I haven’t been able to get on the beta test list for the next version of Hotmail (codenamed Kahuna) Windows Live Mail , but I was able to get onto Yahoo Mail Beta, and that UI totally rocks. Dare’s coworkers sure have their work cut out for themselves if they are going to beat Yahoo. If you are use to working in Outlook, the new Yahoo Mail is a snap to get use to. All the cool AJAX stuff is there, plus they override the normal right-click browser context menu and give you one that is more like a smart client context menu (where you can actually execute task like deleting an email). All I have seen from Windows Live Mail has been a bunch of screen shots, so I can’t really get a feel for usability of their interface, but it looks to have a lot of the same features as the new Yahoo Mail. Two things I did notice that were different from Yahoo Email was that Yahoo’s Email UI has a much cleaner feel to it (it looks more like Outlook 2003), and Windows Live Mail is more cluttered (more like the Outlook Express UI). Maybe it was just the screen shots I saw, and they way that person setup there UI, I don’t know. The other thing I noticed is that unlike the Yahoo Email, Windows Live Mail did have any advertising. That would be my one complaint with Yahoo’s UI, the ads are way to big. I understand that they need to put ads on the page to pay for the service, but the big banner graphic ads are too in your face for my liking. I’m sure that for a slight fee, I could get a version of either service without ads.
Oh, one other major feature I almost forgot about! If you like to use Bloglines or NewsGator to read your RSS feeds, then you will love the new Yahoo Mail, since you can now add your favorite RSS feeds into Yahoo Mail. I’ve never been a big fan of RSS is just another email paradigm, so NewsGator isn’t my thing, but I do love Bloglines, since I can get to my feeds from anywhere (although my main RSS reader is still RssBandit). I haven’t read if Live Mail will be able to add RSS feeds, but I’m sure once they hear about it will get done.
Looks like browser based email client war is about to heat up again, and we are all going to benefit from it. GMail seems to be the odd man out in this battle (but I wouldn’t count them out, yet).