Since we launched Yahoo! Mail Beta a week ago, I’ve been reading your feedback. I’m thrilled to hear your passion for the new product. Your comments have helped us identify what we need to fix in the short-term and how we should evolve Yahoo! Mail in the long-term. On behalf of the Yahoo! Mail team, thank you.
I’d also like to answer some of the most common questions and concerns about Yahoo! Mail Beta. From reading comments on the Yahoo! Mail Blog, on Facebook, Twitter, and the suggestion board, there are a few consistent things on your mind:
- Unread message count: We released an update to Yahoo! Mail Beta that addressed this issue. From now on, the unread message count will not include unread messages in the Trash and Spam folders.
- Browsers: Yahoo! Mail Beta works best with Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3 and newer, Safari 4 and newer, and Chrome 5. But, we’re no longer going to block Chrome 6 or Internet Explorer 9 users from accessing Yahoo! Mail Beta. And, we’ll continue to support more and more browsers as we approach general availability.
- Link to Calendar: We’re glad to hear from our Calendar users! We’ll be adding a link to Calendar in short order.
- Colors & themes: What, you don’t love purple? Not to worry, we have an assortment of great color options and themes coming soon. We’ll be sure to tell you all about them on this blog when they launch.
- Header: It sounds like some of you would like more room to read and compose messages. There are changes to the interface coming over the next few months that will give you more options. Stay tuned.
- IMAP: We support IMAP on many popular mobile devices. Today, our focus is to support the tremendous growth of our mobile IMAP users.
Keep sending us your comments and suggestions. We need your help to make Yahoo! Mail even better.
David McDowell
Sr. Director of Product Management
Yahoo! Mail
In the To, CC and BCC fields, once you enter the name of one of your contacts, you’re not able to copy and paste the contents of these fields into another field like the To field of another email. Instead you have to go and re-add all of the email addresses again. Very annoying!
We have defaulted users to a view that does not have a preview pane. To get the preview pane, you will have to go to options->mail options->Scroll: and select “Each page on the pane individually.” This enables the mode where the preview pane is visible. When in this mode, you will see the show/hide preview button and the shortcut key “v” is enabled too.
I just tried out the Yahoo Mail Beta, and can’t seem to find a way to preview messages anymore. I *really* miss this feature. I hope it will be available in the new Mail soon.
Yahoo Mail Beta Inbox issue – the bold appearance for unread messages seems to have switched off. New mail font has the same appearance
as already opened/read mail, please look into this or advise me how to correct this if the problem is specific to me … thanks.
I’ve just upgraded to Beta (I know, I know I should have done it ages ago!). So far I like it. Overall a good improvement. However, where has “Full View” gone? I understand you need to include the advert in the right-hand pane. Yahoo’s a great service which doesn’t cost me a penny so I’m not going to moan about a few (fairly) unobtrusive ads. But so many of my emails are wider than the reading pane. Clicking on the little tab on “old” Yahoo Mail saved me from scrolling left and right. Sadly this feature seems to have disappeared from the Beta. Is it likely to come back soon? I might have to revert to the previous version of it doesn’t.
Two things I would like to see.
1. Threaded messages… similar to how the iPhone will group replies from an original message
2. I like those backgrounds you can use in the current version… please keep them.
Thanks!
Yahoo Mail user for the past 10+ years
Like the beta, but have noticed when I search my notes it only does my inbox and my sent mail, it used to search my folders. Is it a bug is is there another way to search my folders? I don’t really keep my mail in my inbox.
Why is the stationary still missing in beta? Many people want this but it is being ignored. Just saying, why?
I was really hoping we would see support for nested folders to allow better organisation of saved emails in this version. If it is on your todo list, please add my vote to get its priority raised.
Themes and stationaries,please………….
Hey,
Thanks for the new Yahoo! Mail, the design is awesome. Some new themes would be welcome! However, there are some problems:
1) The “After moving/deleting message: Show the next message” option isn’t working. Tried it in Chrome, tried in FF and the same thing happens, I get back in the folder.
2) In the last Yahoo! Mail Beta when I selected all the messages in a folder (for ex. 200 messages) and pressed k, all the messages were set as read instantly, now in the new one the loader appears and it takes about 3-4 seconds for that same thing to be accomplished. Now this isn’t an improvement in speed.
3) When I hover the mouse cursor over the default inbox, sent, spam, drafts, trash, a balloon appears telling the number of messages that are contained in that folder but when I hoover it over the personalised folders which I have created only the name appears in that balloon which is useless since I can already see the name of the folder. Make it show the number of messages contained.
And this is just a recommendation which I would find useful. The little red triangle which appears on the right of the subject of a message when | flag it is kind of small. Maybe for users with smaller monitors is evident enough but I just don’t notice it and I also didn’t notice it in the previous version of Yahoo! Mail. Flagging a message should be more obvious, maybe highlighting the background would work. When I flag something I want it to be “in my face’.
Thank you and keep up the good work!
Thanks for the great interface, and IMAP for mobile is great. I’m a yahoo+ subscriber and would leave for IMAP on google or elsewhere. PLEASE make this a priority above theme colors or other non essential features. Lack of desktop IMAP is the ONLY thing keeping yahoo mail from being GREAT!
Hi ,
There should be an option to edit the contact through chat window .
Regards
Vasu
How about using the themes in Yahoo! Messenger? That way, both Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger have similar looks.
Calendar – Create Personal Categories – Permanent Tab
Weblinks – Bookmarks to favourite website, so your bookmarks are not fixed to your browser or pc.
Folders – Custom Icons or pictures
rss feeds
Email – Sort by Sender, – Expand & Close by Senders
I would love for Yahoo! to recognize dates in incoming emails so that I can click on them to add an event to the Yahoo! calendar. This is something that is very useful in the current non-beta version.
I agree with Tripp, it would be awesome if you can add the Calendar is a permanent tab next to Contacts. Better yet, give us the option to add our own tabs from Yahoo! services :-)
I dont like the way the new mail is sorted, I would like to to back to the way it was. It was easy to delete and move items to my save accounts. the words are to small, dont know how t get rid of the extry amout of stuff one the pages
thanks
kenneth bartholomew
mrbarth74@yahoo.com
No, I don’t love Purple. When will the new colors come out?
Will yahoo provide Mail for Exchange for the yahoo account. I want to sync my email, contacts and calendar with my Nokia/Windows device.
I’ve been a longtime user of Yahoo Mail.. Since 2000 in fact… and honestly, I am really disappointed to hear that Desktop Client IMAP is taking a back seat to mobile device support beyond what you’ve already done.
It’s frustrating to not be able to have messages sync to the Desktop and back. It is my hope that you’ll fix this issue soon, but it sounds like it’s not a priority for you at all.
So, the look is kind of nice. But you had a UI that easily beat Gmail’s anyway – by a huge margin, in my book. But this has barely moved it forward – in fact it’s gone backwards in terms of UX (*tiny* x to close a tab, mix of rounded corners and square, icons instead of obvious links/buttons like check mail, mixture of window/container metaphors, options hidden away in Help…). Where you’re really behind (and falling further behind, it seems) is in functionality.
I know it’s only beta, but beta should have all the functionality of the final release… so far it seems you’ve only removed things: right-click, F2 to edit folder names, calendar, notes, various preferences… And still no significant improvements: conversations/threads, in-line organise/filters/rules, nothing to rival priority inbox, chat not well integrated…
And with things like auto-sign-in to IM, defaulting to What’s New, obtrusive advertising (I don’t see this as I’ve got Plus, but plenty of upset users out there) – it very much looks like you’ve been persuaded to push this out to make some noise – before it’s actually ready. I’m guessing there’s a big rewrite gone on under the hood, as apart from that I can’t see what this release is all about.
I used to love Yahoo Mail, and evangelise about the desktop-like UI. Sad to see it struggle to keep up on the functionality and lose the edge it has enjoyed in recent years.
Thank you for your quick response to the issues raised in the last week via all the sources that you mentioned, David. Do you have a timeline that is more specific than “the next few months”? The header space and calendar link issues are the most important to address IMHO.
I am using the yahoo imap on my iphone, which makes me wanna imap on desktop more. Please do consider this application, since many of my friends around have switched to gmail because it supports imap on desktop too.
I think the calendar “link” should be a tab next to contacts rather than a link in the potentially busy app list.
I appreciate you finally, after many years, mentioning IMAP support. It is an incredible improvement to finally have IMAP support on mobile devices.
However, I suggest that you please consider IMAP support for desktop computers as well. Many of us, especially those who use Yahoo mail for business, prefer to use Outlook. While webmail is a great tool and the webmail BETA is an incredible improvement, IMAP is an essentially tool. Most other popular email services (gmail, aol, etc.) already provide IMAP as it allows users to use any means to access their email and from multiple locations, while keeping email perfectly synced in all locations.
I truely believe while you do see an increase in mobile IMAP users I believe mostly becuase more people are getting smart phones every day, there are just as many users who would like to use Outlook and desktop IMAP as well. Please consider implementing IMAP for desktop in the near future, and help bring Yahoo! mail back up to par with the rest.
Re: Calendar
It would be awesome if you can bring back the calendar briefing that was at the bottom of the previous version of Yahoo! Mail. It would be “awesomer” if you can add the calendar as a tab on top next to “Contacts”
I need my chat conversation saved in new yahoo mail beta… and want to do group chat and also like to get new version of Yahoo Go! application for java mobile. Want to get undo button after sending a mail and deleting a mail. No one of you guys noticing my feedback. I have given you an innovative idea. That will give us opportunity to send attachment of different mails in a single mail without attaching again. Please review my feedback, yahoo mail will be more popular than ever if you take my suggestion… neither you will remain lagging behind.
When are we going to get full SSL? Please put this in the Yahoo Mail ;)
PLEASE don’t forget some other MAIN features:
Set Text/COLOR/Font style as default for New and replied/forwarded mail
STATIONARIES!!! Please…bring back stationaries!!!
A few notes: When we take care of the link to Calendar we’ll also add a link to Notepad. Also, thanks for the feedback from http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Y-Mail/ as well!
IMAP support is really appreciated, but in order to better support mobile devices IDLE would really be optimal, as it would enable push mail on pretty much any phone with minimal battery usage.
The new interface rocks, although as a suggestion ways to sort messages belonging to a conversation thread together, in tree form, would really be appreciated.
Keep up the good work nonetheless.
How about allowing synching of contacts via the email setup for Iphone like you do with the Calendar and Notes. Its sorta frustrating when you don’t have your most up to date contact list on your phone.
Since you are supporting your mobile users, for how about contact synching via the email setup like you have for the notes and calendar (at least on the Iphone platform). A lot of this is very frustrating email wise when you don’t have your most up to date contacts in your phone.
Not the purple so much as there is so much purple highlighting the wasted space. Work the space issue first, then the color scheme.
Oh, thanks for the quick fix on the counts of unread mail. Driving me bonkers when I have multi-tabs open in FF and the Y!M tab is screaming I have 47 unread mails in my…. trash!!! :)