Add a Shortcut to Yahoo! Mail on your Desktop

Today, I thought I’d share a personal experience on how something that’s so second nature to me, is perceived so differently through the eyes of someone else. To encourage you to read this post, I’ve put a tip at the end.

Here’s the scenario: I was setting up a new Yahoo! Mail account for my mum the other day. I KNOW!! She doesn’t already use Yahoo! Mail?!?! Well the answer is no. In fact, she doesn’t really use the Internet at all, until now. My dad got her a new laptop for Christmas and she’s just getting around to using it now.

At the moment, she’s just going to use it for email, and maybe some Web surfing. She wants to be in touch with her book-group and another group she meets up with. So while setting up the account, it got me to thinking what’s the easiest way for my mum to logon to her new email account? And as I was saying, “Click this picture, also known as an icon ;) (BTW – I like Vista for the option to have those huge icons), then go to bookmarks, then click on this one that’s called Yahoo Mail, and then login.” I was thinking there’s got to be easier way, and then I was thinking how do other people logon to their mail?

So I asked around the team, and what I’ve found a large percentage of users do… They open an Internet browser, and then search for Yahoo Mail, and then click the Yahoo Mail search result. I’m going to assume that it’s mostly Internet explorer for the browser and mostly some other search engine I’m not going to name ;). But then that’s probably what my mum would do too, whereas I would never think to do that. But since my mum doesn’t know what a URL is or what http:// stands for, it makes more sense to me now. I’ve been immersed in this stuff for so long now, what seems second nature to me is completely foreign to someone like my mum.

So the next time the next you’re trying to explain something to someone, think about whether or not my Mum would understand it.

So here’s the tip, which is my solution to the “easier way” from above and how my mum gets to her mail each day. I put a shortcut on her desktop that goes directly to Yahoo! Mail. Here’s one way that you can do it for your mum (although I know that there’s a number of ways to do it):

- All you need to do is click and drag this link – Login to Yahoo Mail – onto your mum’s desktop.
- Make sure her desktop is clutter free so that it’s easy to see the shortcut, and if you have Window’s Vista you can turn on those really huge icons, which my mum really likes.
- The shortcut icon you get may look like one of the two shortcuts above. I thought that it has to do with which browser you have set to be the default browser, but my tests have proved inconclusive.

Now this tip is not meant for my mum, it’s meant for people like me who want to help their friends and family get the most out of their Internet experience. But I promise, mum, I’ll get working on some tips just for you!!

Happy emailing!!
Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Team