In the first half of November 2008, Microsoft was wrapping up the roll-out process of Windows Live Hotmail Wave 3. Upgrading from Windows Live Hotmail Wave 2, introduced at the end of 2007, to Wave 3 has been so far, and will continue to be, a very bumpy ride for Microsoft. The Wave 3 upgrade, debuted at the end of September, hit a climax of negative user feedback in October, with widespread reports of problems. In this context, the Redmond company announced the introduction of Windows Live Solution Center earlier this week, and pointed out, on December 18, that it had removed some of the new features of Windows Live Hotmail Wave 3 to improve the user experience.

“It is very important to us that you are happy with our updated Hotmail experience,” a member of the Windows Live Hotmail team stated. “We heard many users say that they had trouble navigating through Hotmail, especially if they had a smaller monitor. We’ve spent the last few weeks reviewing how users at various monitor sizes and resolutions were using our product.”

“We’ve decided to make a significant change in our product: Hotmail will scroll like classic Hotmail. To make your Hotmail scroll like classic Hotmail, you’ll need to turn the reading pane off: click the Inbox folder; click Options; under Reading pane settings, click Off.”

Just as it has been the case with the initial introduction of Wave 3, users will not be able to observe the changes instantaneously. Microsoft revealed that the new tweaks would be rolled out gradually, and would be available to all users “soon.” Nevertheless, the optimization of Windows Live Hotmail Wave 3 is not over yet. The Redmond company is cooking additional improvements for early 2009, with a focus on Messenger integration, a boost in the volume of visible messages, and the transitioning of the ad to the side.

The Windows Live Hotmail representative indicated that additional changes were made to the service. “When you’re done choosing contacts to send your message to, click anywhere outside the contact picker window to close it, and go back to typing your message. We fixed an issue where some users couldn’t select the last contact in the list. Holding down the Shift key and clicking a message in the Inbox now opens that message in a new window, as it did in the past. We’ve changed the links in the header at the top to match the rest of Windows Live and point to more great Windows Live services.”