… you just keep yours.
Categories
Month: December 2005
Categories
The frequent trips to Redmond paid off…
A free upgrade to business class for my flight back from New York.
Categories
This is a great type of specialist
This is a great specialty to look for in your podiatrist.
Categories
Words to live by
I love this quote from an interview with Richard Pryor on NPR’s Fresh Aire. Mr. Pryor was talking about dealing with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), he said that his disease was a blessing and joked about it in his routines. In the interview he said:
Life to me was like… not supposed to make sense, ’cause, hey, it’s I don’t care how you slice it, you ain’t getting out alive, so enjoy as much as you can.
Richard Pryor died this month at the age of 65, his wife said he was joking right up until the and and died with a smile on his face.
Once again I’m humbled by the strength of others. A tip of the hat to you Mr. Pryor, I’m sure you watching us and still laughing.
Ellie has written a great post on the Windows Live Mail team blog about the yeoman’s work that has gone into the product to support older browsers. Ellie worked with a team in China to develop a version we internally referred to as the “down-level” version of Kahuna (she basically worked U.S. hours in the office, then went home and worked some China hours on top of that… boy does she deserve a few week’s rest!). The goal of this basic implementation is to support older and non-standard browsers for accessing Windows Live Mail accounts. The “up-level” features of Windows Live Mail such as drag and drop, spell check as you type and shift/control click require an advanced browser which supports the core technologies needed for Atlas (JavaScript, DHTML, and XMLHTTP). This is great news… after all, what good is having roaming web-mail if you can’t get to it from everywhere?
You may be wondering, what is “up-level” for the Windows Live Mail beta? For now “up-level” means IE 6 and 7.
I am now sitting here picturing the sparkle that has just come to the eye of all the Microsoft haters and conspiracy aficionados reading this. I’m picturing them clapping gleefully as they hop from foot to foot, pointing accusingly: “I knew it! You’re just trying to force us to use IE! This is just another glaring example of Microsoft forcing its software down our throats! You’re all evil footservants of the great lord of darkness, Bill Gates! [exceedingly long string of expletives removed for the sake of brevity, let’s just say that Lenny Bruce would have blushed]”
Yes, Sherlock, you caught us… red handed. That’s right Kojak, you nabbed us focusing our early development efforts on a single browser to speed initial development. Congratulations Barney Fife, you found us cutting a corner to get our latest product into the hands of customers as early as possible so our beta testers could help us mold the future of the application. We’re guilty of that age old sin of limiting the number of variables when approaching a difficult problem. You may now read us our rights.
Yes, Windows Live Mail beta has all the fancy features only available for IE 6 and 7, for now. Read what you like into that. 😉
Oh, by the way… if you are using IE 6 on the beta and want to see what the other version looks like, check out Ellie’s space… she has the method for changing the URL so you’ll get the basic UI in IE 6 or 7.
Mike, I don’t want to hear that it’s impossible to clap and point at the same time. It’s called imagery, look into it you hack. :-p
The latest update to Windows Live Mail beta was released to the world today. There are lots of great improvements including performance, in-line spell checking and the introduction of the “down-level” experience (the non-AJAX version for older browsers). The best place for a quick summary is Steve’s post and the best place for lots of details is Imran’s post to the mailcall blog (be sure to also check out the video on spell checking).
I’m hoping we’ll also hear from Ellie soon too… she led the effort to develop the downlevel client. Working with a development team in China (both from here in Mountain View, California and by flying out to Shanghai) as well as developers here Ellie got the first downlevel version ready to ship. As with the first Kahuna betas, this isn’t complete yet… but it will evolve as well.
Some spell check video trivia for you:
- a href=”http://spaces.msn.com/members/skafka/”>Steve was the camera man
- The little flash you see at the end is a glimpse of baby clothes… Imran’s going to have twins!
