Greetings, Yahoo! Mail Beta users!
Some exciting updates to Yahoo! Mail Beta that we’re in the middle of rolling out:
“Hello, my name is Stephanie and I’m a Facebook addict.”
To all you fellow Facebook addicts out there, you might already know that we provide Facebook integration in our downloadable Messenger client. Now you can chat with your Facebook friends in Yahoo! Mail too! On the left, you’ll see “Facebook Friends” under “Online Contacts”. If you click on the thunderbolt, you will be prompted to authenticate on Facebook Connect (if you haven’t already). Once you’ve authenticated, your online Facebook friends will appear below “Online Contacts” and you can chat freely. As if Facebook was not addictive enough on its own, right? ;)
Giving you more message space
We’ve been hearing a lot of feedback from you about how much space the purple header takes up and how it limits how much of the actual message content you can see at once. We still want to provide some room to showcase our existing and future themes at the top of the page, but now you can scroll the entire Yahoo! Mail page so you can see as much message content as possible. Just go to Options>Mail Options and select “Scroll content of the entire page”.
Along with the ability to scroll the entire page comes another way to view your inbox. For those of you who are coming to the Beta from our Yahoo! Mail Classic product, we now have a paginated Inbox list view that might look familiar to you. You can view 50 messages in your list and click to go to the next, previous, first or last pages. When you click on a message subject line, we’ll load that message in a full tab. You can change the number of messages per page by clicking on Options>Mail Options and then selecting from 50, 100 or 200 messages at a time. If you still prefer the preview pane mode, you can also change this setting by going to Options>Mail Options and selecting “Scroll each panel on the page individually”. Try it out and let us know what you think!
Access to your past IM conversations
I don’t know about you, but my friends are always, always sending me important links, dates, addresses and other tidbits of information via IM. If you’re anything like me, you’re always, always forgetting exactly what was said/shared. What restaurant were we supposed to meet at? Where is that hilarious link Mike sent me about iPhone autocorrect fails? I rely heavily on my archived messages on the Messenger client and am so excited that we now give you access to your past IMs in Yahoo! Mail Beta. Just click on “Conversations” on the left side just below “Inbox” and see all your past IM conversations from Yahoo! Mail Beta (and the latest downloadable Messenger client).
Known issues with Yahoo! Mail Beta
We’re still working hard to iron out all the kinks in Yahoo! Mail Beta and there are a couple of hairy bugs that you’ve been telling us about on our suggestion board, blog, etc.:
- Randomly getting logged out of Yahoo! Mail Beta – we just fixed this issue, so please let us know if you are still seeing it.
- Attachment upload/download slowness and failure issues – we are aware of these issues and we will release fixes as soon as we possibly can. We’ll keep you up to date on this blog and our suggestions board. Thanks for your patience!
Thanks again for using Yahoo! Mail Beta and keep giving us feedback! For those of you wanting to try out Yahoo! Mail Beta, please visit http://features.mail.yahoo.com .
I don’t want to be confrontational (I understand this is a free product for most of us), but I am completely baffled that there is so much development going on with Yahoo Mail, Calendar etc. yet I cannot wirelessly sync my Calendar and Notepad with my Blackberry. I don’t know who wants “dynamically generated content” (my guess is businesses that engage in borderline spam) or “cool fonts” (I’m guessing people who create chain letters based on urban legends), but the average end user wants their email and calendar, at minimum, to be up to date no matter where they access it. That is the very basics of email today. The only reason I haven’t switched to a better service is inertia (11 years! with Yahoo). Please address this.
Trying Beta now. One thing that’s a major downer for me: not having a scroll bar on my folders list. It’s hugely inconvenient. (Same with the filters list, but I use that far less often. Drag & drop sorting for filters would be awesome, too.)
Thanks.
I just received an e-mail telling me that I will be “asked” (in other words, “required”) to change to the new Yahoo e-Mail within a few months. I am content with the current e-mail and would prefer not to change, but here is my main question: Why are we being forced to convert to a Beta product? Will it be out of beta by the time we are forced to convert? I much prefer using stable production software that is officially supported, not software that a company calls “beta” (i.e., isn’t prepared to stand behind as a fully debugged “production release” product).
So far so good with Ymail Beta. I like the way it looks and feels. I have experienced no issues at present. I have been using it now for about 2-3 weeks.
I have question about the calendar. When will it be getting updated. The last I tried the new one, I went back to the old because the new wouldn’t sync with Outlook.
Thanks,
Gene
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.
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 would like to have all of my friends from facebook to chat with me on yahoo not facebook
The changes to my E-mail e.t.c. are a big improvment and i am very happy with Yahoo. Simple and straightforward. What more do you want.
I think this is a step in a positive direction
Maybe I’m missing it but I sure miss having a message preview. I can’t stand having to double-click a message to read it, and leaving the inbox behind. Yes I know I can scroll from one message to the next but that will take some getting used to.
Thanks for letting us know that selecting “Scroll each panel on the page individually” makes the preview pane usable again. I was just about to throw in the towel on that one.
Kudos for inventing one of the most obfuscated feature toggles ever.
I think this is a step in a positive direction. The previous version of New Yahoo Mail was very clunky. Good job folks. I decided to not switch to Gmail just yet. I love yahoo and I want to keep using it, but I was not happy with the previous version. This one looks and works great so far.
Yahoo Mail Beta – while composing e-mail the font keeps changing size every time I hit the return. It will jump from 12 to 18, then if I change it back to 12, it types in 8 and I have to chose 14 to get 12. Yikes….it’s driving us crazy.
How do I turn off the horrible Chat option? I’m inundated with pop-ups of people that I don’t know and I’ve never been so angry at Yahoo as now. I’ve convinced others to get Yahoo over the many years I’ve been with you and I’m ready to send everyone an e-mail recommending against it if I can’t turn off the Chat pop-ups. I’ve sent other e-mails to Yahoo, but obviously no one is listening or reading.
Joe Martin
The new mail and it’s features are beautiful. Unfortunately, load times on non-recommended browsers are slow and I’ve found Mail to be unresponsive at times. (I don’t have admin rights on my laptop at work, so I’m unable to upgrade my browsers). Can I switch back? I haven’t found that option anywhere. I’ve always hated gmail, but I’ve got to be honest, I’m considering it.
Awesome – love “Scroll content of the entire page!!!
Nice update… but I am not still getting the features. IM conversation history is really great feature. Facebook chat is also help us to connect more efficiently.
Recently I saw a suggestion of a girl who wishes to close the advertise panel just 1st time after logging in. And I am very happy that yahoo mail reviewed the suggestion. I hope we will see a Cross sign beside the advertise very soon.
In old mail, we can see every mail size in inbox and other folder and also we can see which of my disposable email address is getting mail from inbox(in a TO column) and also Show mail from connection feature. Hope to get this in beta mail too. Another things missing greatly, to drag saved draft to another folder and also another folder’s mail to draft folder to edit the mail. This feature is must needed.
Thanks yahoo for hearing our feedback.
I think adding the possibiliy to chat with your facebook friends directly form my yahoo account is a very useful feature because the facebook chat often disconnects, but I have a lot of friends on facebook I’d like to talk to, so it’ll be much easier for me to do it!
Great news – thanks for the update! Still looking for full-session SSL, a calendar tab within mail, and more themes – customizable if possible. Loving the changes so far.