//beconfused

You can check out a preview of Yahoo!’s new design.

_(Yahoo!’s upcoming design preview.)_

It’s 1024 x 768 by default. You can set it to 800 x 600 at the Page Options. It’s good to see that the designers are finally switching to 1024 x 768. It’s about time most people set their computers to that screen resolution.

Personally, it’s an improvement I feel. I can find the Yahoo! services better than before. As for the design, it looks kinda strange to me. What do you think of the new design?

By the way, as of current, only Internet Explorer and Firefox it seems. Opera didn’t work.

Turns out that Macromedia doesn’t like Opera very much.

_(Opera is not supported by Macromedia.)_

I don’t see what Macromedia may be using that Opera doesn’t support actually. But either way, it makes me want to switch browsers each time I get stuck in such pages. Opera is not supported by Macromedia since a long time ago actually. And after it got bought over by Adobe, it is still not changed.

Perhaps Macromedia can attempt to make things work with Opera. I don’t think it’s really hard. All I was trying to do is to download Adobe Flex beta. Not that hard right?

I never thought Live would do this to me. It didn’t support Firefox and Opera. Windows Live Shopping, at present, only supports Internet Explorer. So I can’t view with Opera.

_(Windows Live Shopping Beta logo.)_

You guys should go test it out with Internet Explorer. It was a pleasant experience for me and it’s really quite revolutionary way of shopping with AJAX technologies. Please try it out, I’m starting not to like Amazon.com already.

Visit Windows Live Shopping. I think Microsoft got it right with this one. Great work!

I’ve been looking at screenshots of Office 2007. It looks fresh and dynamic to me. Wait till you see the video of it.

Oh man, I’m already looking forward to Office 2007, more than Windows Vista now perhaps. The whole redesign thing should have came earlier in fact. I always thought Office is one product with many features that is well hidden and everytime I use it, I seem to have dig out something new.

Office 2007… Video Footage of it in Action!

Screenshots are a great way for users to get a glimpse of upcoming products. The problem is that screenshots don’t really show how the product runs, just how it looks. Luckily, Microsoft has released some new Office 2007 footage so that users don’t have to form opinions based on screenshots any longer.

[By the way, I'll be away till weekend.]

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_(Screenshot of the Windows Live Messenger 8 Beta build 566.)_

*The great Windows Live Messenger 8 Beta invite giveaway*

Okay, I have 70 invites for Windows Live Messenger 8 Beta to give away! If you’re invited, you can start using Windows Live Messenger 8. Comment here with your MSN address to tell me you want an invite. (more…)

Microsoft just released the beta version of Windows Internet Explorer 7 (previous known as Microsoft Internet Explorer). It’s Beta 2. I decided to give it a try since my Internet Explorer 6 is giving me so much crash problem. I don’t really bother that it would crash in Windows Internet Explorer 7 (WIE7 I suppose).

(The new Windows Internet Explorer 7. Click to see larger image.)

Indeed, WIE7 crashes lesser. At least it didn’t crash at the moment I read my web mail. In a way, WIE7 seems better. Unfortunately, my WIE7 is plagued with a horrible bug.

(Oh no, the Dial-up connection dialog box just keeps popping up!)

Everytime I surf the internet, the ‘Dial-up Connection’ dialog box just keeps popping up. Sure, it would auto reconnect. But it gets annoying. It just reconnects about 2 times or so each time I load something. And when loading Windows Live Messenger 8, it reconnects up to 10 times.

When it reconnects, the application focus shifts to the ‘Dial-up Connection’ dialog box and it disturbs you when you’re typing in another application.

As far as I checked, very few of them had this problem with Windows Internet Explorer. But it doesn’t stop me from wonder – how the hell do I solve this problem?! I did not see any possible solutions for it at the moment.

If you want to give a try to Windows Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview, you can download it here. It is free to try. You just need to be using a valid copy of Microsoft Windows XP. I am not sure about language-wise. I think you may need the English copy of Windows XP to test out this beta version.

If you do have the same problem and has some leads as to how to solve it, do comment. I love to solve that problem too. Asides this pesky bug, Windows Internet Explorer 7 is a fine browser and is up to standard to fight with Mozilla Firefox already. I love competitions.

Well, here comes part 3 of the Windows Live Mail preview. You can check out part 1 and part 2 first before you read this.

Address filtering

(Filters email address as you type.)

This is one of the features I really like in Gmail, now it’s in Windows Live Mail too. That’s the way emailing should be like anyway. No one likes to open the address book to add addresses. Windows Live Mail does not implement them differently from Gmail. [Click here for a larger image.]

Sending mails in rich-text

The toolbar has been improved slightly. It looks quite similar to the existing one in Hotmail. I think it has a strange addition – to allow uses to add a search link to a particular text. Of course, Windows Live Mail tries to search in a particular search engine. It doesn’t change much, the existing one in Hotmail is already quite good already anyway.

By the way, I still don’t understand why their emoticon icon at the toolbar looks like a yellow french artist with a moustache.

Spel-chacking

(I tend to spell wrongly sometimes.)

One of the cooler features of Windows Live Mail is it’s spell checking feature. It checks as you spell, just like the way Microsoft Word does it’s checking. It is not as fast as the way Microsoft Word checks the spelling of course. I found the speed to be acceptable and I finally am confident of typing a formal email with Windows Live Mail. I always use a decent word processor to spell check my email before I send them to someone important.

Handling junk

(Emails in Junk are not displayed at all.)

Actually, I prefer to just call them spam. Microsoft calls it junk emails. Gmail just disallows images to be displayed and filters spam to put them in the spam folder. Windows Live Mail filters spam and put into the junk mail folder and went further to disallow message content in the junk folder to be displayed. I guess it is some kind of security feature to make sure no one even reads the contents of suspicious email. I think that move may be a little unnecessary though. [Click here for a larger image.]

Conclusion

Windows Live Mail is a significant improvement from the current Hotmail. There are some bugs which have yet to be fixed. One of which is that I can’t access my email from my company, which also means everyone in the army can’t access it I believe. While opening the page, Internet Explorer asks me to download a file named “attachmentpopup.aspx”. That doesn’t happen at my place.

At my workplace, I can only use Firefox to check my hotmail account. It has been “converted” to a Windows Live Mail beta account. Unfortunately, with Firefox, there are none of these cool features that you can play around with. It just hasn’t been implemented. In Firefox, Windows Live Mail is nothing more than the usual Hotmail with the Windows Live Mail look, it doesn’t have AJAX at the moment.

Note that what I wrote is just a glimpse of how Windows Live Mail is like as of Febuary 03, 2006. Microsoft may add and remove features. Sorry that I took so long to complete what was to be one post only. I wasn’t very free but I just want to show something (Windows Live Mail) I really like to you guys.

Read back

• Windows Live Mail Preview page 1 of 3
• Windows Live Mail Preview page 2 of 3
• Windows Live Mail Preview page 1 of 3 (you’re here)