zhwang 14y ago
If you do a hard refresh it should be fixed. And there's always the option of filtering it `live.com##div.c_htr` :)
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

Craiggybear 14y ago

I've surprised myself by actually liking it. A lot.

haydin 14y ago

1- Get excited. 2- Create account. 3- Provide alternate e-mail address for security during signup 4- Login to the site. 5- See that outlook.com found out your facebook profile picture using your alternate e-mail address and started using it in outlook.com 6- Get turned off immediately. 7- Close browser, to never ever login to outlook.com, ever again

oozcitak 14y ago

Your password can't be longer than 16 characters. ... we provide an inbox with ... rock solid account protection powered by your Microsoft account ... Those two do not chime that well.

dante_dev 14y ago

seem to be gmail with a flat template, with a bit of sparrow style.

itsbits 14y ago

i am reading lot of comments about not to trust Microsoft. Am ready to waste time to read the problems/issues, common people faced while using Microsoft products.

chmars 14y ago

'Your password can't be longer than 16 characters.' The password requirement description only shows '8-character minimum; case sensitive'. Disappointing. And apparently no 2-factor authentication either … :(

error 14y ago

Why do the need to ways to verify that it's me. one is not enough!! Cancel :)

jpalomaki 14y ago

I really like the way they use text in the user interface instead of graphical symbols. When Google introduced their new buttons it took some time to get used to remember which one did what. Google has been probably quite successful in monetizing their web mail. It can be sometimes annoying for users, but I believe in the long run it is better to be using a system that has a viable business model behind it. One thing where Microsoft could compete would be support for third party apps. I think there could be some possibilities for innovation on this area. Something that would strike a balance between security and flexibility. With GMail the options seem to be either gadgets (pretty limited) or giving full IMAP access to 3rd party apps (too much power).

brongondwana 14y ago

Totally broken in Opera. Fail.

tarouter 14y ago

I was happy to see the interface and tried to sign up. Outlook.com would not let me set my password bigger than 16 characters. wtf?

cpearce 14y ago

The comments on that article looks bogus...