Microsoft recently completely redesigned and re-branded their email service, Hotmail, to Outlook.com. The redesign included a major visual refresh with the goal of making a Windows 8-like web interface to match its desktop operating system. Big tiles, buttons, and text make the new Outlook.com visually pleasing and touch friendly.
In my preview of Outlook.com, I mentioned that the Calendar and SkyDrive sections of Hotmail didn’t receive any improvements. Well that changes as Microsoft has redesigned SkyDrive.com to follow Outlook.com’s footsteps. The new redesign is slowly rolling out to users over the next 24 hours so don’t be too disappointed if you don’t see the new site yet.
On top of announcing a visual overhaul of SkyDrive.com, Microsoft announced that a SkyDrive app for Android would be coming in “just a few weeks.” There is no solid date for the Android app yet. Let’s take a look at the changes in the new SkyDrive.com.
The most notable change is the new tile based interface. If you’ve been playing around with Windows 8 or Windows Phone 7.5, you’ll feel right at home as it mimics the tile interface and design. To make the website feel more like a native application, you can now drag and drop folders and files. There is also a new contextual toolbar at the top that changes according to the features you’re using at the time, just like in Outlook.com. If you’re a fan of the old ‘list’ style, you can enable that instead.
Search has also received an update. Start typing in the search field and results will show up as you’re typing. Results show documents, files, and folders that contain the keyword.
If you’re using the SkyDrive client on Windows or Mac, you’ll be happy to know that you’ll be receiving an update in the next week that brings performance enhancements and better photo uploading. The performance enhancements target changes when syncing.
Unfortunately there’s still no way to manually choose which folders SkyDrive should sync. Microsoft is working on this feature and will hopefully make it to the next release of SkyDrive for the desktop.
UPDATE: Microsoft released SkyDrive for Android and you can read the review here.
