All morons who maintain a hotmail account would have noticed the recent redesign. Perhaps you would also have struggled with the weird names and weird positioning of normal icons such as Sign Out, Inbox etc.

Agreed, hotmail was in a desparate need of a redesign, but it definitely did not require this mismash. Starting with the stupid renaming of the Inbox as Mail and the Compose button as New. Yeah they are trying to make it look like MS Outlook. But they should remember that most hotmail users do not associate Outlook’s interface with hotmail or atleast should be warned so before we users try to stumble through with navigation. Else, they should have made hotmail look exactly like MS Outlook.

The worst thing is the positioning of the Sign Out button in the middle. Whatever on earth for! Every mail provider puts the Log Off or Sign Out button at the right most position or in the left bar. In the new hotmail, I had to search the whole page ( including the agonising ads on the right ) to find out where that darned button was. Before my eyes sighted the familiar Sign Out icon (atleast, they didnt change the icon).

I think there needs to be two different buttons Compose and Add. That will atleast stop confusing people and let them easily navigate through the site. Even better would be to provide for a Find bar rather than a Find button. The Options and Help links are located at some random corner which will only cause more headache. Agreed, those two links are the most least used. But people would like to use options to change their password. So an inclusion in the left bar seems logical. But I guess MSN designers are beyond any such logic.

Or perhaps its just my dumb brain thats complaining!