Hi sbmgabby7
Windows Live Mail was created with the intention of emulating the layout of Outlook Express, but was clearly also an effort to give a universal themed appearance with the other "Live" components, including Live Messenger. A kind of half way step towards Vista-like appearance where panes fade in and fade out on mouseover, etc, and an effort to make everything look like you are interacting seamlessly with online webmail.
Personally I dislike the clunky bloated theme, which makes it as sprightly as a Toyota Yaris with 5 passengers and a large roof-rack towing a travel trailer with flat tyres. Although you can change the colours used in the user interface to make it like a new "theme", you can't really change the appearance of the components in terms of shape.
You have a little paint brush icon in the "toolbar" with a drop-down list entitled "launch the colorizer". The default theme is a weather-faded pasetl blue gradient, but the "More Colors" choice allows you to choose more robust and solid colours to make it look less like a girl's bedroom, but I don't think you can get away from the all over gradient colouring.
You can Right-Click on each of the configured accounts in the Folder Pane and choose "Set Color", but all this does is change the colour of the account name, so it's pretty useless except where you have multiple account folders showing there.
You can choose to a slight extent how the message pane shows your unopened messages using thr View menu > Layout > click on "Message List" > set to "Automatic" or to "One Line View". This gives it more of a solid Outlook/Outlook Express type feel, where the messages are more prominent and take up less space than in the default wide rectangular "Two-Line" bubbles. In this view you also then have access to the View menu > Columns. This allows access to the various icons that show if there is an attachment, to flag or watch a message, and to hide or show columns that you can rearrange. Again, this is the more classic OE look rather than "webmail" appearance.
As far as controlling how large or small the text shows in the overall layout goes, I have not found any setting that allows you to adjust this. Neither does Outlook Express when it comes to it. I suppose they reckon that if you can read every Windows dialog, see the icons on your Task Bar, etc, then the Windows Live Mail layout should be large enough for you also, and that any adjustments should be made to your Desktop settings or Accessibility options.
Yes it's disappointing, especially for Vista users who were forced to use Windows mail in the absence of Outlook Express as a preference, but there are other email applications such as Mozilla Thunderbird, Opera, etc which can probably be tweaked to an overall appearance to suit your aesthetic preferences.
You haven't said what your Operating System is. I'm presuming that it is Windows XP, or else you would be talking about "Windows Mail" rather than "Windows Live Mail". If you are using XP and have had to resort to Windows Live Mail to retrieve your Hotmail, then I'm not sure if you are aware that you CAN retrieve Hotmail in Outlook Express.
This would infer that you need to install Windows Live Mail:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/220852however, this gives you the settings, which are the same as you use in Live Mail:
http://email.about.com/od/outlookexpressfreemail/qt/Access_a_Windows_Live_Hotmail_Account_with_Outlook_Express.htmIgnore old pages like this that give you the OLD Hotmail settings that configure Outlook Express to retrieve Hotmail as
HTTP:
http://www.ehow.com/how_4442921_configure-hotmail-outlook-express.htmlAs with most other applications that attract criticism and are limited in "tweakability", I'm sure that some enterprising individuals out there will have tried to compile utilities to tweak Windows Live Mail to a greater extent than the limited default offerings.
If it had been possible, then this guy would surely have come up with a partner utility to his Live Messenegr tweaker:
http://www.sizzledcore.com/2008/05/25/tweak-your-windows-live-messenger-with-a-patch/but I see no evidence of such a utility for Live Mail.
From what I can see the actual layout is stored deep within the various DLL files and possibly also in the two "theme" files in the Windows Live Mail program folder:
C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Mail\mailhc.thm (high contrast theme)C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Mail\vista.thm (as it says).
These files are not editable like *.xml, *.htm, or *.css files would be if they were used, so any "tweaking" will likely have to be able to dig into and modify binary resource libraries.
From what I can see the Current User's registry settings for Windows Live Mail:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Softwar
e\Microsof
t\Windows Live Mail]
don't actually store the details of the current appearance in an editable format which would allow you any greater control over tweaking the appearance than is offered by the menu options within the application. The Font-related registry values only seem to relate to opened messages.
This is an interesting discussion that probably answers things for you:
http://www.vistax64.com/live-mail/203073-windows-live-mail-appearance.htmlI like the statement by Dr. Barry L. Ornitz in the above discussion:
"Many of us did complain, including several well respected MS MVP's. We
were told that the color scheme of WLM was chiseled in stone and would not
be changed. Basically WLM is useless to me because the contrast is so
poor. I use Windows Mail which is quite readable. You can rest assured
that until Microsoft fires its Feng Shui designers, etc."
Regards
Bill
