We’ve been working away, incorporating your feedback into Windows Live Mail.  We’re just about ready for our "M6" release of the Windows Live Mail beta.  We used to post a summary of some of the new features after the release was live, but we’ve had so many requests for a sneak peak, we’ll continue our recent tradition of letting the cat out of the bag.  We expect to roll out these features in the next week (get ready!). So without further ado, here are some of the highlights of M6.
 
Firefox support – We’ve been saying for awhile that we would be supporting Firefox, but a lot of people didn’t really believe us. In fact we already have been supporting it with our "Hotmail Classic" view — but we know that isn’t enough.  We’ve been working away and more is finally here, Firefox 1.5 now gets all the same cool features like the reading pane, drag and drop, right click menus, and more, that you’ve seen on Internet Explorer.  There are still a few features we’re working on, but we didn’t want to hold back any longer. So go ahead, take Windows Live Mail beta for a spin on Firefox. 
 
Policy Changes – Today accounts expire if customers don’t use them for 30 days.  For most of us email addicts 30 days sounds like forever, but not everyone lives on email like me :-)   Starting in M6 accounts won’t expire until you haven’t used it (eg, you haven’t even logged in) for 120 days!  So take that long summer vacation, disconnect (really) and your Windows Live Mail will be there.  In addition, we’ve gotten lots of questions about saving sent mail.  We used to save it all with Hotmail years ago, then changed and saved sent mail for only 30 days.  Well…now if you ask us to save your sent mail we save it, period.  No "use by" date.

 

Performance -  We know that speed is one of the most important things for Mail and we’re working on getting even better.  While we’re not done yet, we’ve made some changes to make Windows Live Mail faster and more responsive then ever.
 
Signatures – They’re back.  We know they’ve been sorely missed and we’re happy to say you can finally add signatures to your mails.
 
Don’t auto select first message -  A lot of people don’t like their first message being opened in the reading pane automatically. We heard you loud and clear and we added an option to turn this off.  Now you are in control, select the style that suits you best.
 
Change colors on the fly -  We added the ability to change your color scheme in M5 and it was a big hit.  But you still had to go to options, select a color, and go back to the inbox to see if you liked it.  That’s way too much work, so now you can select your color from the "customize" drop down menu on any page and see your colors scheme change instantly.  Go ahead and play, it’s easier than ever.
 
Subscribe to contact updates -  Some of you have discovered through Spaces and Messenger that you can subscribe to you friends’  contact information so you will always have their latest contact info.  Now whenever you have access to a friend’s contact data, we’ll show you a "Subscribe to contact updates" link right next to their name.  Click on it and you’ll instantly have their latest information in your contacts. Next time they change their phone number, you’ll automatically get the change without having to do anything.
 
Contact display name choice – Now you can choose how to view your contacts.  Do you like "Joe Smith" or "Smith, Joe"?  It’s your choice, simply select your preferred setting from the "customize" menu.
Show message size – Another one of our ‘missing features’ is back!  Now you can see the message size if in the "bottom reading pane" or "no reading pane" views.
 
Compose from anywhere - Finally, you don’t have to go to the inbox to compose a new mail.  With our new "split button" you can now create a new mail, contact, folder, or group from any page.
 
More Classic Hotmail improvements – For those of you using our Classic Hotmail version of Windows Live Mail, we’ve added two more features, search and contact.  No more browsing, use search to find that old mail.  We’ve also added the contacts page back!  Now you can see all of your contacts to quickly find their e-mail address or phone number.  We realize there are still some missing features for Classic Hotmail, but don’t worry, we’re working on it
 
Many of you know that we are making advertising changes in the inbox. Just wanted to let you know that this change won’t happen this week but is imminent. 
 
Hope you guys are excited as I am.  If you’re not one of the 3 1/2  million people already using the Windows Live Mail beta, you can go to http://ideas.live.com and sign up.  Keep visiting…more is on the way….
 
Program Manager
 

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May 5, 2006

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