Windows Live Mail Getting Better, Still Needs Work

Commenting on other people’s blogs is fun, especially when those blogs get a lot of page views and a lot of comments. Since I use Windows Live Mail (the next generation of Hotmail) as my primary email, I naturally like to visit the blog of the team who makes Live Mail so I can find out what’s new. It’s also a great way for me to post my concerns and ideas for improving Windows Live Mail. I did just this on October 6th, and it was very interesting seeing what came of it. I was just posting my thoughts and feature requests in the hope that the team would read my comment and adopt some of my ideas for their future releases. Little did I know just how many people would read my comment and post after I did.

 

I was one of the first people to post, and I guess a lot of people like to read the first set of comments, because a large number of the subsequent posts referenced mine. Some agreed with my statements, some echoed my thoughts without actually referencing my post, and one person even commented that I made so many references to other email services that I must surely be "an agent of Yahoo! and Google." I’m not an agent of Yahoo! or Google. I’m just a tech-loving guy with a thirst for great email products. If I see something great in another company’s products, I won’t hesitate to mention it because I want Microsoft’s Windows Live Mail to be as great as it can be when it comes out of Beta at some undetermined point in the future.

 

I’ll likely be adding more thoughts on ways that Windows Live Mail can improve as time goes on, as well as how I think it fares in comparison to other email services. In the mean-time, I thought I should post the comment I made on October 6, 2006 at Your mail is here, come and get it!. I encourage you to read it and see what you think of my thoughts. If you have an interest in the future of Windows Live Mail because you’re a current Live Mail or Hotmail user, or if you’re just a technology-oriented person who would like to see Microsoft’s next webmail product be the best it can be, I ask that you do as I have done and post your thoughts and suggestions for improvements to Windows Live Mail on the team’s blog. They won’t know that people want certain changes and additions unless we speak up and let them know. My original comment from 10/6/2006 follows:

I’m really happy with the improvements you’ve made in this release. It’s a significant upgrade over M7, and I really appreciate the work you put into it. Even if you had just added the Windows Live button with the drop-down list of Windows Live sites, it would have been worth the release. I do, however, still have some features that I would really like to see added before the final release, most if not all of which I may have posted on this blog before. They are as follows:

 

1) The ability to flag an email (make it a high priority/mark it as important). Windows Live Mail Desktop now has this feature (and it’s a very nice and needed feature, too). I would love to see this added to the web version of Windows Live Mail, however perhaps in not exactly the same way as it is implemented in Desktop. Desktop uses an entire column to display whether or not an email is flagged, and this uses a lot of screen space. For the web version, I think it would be sufficient to remove this column. Instead, add the ability to right-click and email and flag it. If an email is flagged, it would have a small red flag icon in the pane that displays the list of emails, right next to the message’s subject line by the icons that indicate if the message has an attachment. You could then add the ability to sort by whether or not an email is flagged, as well as the addition of a "flagged" category to the farthest left pane, perhaps under the other folders and in smaller font. As an added bonus, you can make it so that Windows Live Mail’s flags and Desktop’s flags automatically sync (although this feature isn’t absolutely necessary).

 

2) The ability to scroll through all my emails at once, without clicking on an arrow to show the next 50 messages. I get a lot of email, and while I don’t go very far back in my email often, it’s very annoying when I do need to do so. This feature could be implemented like the previously available continuous scrolling of search results in Windows Live Search. As the user scrolls down, more emails are loaded. Since this feature would probably require a good internet connection, you could have an option in the settings menu to switch between the continuous scrolling and the current method.

 

3) Accurate search results. While the relatively-new search is a welcome addition to Live Mail, it is not nearly as thorough and accurate as it needs to be. I have found that its indexing tends to be very behind (hasn’t indexed the last few week’s email quite often). Also, it seems to omit quite a few emails when I perform a search. If I search for, say, "bu.edu" (without the quotation marks), I expect it to return all emails that contain "bu.edu" in the subject line, the body of the email, or in the email address of a sender. I have found that search currently omits most of these emails. Granted, I do have more than two and a half thousand emails in my inbox, but the size of my inbox should be irrelevant. As previously said, such a search would also very often return results from a week or two ago, but omit very recent emails that should be included. To be useful, a search function needs to be completely up-to-date (like Gmail’s search function is).

 

4) The Today page needs more functionality (and by functionality, I don’t mean more advertisements). It’s far better than it used to be, but for me to have to look at it every time I sign in, it needs to be more useful and show more information that I care about. Perhaps it could tie into the calendar built-into Windows Live Mail and display Notes, Tasks, and the current day’s calendar listings. Perhaps it could show what the subject line and From fields of unread messages in the Inbox. Maybe it could somehow tie into other Windows Live Services. For example, it could include a Windows Live Favorites gadget like I can have on my Live.com page. It might even be sufficient if it just shows a few of the most popular MSN Video clips. No matter what you make it do, it needs to be more useful. Otherwise, it’s largely a waste of my time.

 

5) Automatic check for new email. It’s great that I can click on a button to check for new email, but I really shouldn’t have to. Like Gmail, Windows Live Mail should check every minute or so for new email in my Inbox and in other folders and update my current panes accordingly. It’s a relatively minor feature, but it would be a huge help. Outlook offers it, Gmail offers it, and Windows Live Mail should also offer it.

 

6) A better calendar. Sure, I can keep using Google Calendar, but I would really rather use the one built-into Live Mail. However, until certain features are added, I won’t be able to. All it would really take is a little Ajax goodness.

     First, when I click on a day in Month view, it should automatically give me the option to add a new appointment to that day. I shouldn’t have to click on the actual numeric date.

     Second, I need the ability to have more than one personal calendar. For example, let’s say that I want one calendar for my personal appointments and another one for the upcoming movies I’m looking forward to. I want to display them on the same calendar so I can see them at the same time, with some way of differentiating appointments on each calendar (such as a different color for each calendar’s appointments). I should also have different sharing options for each calendar should I choose to share one but not the other with friends.

     Third, it would be nice to have an RSS or Atom feed of my upcoming calendar appointments. I could use this feed in my feed reader or give it out to friends so they know what I’ll be doing.

     Fourth, there needs to be a way to quickly add calendar appointments. Google Calendar does this very well with its "Quick Add" feature. A similar method for easily adding appointments would be most welcome (although not absolutely necessary).

     Fifth, I should be able to search my calendar appointments. A full-featured search with lots of customizations like Google Calendar’s would be very welcome.

     Sixth, it would be nice to be able to set an appointment for any time of day, rather than just on the hour and at 15 minute intervals. Realistically, not everything starts at one of these times. I could do something from 10:20 AM until 10:45 and another thing from 10:45 until 10:55. It wouldn’t happen all the time, but I really should be able to set the appointment for any time I want.

     Finally, one feature you could add that Google Calendar lacks (and that would make me quickly switch over) is a way of syncing appointments, tasks, and notes between Outlook and Windows Live Mail’s calendar in a way similar to how Windows Live Favorites can sync with Internet Explorer when using the Windows Live Toolbar with the Favorites add-in.

 

This seems like a lot of complaints, but it really isn’t. I love Windows Live Mail. I just think that the addition of these features would make it a near-perfect service that can easily trump anything the competition has to offer. While I obviously don’t realistically expect that you’ll be able to add all these features any time soon, I sincerely hope that you add at least some of them before the final release of Windows Live Mail. Thank you.

You can read all about the improvements that the Live Mail team has made recently in the M8 release of Windows Live Mail by viewing their latest blog post. Windows Live Mail in its current state is a great email service. With the right feature additions and subtle tweaks, I can see the team pushing it above Yahoo! and Google’s email offerings by a significant margin in certain areas. As with any beta product, it is up to us, the people using the product, to find what needs changing and recommend these changes as vocally as possible. The team’s blog has a comment feature, and I think it’s time we put it to good use. (By "good use," I don’t mean leaving ridiculous comments like 2/3 of the commenters currently posting there. Oh well, at least we can make sure that there are some valuable comments on the team’s blog.)