A few days ago, we told you about how Windows Live Hotmail was created. Today, we’ll respond to some of the top issues we’ve heard about from our customers.

1. Why did you move me from MSN to Windows Live Hotmail when nothing was wrong?

Unfortunately, MSN Hotmail did not allow us to address significant customer needs, such as support for certain languages and accessibility for folks with different visual and motor disabilities. We also got complaints from many customers about MSN Hotmail being too hard to use. We spent a long time building a new version of Hotmail that the majority of our customers like better, and we want to focus our engineering team’s efforts on the new system. It is a bit of a change, but Windows Live Hotmail has a lot of the same functionality as MSN Hotmail. Before we started working on Windows Live Hotmail, we used to update MSN Hotmail a lot, so it would change, too. If you liked MSN Hotmail, you may prefer the classic version of Windows Live Hotmail. Make sure you’re using it by going to Options (or Options --> More options from the full version). Look at the first option on the page to see if you’re currently using the full or classic version.

2. Windows Live Hotmail pages take too long to load. Can you fix this?

Thanks for reporting this, and this is a high priority for us to fix. If you have a slower Internet connection, you may do better by switching to the classic version of Windows Live Hotmail, which loads about as fast as MSN  Hotmail did. The full version is fast once it’s fully loaded, but you do have to download a good chunk of JavaScript at the beginning, and this may be tough for folks who have slow Internet connections or live far from our data centers. Make sure you’re using the classic version by going to Options (or Options --> More options from the full version). Look at the first option on the page to see if you’re in the full or classic version.

3. When I don’t use Internet Explorer, Windows Live Hotmail doesn’t work very well, especially in Safari.

We added support for browsers other than Internet Explorer (IE) in 2005, and the non-IE browser we support best is Firefox 1.5+. It’s available for practically every operating system out there, so if you can’t use IE or don’t like it, try Firefox because it works well with a wide range of websites. We currently do not support the full version for Safari due to technical limitations, though we continue to monitor the issue. Safari users can use the classic version of Hotmail for now, and we are monitoring whether future versions of Safari will support all of our technical needs.

As far as I know, there are only four features that IE supports but Firefox doesn’t. Firefox users get Firefox’s built-in spell check while IE users get a spell check that stores its dictionary on Hotmail’s servers. Firefox users can’t resize the columns in the full version. The special photo upload tool is an ActiveX control and works only in IE, but non-IE users can attach photos just like any other file. Only IE users can see their friends’ Messenger presence.

4. I don't want an e-mail program that looks like Outlook; the interface of the new Hotmail is too complicated.

The classic version of Windows Live Hotmail looks and acts very similar to MSN Hotmail. If you preferred that simpler interface, make sure you’re using the classic version by going to Options (or Options --> More options from the full version). Look at the first option on the page to see if you’re in the full or classic version.

5. Why can I do some things in the full version of Hotmail that I can't do in the classic version?

The full version uses AJAX, which is a more advanced technology that provides you with a lot of rich and snappy interactions, such as loading the next message in your inbox without reloading the whole page. Some features, such as the reading pane, wouldn’t work well if the whole webpage had to reload, so they are available in the full version only.

6. Help! I've lost everything in my inbox!

We’re very sad whenever we hear this from a customer, because we know how important your e-mail data is. Our support team has done a lot of investigation into these issues, and nearly every case is due to account expiration.

Free Hotmail accounts expire if you haven’t logged into Hotmail for a certain number of days, which is a standard practice for web-based mail accounts because many users use an account for a little while, and then never use it again. MSN Hotmail accounts expire after 60 days, and Windows Live Hotmail accounts expire after 120 days. Advances in our data center have allowed us to extend our expiration times, which used to be 30 days.

If you believe your e-mail was deleted in error, please contact the Hotmail Support Team directly. We are not able to offer effective support through blogs. The email address is emailspt@microsoft.com and set the subject to “Data Loss Question.” There are great, real-life people there who can help you. They are the same folks who bring you the E-mail Support Space.

Thanks for your patience and feedback so far.

By the way, the best way to give us feedback is not on this blog, it’s via this feedback site.

- Ellie Powers, program manager, Windows Live Hotmail

P.S. This blog entry has also been published on the Hotmail team blog. You’ll find lots more info about Hotmail over there.

Hi, I’m Ellie, and I’m a program manager on the Windows Live Hotmail team. A lot of you have had comments and questions about how and why we decided to make all the changes that we did in going from MSN Hotmail to Windows Live Hotmail, so I thought I’d provide a little background for you.

The Hotmail team started working on Windows Live Hotmail back in 2004, with the goal of making web-based e-mail easier, faster, and safer. Our MSN Hotmail code base was also getting pretty rickety, so we wanted to start over from scratch to create a new code base that would be easier to maintain and develop on. When we started thinking about what belongs in the new Hotmail, we focused on the core features of e-mail and analyzed how e-mail fits into the lives of our hundreds of millions of customers around the world.

It’s not possible to build something perfect the first time (or maybe not even the 10th time), so we decided to start gathering your feedback early. We launched our public beta in the spring/summer of 2005. Customer feedback was such a high priority for us that we started our public beta when we still hadn’t added all the features we knew we’d need.

Some of you out there in blogland are the beta testers who devoted so much of your time and energy to trying new releases and submitting feedback. With each release, we identified the biggest problems by looking at customer feedback and surveys from the previous release, fixed bugs and designed new features to address the top issues, and then used usability studies to tweak our initial designs. What comes next? Yup, more beta testing and another survey to see how much better the new release was compared with the old one. You can read all about Hotmail’s adventures in betaland on our Hotmail team blog.

We did these iterations for about two years, until May 2007, when our data showed that Windows Live Hotmail was good enough to get out of beta. We did another release in the fall of 2007 that we have been moving our MSN Hotmail users to. We are eternally grateful to everyone who has taken the time to give constructive feedback. You have influenced what we built and which order we built the parts in. Windows Live Hotmail in 2007 is so much better than it was two years ago. And we are not done yet! Hotmail will continue to evolve for years to come – we have some really cool ideas for the next year that we’re just starting to plan.

With that said, Windows Live Hotmail is not perfect, and we are still planning to make changes. Change can be hard, especially when it’s not a change that you, personally, may have asked for. We did get feedback from thousands of customers, but it’s tough to make something that makes everyone happy.

In a few days, we’ll follow up with answers to some of the most common questions we’ve heard from our customers about Windows Live Hotmail.

You can post a comment on this blog if you like, but the best way to give us feedback is on this feedback site.

- Ellie Powers, program manager, Windows Live Hotmail

P.S. This blog entry has also been published on the Hotmail team blog.

Personally, I’ve never been a big fan of toolbars and other browser add-ins. But I’ve just come across a feature that makes the Windows Live Toolbar really, really useful: the Windows Live Translator button.

When you add this button to your Windows Live Toolbar, you can instantly translate almost any foreign-language webpage on the Internet. I love international travel and have dabbled in a few foreign languages (with varying degrees of success). Having an instant translator on my toolbar means I can expand my armchair travel to foreign language websites, and check out local information on all the places I plan to travel next.

The translator button is a spin-off of the Windows Live Translator beta website. On the website, you choose the languages you want to translate from and to, type in a few words, and it provides instant machine translation. Or, type in a web address, and it translates the whole page for you.

Because this is machine translation, it gives you a somewhat literal translation, which, I’ll admit, is far from perfect (hey, folks, this is still a beta). It doesn’t deal very well with complex sentences, and it REALLY can’t handle anything idiomatic, so it sometimes comes up with some, shall we say, interesting sounding sentences, (which personally, I find hilarious). But humor aside, it’s usually close enough to give you the gist of what any given sentence is about. It’s especially useful if you know a bit of a language, but need help with a word or two here and there.

Instant gratification

But to really take advantage of the services offered on the Translator website, I highly recommend adding the Translator button to your toolbar. Then, when you’re surfing through a foreign language website and come to a phrase you don’t understand, just click the button for an instant translation.

You can choose from 4 different views of the translated page: side by side, top over bottom, original with translation on hover, or translation with original on hover (the icons for each view are shown here, with the third choice, translation on hover, selected).

For a language I know pretty well (like French), I prefer the translate-on-hover view. I can still read the page in the original language, but when I get stuck, I just move my mouse over the sentence in question, et voilá! The translation appears.

For a language that I need a lot more help on (like Chinese), the side-by-side view is more useful.

Here’s how to get the Translator button:

1. If you don’t have it yet, install Windows Live Toolbar.
2. Close and re-open Internet Explorer to see the new toolbar in place.
3. Get the Translator button from Windows Live Gallery.
4. Close and re-open Internet Explorer again.
5. Set your default language pair by clicking the arrow next to the Translator button.
   

There are 25 language pairs to choose from in the Translator beta, mostly English paired with other languages (but French <-> German is also included). Additional language pairs will be added once this service comes out of beta.

Have fun, and let me know what you think!

Antonia Blume
Editor, Windows Live

I’ve been blogging on Windows Live Spaces for a while now, and life has been good. But I knew that by getting a fresher, shorter Windows Live ID, life could be even better. And now it is—12 keystrokes better every time I sign in. But while I did want to lose those keystrokes, I didn't want to lose the space I was slowly (very slowly) building with the old ID.

In a previous post, Kaarin explained how to move your photos from your old space to a new one, which worked out great for me. But I also had a few blog entries to migrate over. Thankfully, Windows Live Writer makes this step relatively easy, too.

Here's the skinny: Use Writer to download all of your posts from your old blog (on Windows Live Spaces or on another blogging service), and then upload them to your new blog (again, it doesn’t have to be on Spaces, but we recommend it!). That's pretty much it.

Get posts from your old blog

1. If you don't already have it (but of course you do!), install Windows Live Writer.
2. Add your old blog to Writer, either during setup, or by clicking Add Weblog Account on the Weblog menu.
3. To find the posts from your old blog, click More… under the Recently Posted list in the right-hand pane.
    
4. Click the name of your blog in the left pane. (You may need to click the Refresh Posts button if your blog has changed a lot recently.)
   

Add them to your new blog

1. Add your new blog to Writer, by (you guessed it) clicking Add Weblog Account on the Weblog menu.
2. Prepare to publish your old posts to your new blog by clicking More… under the Recently Posted list.
3. For each post that you want to migrate, double-click it in the list to open it.
4. At the bottom of the open blog post, select a category (you'll need to add your custom categories to the list), and then set the publish date to whatever it was on your old blog.
5. With the post from your old blog still open, point Writer at your new blog by clicking its name on the Weblog menu.
   
6. Then click Publish to add the old post to the new blog.

That's it. Some might say the physical actions required to migrate one's blog are so subtle that one could complete the task during the course of a routine meeting. Not that I would know anything about that.

Oh, by the way, the comments people have left won't follow your posts to their new home, so you’ll be making a fresh start in that sense. If you’ve formed a deep emotional attachment to the old comments, you may want to keep your old blog online and add a link to it in a custom module, as suggested at the end of Kaarin's post.

Happy blogging!

Lisa Andrews
Windows Live editor
http://perro-gordo.spaces.live.com/