Windows Live Mail supports more browsers

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