New Windows Live Mail Beta Update

Looks like my box/server/bay/etc has been updated to the latest Windows Live Mail Beta...

Some initial thoughts:

The first thing I hit was the new "Move To" drop down menu.

I have a number of folders into which I organize my mail... Roughly 20 folders. And the new "Move To" doesn’t scroll... I’ve looked and looked, played and played and I can’t seem to find any way to scroll it. So I’m only able to use the "Move To feature for about 10 of my folders... This means I have to read the message, close it and then drag and drop it into the right folder. That’s kind of icky and a new issue in this release.

The new location for the email sorting is nice (message list header area)... Much easier to find than in the last release. I still have to say that I’d rather have column header sorting (i.e. click on a column header to sort, like in the older Hotmail UI/Outlook/OE/every other email UI/etc).

The new location for the Shortcuts panel/pane is pretty nice too. I also really like that it seems to remember its expanded/collapsed state. Meaning, once I close it, it stays closed, even between sessions.

One minor bug I’m seeing is that the "quick empty" arrows for the Junk e-mail and Delete items folders sometimes have position problems. The arrow’s position is under the scroll bar in my folder list panel/pane. Sometimes hovering over the folder fixes the issue, sometimes not. Resizing the folder list also sometimes fixes it, and sometimes not. A minor thing as they are still clickable, but still something new in this release.

The new Customize feature is also nice. Makes it much easier to tweak the look and feel.

All in all, I’m digging Windows Live Mail. It’s come to the point where I don’t feel the need for an offline client at all (like Windows Live Mail Desktop...).

BTW, submitting these things to the beta feedback now...