Hello,

Has anyone seen the new revamped version of www.hotmail.com? It's not bad to look at it, but it's totally useless to work with, I cannot write an email!

If I reply of starts a new email, I can change subject, To, CC and that stuff, but the body of the email, the section where you write your txt, it is disabled! You cannot even click to put your cursor.

I have tried with Firefox 2 and 3, 2 different versions of distro, KDE3.5, KDE4, 32bits and 64bits and also with Konqueror and I get the same problem (it's even worse in Konqueror).

Anyone is able at all to write an email on www.hotmail.com from a Linux distro?

Hopefully Microcrap hasn't found a way to disable writing mails from a linux distro, that would be attacking the opensource world and totally against the basics of constant smart and wise evolution. lollll

tnx

As much as I would love to see Hotmail start blocking Linux, it just hasn't happened. I just opened an account with Live and sent myself several test messages. I am using Firefox 3.0 and it gave me no trouble at all. I repeated this test using Ubuntu 8.10, Linux Mint and Mandriva. So it clearly isn't a problem with Linux.

Make sure you don't have java blocked and give another try.

Yeah my Java is enabled, but I wonder if it's using a new type of plugin that I might not have by default. In KDE4 32bits Firefox 3 asked to install a new java plugin. Didn't solve the problem.

I will check deeper, if it's not related to Linux it's related to something I did not yet install or configure correctly.

tnx for the tests!

It's working for me. You could try to re-install your browser and try again.

Debian Kernel

Hmmm... Not easy. I have tried Firefox 2, Konqueror, Opera, SeaMonkey and Epiphany and they all cannot enable the body of message to write txt. I discovered I succeeded once with Opera, but the other links (sign out, etc.) were not working, it worked once and that's it. After enabling Java, which disables by itself all the time.

I tried installing different versions and architectures (64bits and 32bits) of JRE1.5 and JRE1.6 with JRE1.5 browser plug-in and 1.6 browser plug-in and I could not make it. It seemed to have helped konqueror, which was the worse before, but the body of message, where you can select font color, size etc, is still disabled.

Trying a different version of opensuse (11.0 32-bits KDE4 with Firefox 3) did not help at all. So it's not browser related. It's not distro related, it's not GUI related, it's not version related.

It must be java related, but I have tried all the ones I could think of, the other java stuff I don't know what they are, so I have not installed. I must be missing some kind of plug-in in my whole distro.

If anyone has an idea, or the same prob as I do and finds a solution (what is the missing package), feel free to let me know.
tnx

I was able to use hotmail 'till yesterday. Now it's same as described by OP. I think MS rolled out some new "improvements" in different areas in different time. It might be related to to server to which we are trying to connect. I will try to work around, maybe IE4inux help?

cheers TJ

Who is "OP"?

IE4linux?? Didn't know it was existing, but I have found it on google. I will give a try too, as I could not find anything to work around this hotmail site.

Looks like I need wine for that. Will give a try soon.

tnx for the tip.

The OP are you

OP stands for Original Poster, the one who wrote the first post in a given thread.

It's a script that makes easy the installation of IE6 under linux, so you can use it (with wine) on linux.

Hey Guys - I still don't know how to make hotmail to work with FireFox but I have just tested it with IE4Linux (IE v.6) and it works :-) I'm not happy to use MS product but... What else I can do? Hard to say I'm new to GNU/Linux word, I could rather say that MS is new to Hotmail for I've been using the same e-mail address since 1995. Way before when MS bought them...
Cheers to every one TJ

What else can you do?

Stop using hotmail.

Serious statement; stop using it. M$ wants to own you, and tracks you all around the web. When you go to hotmail you also go to passport, where information is collected about you.

One of the real joys of not browsing using M$ software is that this privacy attack, at least, is neutralized.

Well I stand corrected! There is a problem with the user agent not being MS on Hotmail. I see this as another maniacal attempt to force people to stay within the grasp of M$. http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/...with_firefox_2

Has a long rant and then a possible fix. However, I for one would immediately assert my independence by setting up a transfer in Hotmail and opening a Google Account. Both Google and Yahoo mail are superior to hotmail in every category.

Now is the time for change! Welcome to the free world!

We all know the answer to that question. Actually, hotmail is probably the worst mail accounts provider ever. And has and "amazing security record".

I can't understand why would anyone use a service that limits your connectivity in such ways. After all, the whole point of webmail is that you can use it from anywhere with just a web browser, without the need to use a mail client and configure it, which is often not true with hotmail.

Let's confess it, people don't migrate not because there aren't featureful alternatives, nor because they don't know about them, nor even because "oh, well, I've been using X for years and don't feel like migrating". They don't migrate just because they are lazy to bother a couple of minutes to do so. Period.

Maybe, but people also move home, and still receive the regular mail without problems. People change the phone number, and people locate them without problems. Really, it's not that hard to make a list and send the same mail with a notification to all the people you know. After that, you can continue using both accounts during a period, before you migrate completely. Nothing last forever, it's just that MS likes when you think so.

Another "fix" is to browse through privoxy, and specify the user-agent on a per-site basis. Privoxy will send any user-agent string you tell it to send, so you could just go to hotmail claiming to be some version of IE.

Best choice is to just ditch hotmail.

@ jiml8, yes, you are right there. I checked one more option, which happened to be easiest one. IF you aye using FireFox type in address line: about:config and when all those nice configuration options shows up put in filter word "agent". Than find "general.useragent.vendor" and whatever is set as string there (it be distro you're running) change to Firefox. Reset browser and you are done.
You are right about to ditch hotmail. I'll do it very soon. But there is one more thing - if we start to avoid some highways because of puddle holes, so road maintenance ppl might assume that there is no need to repair it for there is not much traffic...

I try not to argue with OPs over why they want to do something, but in this situation....

Even Yahoo is better than MS when it comes to webmail. That is saying something.

Gmail isn't perfect, but it's a damn sight closer.

(And at poster above - nah, it just shows companies that we care about good products, and that they can't keep making proprietary crap and expecting the masses to go along with it. Do send a shout to MS about this, though. Not that they'll listen.)