A Sneak Peek at the New Yahoo! Email Beta!

Yahoo! has been working on a new beta version of their standard email service.  Currently, it is in beta testing to shake the bugs out of it before unleashing it to the general Yahoo! membership.  At first glance, it looks to be a force that other email providers will have to reckon with.  I’m not sure they will be successful, as the beta is simply awesome.

Although I’ve always been a Yahoo! fan, I have not loved their email.  It sported a clunky interface that required too many clicks to get to what was necessary.  I resorted to subscribing to a Yahoo! Mail Plus account to be able to get POP access and I have been using a third-party email client — Thunderbird, to be specific — to access my email.  Although I love Thunderbird, I will no longer have the need for it with the new beta.

Yahoo! has replaced the old multi-screen interface with one that resembles a third-party client, very similar to Outlook Express or Thunderbird.  Graphics are clean and sharp.  Presently, it comes in shades of white and grey, but there are hints that colors will be coming as the beta testing continues.  The left sidebar has the standard folders, such as the inbox, drafts, sent, spam, and trash folders.  One’s personal folders are below.  Despite Google’s move toward tags, I still prefer the folder structure and was glad to see it retained.  Much of the screen real estate, however is taken up by the Inbox section (tabbed no less) that resembles that of Outlook Express or Thunderbird and lists each email by sender, date, subject, and a column for flags.  The bottom portion of the screen, which is resizable, boasts a reading pane.  Highlight an email in the list and one can read it in the reading pane below.  Double clicking on an email opens it completely in a different tab with more screen space.  In short, the Yahoo! interface is effectively an email client.

Yahoo! has also incorporated an RSS Feed reader into the new Yahoo! Mail.  It was easy to load my feeds into the reader.  Click the “add” button, provide the URL and the feed is added to the list.  A small sun burst in the upper right hand corner of the feed icon lets one know that a blog or site has been updated.  Highlight the “All RSS Feeds” line and all new articles, regardless of which feed they come from, appear in one screen.  There is no need to jump from one feed to another.

Another change is in the Addresses, which is now called Contacts.  All my contacts are still there, but now with a much more streamlined look.

Yahoo! still has some improvements to make for me to be completely satisfied.  First, many testers complain about the system being slow.  In my case, I have not found that to be the case.  I’ve found the interface to be fast and very responsive.  I like to embed photographs or add images to my emails, but that is not supported yet.  I also would like to have the option of having multiple signatures.

Although there are links to the Calendar and Notepad, those areas remain untouched and it feels very disjointed to go between the Calendar and email, as the two look totally different.  They simply don’t feel integrated anymore.  I’ve even stopped using the calendar because of this.  I am hearing, however, that the calendar is also being upgraded and we may see something come from the calendar team soon.  Notepad, however, is being neglected at the moment.

My overall impressions are that as the beta is released to a wider audience, other web-based email providers are going to feel the heat, as nothing out there can touch this. 

Want to know more?  Visit the Yahoo Mail Beta Blog or the Yahoo! Mail Users Group.  Even better, get on the Yahoo! Mail Beta waiting list.

Comments

[Arlon Webb]

Thanks for your analysis of the new yahoo beta mail.
I have one question about it. I tried to delete the spam mail and I find no button to "select all" in order to delete all of them at once. I haven't been able to find anyone at yahoo that will answer my question about that.
If you know where it is located I would be grateful.

Sincerely,

Webb

[Bert]

Arlon--

If you look to the left in the folder pane, you'll see the spam folder (along with the inbox, sent, etc.). Simply click the "empty" link that is to the right of it. The only reason to even open the spam folder is to check it to see if anything of value is in it or if you want to delete specific emails. To empty the entire folder, just click on the "empty" link, there is no need to select anything.
--Bert

[kealoha]

Another way to delete all messages, Cntrl + A to highlite all the messages and hit delete key (standard windows style)

[alick]

I was the first lot of the try out for the beta mail, which is wonderfully simpler,fast, and personalised.However I miss button to switch off back to original , that is why I have to re-apply the beta mail, who can send me the shortcut of Beta Mail, I can not live in net without it

[mikshir]

I started playing with the Yahoo! beta email when it came out and was impressed. The old interface was abysmal and clunky and I too sprung for the POP3 access and extra storage, which now annoys me since it's free on Google. The sad thing is that while better, it works like just about every other standard email interface and came a bit too late for me, since now I've grown to love the gmail conversation+label+search paradigm and format. I still keep the yahoo account going, I've had it for 10 years, but the paying for POP3 grates on me now.

[Patrick]

I would like to be able to drag and drop links from my favorites list into my outgoing emails. AOL has this feature, and when I was on aol, found it to be very useful.

[Stephen]

I have played with Yahoo! Mail beta and there are two glaring problems they should fix:

1. No fixed width font. I recieve Unix log files in my email which rely on having a fixed-width font for viewability. This means that all characters have the same width. Beta uses a variable width font which means the columns in the log files don't line up. Gmail does this too - one of the big reasons why I don't like Gmail.

2. Replying encourages bad ettiquite. When I reply to messages, I like to quote what the person said, weaving my responses between quotes (which are the lines beginning with a ">"). Like this:

---

> What do you think of the colors I picked?

They're great!

---

Beta doesn't put the greater than signs on each line like old Yahoo mail does, making quoting like this tedious. Gmail doesn't quote with > signs, either.

2.5 Related to point #2, Beta puts my signature above the copy of the replied message. So if I reply to messages the way I like to, the first thing my recipient would read would be my signature. This isn't so major because I can cut/paste it to the bottom in a second or so. But I shouldn't have to.

[Mr. Shiney]

Thanks for the link to the waiting list. While we're waiting, can you tell me if the new beta supports "saved search" folders? Or message threads similar to GoogleMail?

I've left Yahoo feedback several times about the ability to save a search as a folder but have never heard anything about it. This is a great feature I use all the time in Thunderbird.

[Dave]

Needs to be some way to customize (add/delete) columns to the display. Truly miss not being able to see the size of a message.

Also integration with Yahoo Messenger is week. When Messenger detects a new message, it alerts you as always - but clicking on the alert brings up a new instance of mail even when one is open; coversely, if I go to the open instance and click on check mail, the alert in the system tray does not go away.

[Bert]

I've discovered a problem that has driven me back to Thunderbird for a while that has to be remedied. I upgraded my browser to IE7 Beta to put it through its paces for a future product review and have found that Yahoo Mail Beta is incompatible with that browser.

I'm sure that as the Yahoo! Mail Team continues to chase down bugs in the Mail Beta they appreciate a new browser that they have to contend with!