

Now, the beginnings of a consistent and attractive Windows Live UI are appearing, and it's easy to see how this can work across multiple services. In the previous version, there wasn't a toolbar so much as there was a colored header area near the top of the screen. Visually, the big change is the appearance of this toolbar. The new UI features a strongly rendered toolbar that extends across the width of the screen on the left side of this toolbar is the Windows Live logo which, when clicked, reveals a cascading menu. The most notable change is that the Windows Live Hotmail UI has been updated to conform to the attractive new Windows Live user interface style, which has been available on the new Web portal and elsewhere throughout the properties for a few weeks now. You might think of this article as an update to the main Windows Live Hotmail review, one that's here just to make sure you have all the latest facts.

That the Windows Live team at Microsoft is able to turnaround revisions very quickly should never again be questioned: It's one thing to update a comparatively minor service, but Hotmail is used by 280 million active users. And that update came after many, many years of testing. This is notable for a number of reasons, the most obvious being the company just issued the latest Hotmail version back in May ( see my review), just three months ago.

Microsoft this week updated Windows Live Hotmail with some pretty hefty improvements.
