Outlook Web App - Functionality

Functionality

The Outlook Web Access interface available since Exchange 2000 comes in two flavors: one with a complete feature set (known as "Premium") and one with reduced functionality (known as "Light" or sometimes "Lite"). Prior to Exchange 2010, "Premium" access required Internet Explorer. Exchange 2000 and 2003 require Internet Explorer 5 and later, and Exchange 2007 requires Internet Explorer 6 and later. Exchange 2010 requires Internet Explorer 7 or later, Mozilla Firefox 3.01 and later, Google Chrome, or Apple Safari 3.1 and later for full functionality; however, Exchange 2010 performs checks on the operating system type to restrict Mac OS X and GNU/Linux users to Firefox or Safari, thereby making Google Chrome only officially compatible on the Windows operating system, even though there is very little difference in its JavaScript and rendering capabilities between platforms. In all versions of Exchange, the "OWA Light" user interface (UI) is rendered for other browsers. While the basic interface did not support search with Exchange Server 2003, the UI has been reworked for Exchange Server 2007. On Exchange Server 2007, OWA Light now supports search for mail items, and managing contacts and the calendar has also been improved. On Outlook Web Access 2010, a user may now connect email accounts to one's Outlook Web Access. That feature is most ignored due to professional uses of Outlook Web Access.

On Exchange 2007, a user would get a pop-up that a new message was sent, but this was dropped on Outlook Web Access 2010.