MSN Windows Live is Dead on Firefox
MSN put Live.com into Beta testing today with its portal of RSS aggregation, My Web, Mail and custom formatting with an attempt to lure some of the educated web to their new non-Hotmail, non-MSN.com offering. At first glance, the page seems quite (excure me here) Google-esque : simple, white, and search oriented – following the approach many web destinations, including Yahoo, have been making in the past year.
After reading all of the hoopla about Live.com, Barry Schwartz of SE Roundtable decided to give it a try and was a bit letdown :
Yawn? Visit www.live.com, nice domain, and you will see a “Windows Live” logo and a search box. You do a search on anything and you get http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?FORM=LIVE&q=anything. FORM=LIVE, may be the only difference.
Is Windows Live the mega API that Bill Gates and the press are playing it up to be, or is it just another basic search revenue generating web portal?
Barry later found out that he simply was not using the ‘right’ browser, as Live.com (Windows Live) is not yet fully fuctional on Firefox : “I see, you need to run IE on Windows to see the portal. A portal with a search box, and news, my web, rss and so on.”
Microsoft has now addressed the non-capatibility with Firefox on the Live.com site : Firefox Users
Firefox support is coming soon. Please be patient.
Live.com is one reason to sift through your programs listings and dust off that IE browser you thought you may never use again. Microsoft has put together a most integrated simple offering which may end up becoming an alternative to MSN members who are sick of the display advertising crazed MSN portal and want something more user friendly in terms of search, news, feeds, email and umm… weather.
