Yesterday, we told you about an upgrade to Windows Live Essentials that included for the first time support for HTTPS settings in Windows Live Mail.  Included in the update was an updated version of the Hotmail Connector for Outlook, and today there’s confirmation that it does include HTTPS support.

The Outlook Blog has more details, including some fixes for Calendar issues between the Hotmail Calendar and Outlook:

Overall

• All communications between Outlook and Windows Live services (Mail, Calendar, Contacts) use the HTTPS protocol.
• We fixed an issue in which the user was prompted to remove folders that used names longer than 30 characters or that contained invalid characters even after the folder was removed.
• We fixed several stability and reliability issues.

Calendar

We fixed the following issues:

• Some calendar meetings and appointments series with specific exception patterns caused error 8004a164 during first synchronization which blocked additional calendar synchronizations.
• Users couldn’t remove recipients of a meeting series from an exception to the series.
• Flagged mail items would continue to prompt with a reminder value even after it was dismissed.

Mail

• We fixed an issue in which users couldn’t send email messages if the recipient address was copied and then pasted from a contact.

Contacts

• We fixed an issue in which street address fields only synchronized from the server one time.

You can start using HTTPS with the Hotmail Connector by installing the latest version, either by upgrading Windows Live Essentials or for 32bit versions of Outlook 2003, 2007, or 2010, or 64bit Outlook 2010

Update: Dick Craddock has posted over at Inside Windows Live, clarifying a bit more.  Both Windows Live Mail and Hotmail in Outlook via the Hotmail connector are automatically using SSL on on all Hotmail connections, no need to do anything other than update to the latest versions.  Craddock explains more about web based and mobile connections, too, you can read more on the blog post.