Creating a desktop shortcut for Yahoo! Mail

I saw this tip on the UK blog, and at first thought that Andrew must be out of his head … but I checked with folks from this side of the pond and found that this behavior isn’t all that unusual.

It turns out that a decent portion of users don’t actually bookmark Yahoo! Mail, but instead carry out a few simple steps every time they want to login.

Open a Browser > Search for Yahoo! Mail > Click on Yahoo! Mail in the Search results > Login

This sounds like a lot of work (which is why I use the bookmarks toolbar in all of my browsers), and there are several easier ways. Andrew’s suggestion for his ‘mum’ (as well as for the UK blog readers) was to create a desktop icon to launch Yahoo! Mail. All you need to do is get to the Yahoo! Mail sign-in page any way you prefer. Once there don’t sign-in just yet. Then mouse up to the browser’s address bar (the part with the http:// stuff) and drag the little Y! icon from your browser to your desktop.

Depending on which browser you have, as well as whether you are on a Mac or PC, you’ll get a little shortcut graphic representing your browser. On the left you will see an example of Firefox on Windows XP.

You can also see that the name of the shortcut is based on the name of the page it is pointing to (apologies to Mac users who will have to settle for the URL). You can rename it with a good ol’ slow double click, and have it say whatever you like.

Ryan K. Community Manager Yahoo! Mail