It’s been about 3 months since our last Beta release for WL Mail, and I know that many of you have been eagerly awaiting an update.  Well, wait no more!  Today we’re releasing an updated Beta build for Windows Live Mail!

Since I’m sure many of you are visiting this site just to find out where you can download it…I won’t make you wait any longer for that info.  Click here to get the latest build!  Here are the build specifics...  Build #: 12.00.1365 (just refer to it as build 1365); Languages available:  all English markets

What’s New?

Since we released our first WL Mail Beta on May 31^st, we’ve gotten some incredible feedback from our Beta testers about what they liked and didn’t like.  We’ve taken a lot of that feedback to heart – and with this latest build, I think you’ll see some newly added functionality to our existing features, but also fixes for a number of the top customer-reported issues.  

So, without further adieu…here are some additional details on some of the new features/fixes you can expect to see with this build!

Setup

Though not exactly an update to WL Mail, it is an update to the Windows Live Suite install experience – and is definitely worth mentioning.  With this Beta release, you can now choose from a list of Windows Live applications (which includes Messenger, Writer and Photo Gallery), and install them all at once.

After selecting which applications you would like to download, the new install experience will begin – downloading and installing all apps with just one click of the button!  You no longer need to go back and forth to the install pages to get all the products that you want…  And after it’s done installing, you can launch them directly from the dialog box that appears.

Contacts Updates

List View

We’ve added a List View to Contacts!  A LOT of request came in for this feature since our last release – so here you have it!

In the toolbar, just click on the “View” dropdown and choose the “List view” option.

The List View in Contacts is similar to other list views in Windows.  You can click on the column name to sort by that item.  You can also right click on the column headers to add and remove columns.

You can also have the Preview Pane open in addition to the List View.  This is incredibly useful for viewing the details of each contact without having to open a separate window.  To get the view below, just click on the “View” dropdown in the toolbar again and select the “Show preview pane” option.

Import/Export

Another huge request in the Contacts space was to provide more options for importing and exporting contacts.  Here are the new options available to you!

Customize Toolbar

Now you can pick and choose which buttons you would like to have visible to you in the Toolbar.  Here’s how you can do this yourself…

1. Click on the “Show Menu” button in your Inbox, and choose the “Customize Toolbar” option.
2. A dialog will open that offers additional buttons that you can now move to your toolbar to make your WL Mail experience much more productive.  Just add or remove to the “Current buttons” list to make this look exactly how you’d like…

Quick Views

Quick Views will allow you to view mail from all your different accounts in one location, rather than having to switch between folders in your folder list.  With this release, we’ve included a couple new options…“All Drafts” and “All Junk E-mail”.  Their addition allows you to use Quick Views as a complete aggregate of all your mail accounts – similar to the experience you had with Local Folders in OE (where you were offered All inbox, All drafts, All junk e-mail, and All sent items).

1. To get to these new options, right click on the “Quick Views” header in your Folder List and choose the “Select quick views” option.
2. From here a dialog box will open where you’ll be able to choose which other Quick View folders you’d like to have in your Folder List.

Improved Layout Dialog options

We wanted to make it easier for you to be able to choose the way your Inbox looks since there are quite a few options, and it’s kind of hard to know section is going to be modified until after you’ve already selected one of the options.  With our new Layout Options dialog box, you can easily see what options are available to you for every section in the Inbox.

Change your sign-in account

Now you can switch which account you’re signed in with directly from the “Me” area in the upper-right hand corner of the application window. 

Just click on the account you’re currently signed in with, and in the menu that appears, choose to “Change the sign-in ID”.

Photo E-Mail Updates

We’ve made a lot of improvements to the Photo E-mail feature since the last beta build.  After you add images to your compose page using the “Add Photos” button in the toolbar, you will see many more options that will allow you to customize the way your photos appear. 

Here are some of the new options you’ll see…

We also made some changes to the experience you’ll have when receiving a photo e-mail.  In our previous build, when you received a photo e-mail you had to go online to the slideshow viewer to save the higher resolution version of those images.  With this build, you can just click on each image individually to get the option of saving them.  Or, even better, if you’re using WL Mail you can save them all with just one easy click!

Newsgroup Updates

Bug Fixes!

As usual, most of our other changes in this build will come to you in the form of bug fixes.  Since our last Beta build, we’ve not only included feature updates like the ones listed above – but we’ve also fixed hundreds of bugs within the product. 

It would be impossible to list all these fixes out individually, so I’m just going to point out the ones that we got the most customer feedback on…

• 1)      Sound notification with new email:  This was probably one of our most requested fixes – so hopefully you all will be happy to hear (literally ;-) that the fix for sound notification when you get new mail is now in the builds.
• 2)      APOP fix:  With our previous build, we were a little too aggressive in the way we determined whether or not a customer’s account was enabled for APOP.  Because of this, some of you weren’t able to check mail on some of your POP accounts.  With this build, using APOP is dependent on a user setting.
• 3)      Messages getting stuck in the Outbox:  Lots of customers ran into an issue where messages would get stuck in the Outbox (among other folders), which could block you from being able to send and receive messages in certain situations.  A fix for this issue is now in the build, so you should no longer run into this problem.
• 4)      Quoted-Printable updates:  We have improved the way we handle the quoted-printable encoded Plain Text messages when replying and forwarding to mail. Most notably, we now clearly indicate which portions of the mail should be quoted with the appropriate character (‘<’).

Send us feedback!

As usual – we ask that you continue to send us feedback on this build!  I’ve always said that we take your feedback seriously – and this time is no exception.  And to just give you some idea of how important your feedback is…here is one important statistic for you.  About 25% of the bugs that we have fixed since the last Beta build were ones that came in as requests from our beta testers!  The WL Mail team is really proud of this number because we definitely want to make sure our customers are happy with the product – so often times, the issues that come in from all of you are the ones that we are most excited and happy to fix! 

And just as a refresher…  For those of you not familiar with the Beta feedback processes, here you go!

Newsgroup: This is where you should go if you want to discuss something that you’re seeing in the product with other beta testers and the product team. It’s great for talking about a feature or trying to see if someone else is also experiencing the same problems you are.

Feedback: This is where you should go when you just want to send us your thoughts about the product as a whole, or about specific features (good/bad, I like this feature/I hate this feature, I’d like to see this in the feature/I wish you’d take this out of the feature, etc…). The product team won’t be able to respond to you through this channel, so be aware of that.

Support: If you’re experiencing an issue that is blocking you from using the product and you need an immediate resolution (i.e. you can’t sign in, you’re getting sync errors, etc…), you should contact our support team for help. If it’s not critical and it’s just a bug in the Beta product, then the newsgroup is probably the better place to go for this.

I guess that’s about it for now!  Thank you for testing out the product and sending in your thoughts…

Enjoy the build!  We’re looking forward to seeing your feedback… J

--tanja