Recently, Microsoft has done a great deal of remodeling to Hotmail. Most is just the transition to Windows Live Mail. The first revision was hard to get used to, as change usually is, but I eventually grew to like it more than the original. There’s all kinds of AJAX functionality to make it more modern and to keep up with GMail.
Microsoft’s latest changes make Hotmail almost impossible to use. It seems like they were trying for a more minimalistic approach, but went to far. As you can see in this screen shot,
buttons are almost impossible to decipher from the rest of the page. The buttons are little more than text links, lacking and sort of hover event other than an underline. My folders on the left hand side blend in with the rest of the sidebar and even the message pane. What Microsoft needs to do, is accentuate the borders on the individual panes more, create larger, more discernible buttons, and have a hover event that clearly lets me know which button I am about to click on. Microsoft needs to make improvements to their system, not worsen it, or it will never be able to keep it’s customers from moving on to better services like GMail.