Outlook Messaging

Ok I suckered myself into doing another design post.

This time it's also about Windows mail, although now they updated it and its called Outlook instead. Nice! @outlook.com is a very aesthetically pleasing address, that is much more professional than @hotmail.com and even @live.com. I am happy.

I'm also really happy with the design in general. It's pretty, it flows consistently with a Windows 8 desktop background and really looks unified, and there's tons of great features (that actually work and aren't shitty betas like the Google Labs stuff), like split pane inbox/message viewing screen, Facebook chat integration, sweep, and yes, folders! I can't wait until Microsoft builds in Skype integration, that would honestly make Outlook mail far and away the best webmail service (it's objectively the best right now, not biased, but this integration will just make it super super clearly the king).

There are some things I'm not so happy with, though, and foremost among these also has to do with the Facebook messaging integration, just like with their Live mail client.

Here's the problem:

Outlook_messaging

The messaging sidebar covers the message body text (this message is from my junk folder and is someone trying to pull a Nigerian scam, lols). It doesn't even cover that much, and honestly it wouldn't have been that difficult for Microsoft to design it so that the text margins shrunk when you opened the Messenger. Even if it didn't do that, why not at least make it so that I can scroll the message body text to see the part hidden by the messenger client?

Nope. Instead, in order to actually read my emails, I need to close the messaging sidebar, read the email, and then reopen the sidebar to go back to messaging. It totally kills any multitasking ability. Fortunately, the sidebar doesn't take any time at all to load or anything; it's just annoying to have to keep clicking to get rid of and then reopen it.

MSFT, you guys got a winner here. Don't let stupid shenanigans give anybody a possible excuse for not using your product.