Windows Live Mail Beta Milestone 6 (M6) will soon be coming to all beta testers, with this new release we can hope to see a lot of improvements some of which are listed below, notice the first one is better firefox support, this should keep a lot of you happy!<\/p>\n
Firefox support<\/strong> 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0
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\nPolicy Changes<\/strong> – Today accounts expire if customers don’t use them for 30 days.\u00a0 For most of us email addicts 30 days sounds like forever, but not everyone lives on email like me \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 Starting in M6 accounts won’t expire until you haven’t used it (eg, you haven’t even logged in) for 120 days!\u00a0 So take that long summer vacation, disconnect (really) and your Windows Live Mail will be there.\u00a0 In addition, we’ve gotten lots of questions about saving sent mail.\u00a0 We used to save it all with Hotmail years ago, then changed and saved sent mail for only 30 days.\u00a0 Well…now if you ask us to save your sent mail we save it, period.\u00a0 No “use by” date.<\/p>\nPerformance<\/strong> –\u00a0 We know that speed is one of the most important things for Mail and we’re working on getting even better.\u00a0 While we’re not done yet, we’ve made some changes to make Windows Live Mail faster and more responsive then ever.
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\nSignatures<\/strong> – They’re back.\u00a0 We know they’ve been sorely missed and we’re happy to say you can finally add signatures to your mails.
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\nDon’t auto select first message<\/strong> –\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Now you are in control, select the style that suits you best.
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\nChange colors on the fly<\/strong> –\u00a0 We added the ability to change your color scheme in M5 and it was a big hit.\u00a0 But you still had to go to options, select a color, and go back to the inbox to see if you liked it.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Go ahead and play, it’s easier than ever.
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\nSubscribe to contact updates<\/strong> –\u00a0 Some of you have discovered through Spaces and Messenger that you can subscribe to you friends’\u00a0 contact information so you will always have their latest contact info.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.
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\nContact display name choice<\/strong> – Now you can choose how to view your contacts.\u00a0 Do you like “Joe Smith” or “Smith, Joe”?\u00a0 It’s your choice, simply select your preferred setting from the “customize” menu.
\nShow message size – Another one of our ‘missing features’ is back!\u00a0 Now you can see the message size if in the “bottom reading pane” or “no reading pane” views.
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\nCompose from anywhere<\/strong> – Finally, you don’t have to go to the inbox to compose a new mail.\u00a0 With our new “split button” you can now create a new mail, contact, folder, or group from any page.
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\nMore Classic Hotmail improvements<\/strong> – For those of you using our Classic Hotmail version of Windows Live Mail, we’ve added two more features, search and contact.\u00a0 No more browsing, use search to find that old mail.\u00a0 We’ve also added the contacts page back!\u00a0 Now you can see all of your contacts to quickly find their e-mail address or phone number.\u00a0 We realize there are still some missing features for Classic Hotmail, but don’t worry, we’re working on it<\/p><\/blockquote>\n