Tag: firefox 3

Hotmail vs. FF3 – Clueless Support!

Since I wrote that Hotmail is not friends with Firefox 3 on Wednesday there have been a lot of people finding that entry searching for things like “hotmail not work firefox 3” and “hotmail tells me to clear cache and cookies.”

Well, one reader, Joel, contacted support, and here’s the excellent E-mail he got back:

…Your message was forwarded to us at Windows Live Hotmail Technical Support. This is Kris and I gather that you are having issue that Windows Live Hotmail will not load in the full version when you are accessing your #######@###### account through Firefox 3 as your browser. I understand the importance of having this addressed immediately.

Joel, I would like to inform you that Windows Live Hotmail does not currently have the feature that will allowed you to use the full version of Windows Live Hotmail when using Firefox 3 as your browser. What I can do for you now is to personally submit this item to the Windows Live Hotmail Product Development Team as a feature request for evaluation, as I see the usefulness of this capability.

We appreciate your continued support as we strive to provide you with the highest quality service available. Thank you for using Windows Live Hotmail.

How cryptic can the response be?  Again:

Windows Live Hotmail does not currently have the feature that will allowed you to use the full version of Windows Live Hotmail when using Firefox 3 as your browser.

What’s going on?

Hotmail is not friends with Firefox 3

Since yesterday’s release of Firefox 3 I have been enjoying snappier speeds browsing  some of my favourite websites.  Not Windows Live Mail though.  When I log in it tells me this:

You are temporarily on the classic version of Windows Live Hotmail due to an error encountered during login. Before trying again, please clear your cache and cookies.

Reminds me of earlier times, when Windows Live Mail didn’t fully support FF.  What gives?

Update: A lot of people are finding this post when searching for things like “firefox 3 hotmail not working,” so it seems that this is a fairly common problem.  If anyone finds a solution, drop me a line at john at johnbeales dot com and let me know how it works, or post it in the comments, (comments are moderated so it may not appear right away).

Downloading Firefox 3

Today is Download Day and there has been a lot of griping about the servers going down.  Well, it looks like the servers are back up again.  I hadn’t tried earlier, (well, I tried at 10 AM EDT, since I’d read that FF3 was going to be available at 10 AM, but apparently the article I read forgot to mention the timezone.  10 AM = 1 PM).

I have now downloaded Firefox 3 with no problems at all and am writing this post using it.  I had played around with some of the release candidates but hadn’t been using them full-time because of plugin compatibility, (I’m looking at you Firebug).

Speaking of Firebug, it didn’t upgrade automatically when I installed FF3 as it should have, and when I went to getfirebug.com I got no response.  After a quick Google search I discovered that getfirebug.com has been down for a bit, (ownership is being transferred to Mozilla so this never happens again).  However, you can download Firebug 1.2 from Mozilla, (this is the FF3-compatible version).

So I am now running FF3, (and keeping a copy of FF2 around for testing). If you want FF3, get it here.