Yahoo! Mail Blog
The latest scoop on Yahoo! Mail product updates, new releases, bug fixes,

By Ankit Shah, Senior Software Engineer – Yahoo! Mail

When you’re looking for the party invitation your friend sent you yesterday or the coupon you received from your favorite store last weekend, sometimes it’s easiest to just scroll back through your messages to find what you’re looking for. Beginning today, you can effortlessly navigate your Yahoo! Mail inbox by scrolling through hundreds of messages at a time. To jump back to the top of your message list, click on the gray arrow in the lower-right corner that follows you as you scroll down the page. And to get to the earliest or most recent message in the list, simply sort by date in the menu above your inbox.

And if you use the preview pane, you now have the option to view it on the side of your inbox.

We hope this new feature makes it faster and easier for you to find what you’re looking for. Let us know what you think!

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By Lee Parry, Senior Director of Product Management, Yahoo!

This morning, we introduced the new Yahoo! Mail for iPad and Android tablets. As we set out to develop these apps, we wanted to take full advantage of the unique aspects of tablet devices, like the beautiful screens and intuitive gestures, while also making it easier and more fun for you to read and manage your email. Below are our tips for using a couple of our favorite new features.

Enjoy a lean-back, magazine-style experience when reading your email.

• Tap the full-screen button in the lower left corner of your message to expand it across the entire screen. If you want to reply, delete, file or star a message simply tap anywhere on the screen and Yahoo! Mail’s familiar icons will appear.
• To move to the next message on your iPad, simply swipe, as if you’re turning the page in a magazine.
• To flip through messages even faster, simply tap on the side of the screen to rapidly scan through your inbox.

Focus on the messages you care about most with a new feature that lets you easily sort by sender in Yahoo! Mail’s split-screen view.

• Select a message in your inbox on the left side of the screen by checking the box that appears with the email. You will then see that sender’s name appear on the right side of your screen.
• Swipe on the sender’s name and you will see Yahoo! Mail’s familiar icons appear to delete, file, star or mark as unread or spam.
• You’ll also see a plus sign that will indicate how many more messages you have from that sender. If you select that, it will pull all the messages from that sender and then you can star, delete or file them all at once. Just think – you can easily take control of your inbox with just a few taps.

We hope these new features make email on your tablet easy and enjoyable. Check them out and let us know what you think!

Download Yahoo! Mail for iPad

Download Yahoo! Mail for Android tablets

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By Gaurav Mishra, Director of Product Management, Yahoo! Mail

Today, we’re excited to announce that we’ve integrated Dropbox into Yahoo! Mail. For those of you who don’t know Dropbox, it’s a central place where you can keep and share all your photos, documents and videos. By bringing Dropbox to Yahoo! Mail, it’ll now be easier for you to send, receive, share and manage your attachments.

Get Started
If you already use Dropbox, you can get started right away. If you’re new to Dropbox, simply click on any attachment you receive in Yahoo! Mail, select ‘Save all to’, then ‘Save to Dropbox’, then follow the instructions to set up a new Dropbox account.

Saving to Dropbox
To save one or more files to Dropbox in Yahoo! Mail, open the attachment and click the ‘Save to Dropbox’ button. Save your file to the default Yahoo! Mail folder within Dropbox, or click ‘More Options’ to create and name a new Dropbox folder for your file.

Sharing from Dropbox
To send a new attachment from Dropbox in Yahoo! Mail, select the dropdown next to the paperclip icon in Yahoo! Mail and select ‘Share from Dropbox’. The Dropbox Chooser will pop up so you can select the files you want to share then see them automatically appear as attachments within the email you’re composing.

Large Attachments
And if you need to send a large file (>25MB), you can simply drag and drop the attachment into your email, but send it through Dropbox.

Our integration with Dropbox is available globally starting today in Yahoo! Mail for Web in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. Check it out and let us know what you think!

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By Ash Sharma, Product Manager, Yahoo! Mail for Mobile

Like you, we often find ourselves checking email throughout the day while we’re on the go. If you’re using the new Yahoo! Mail app for iOS, here are a few tips to make it even easier for you to send and organize messages in Yahoo! Mail for iPhone.

Make sure you’ve got the latest version

We’ve issued a couple of updates to our iPhone app since December, so make sure you’re running the latest version of the app that’s available in the App Store.

Quickly delete a group of messages

We know that email can get unwieldy, so we give you several ways to keep it organized. To quickly delete a group of messages, tap the checkbox to the left of each message to select it and reveal a trash icon within the toolbar at the bottom of your screen. From there, you can delete messages individually, select all and delete, move messages to your personal folders, mark as spam, or change the status to read or unread.

Sometimes even legitimate emails can set off alerts that mark them as spam. To get those back, open the spam folder and tap the checkbox to the left of each message you want to keep. Select the Not Spam icon shown within the toolbar at the bottom of your screen.

Disable push notifications

Don’t need notifications for your Yahoo! Mail app? Turn off push notifications in your device’s Settings. While in Settings, go to the Notifications screen and tap on Yahoo! Mail. Here, you can change the Alert Style to “none.” You can also change the settings for sounds or the badge app icon.

Other problems?

If you’re facing intermittent issues, such as crashing, freezing, issues loading mail, etc., try resetting the app. To reset the app, sign in and go to the sidebar (the icon on the top left), then select Settings and Reset App.

If you have other questions or feedback, you can reach the Yahoo! Mail for iPhone team directly at aerogram-feedback@yahoo-inc.com.

Thanks for using Yahoo! Mail for iPhone– we look forward to bringing you more tips and features soon!

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Today we are launching two new features on Yahoo! Calendar that make using the Calendar an easier and more seamless part of your Yahoo! Mail experience.

1. Yahoo! Calendar as a tab in Yahoo! Mail:

• Currently, users access the Calendar by clicking on the Calendar link under the “Applications” section in the left panel. The Calendar would then open in a new browser window/tab.
• To simplify the process (who wants more tabs open on their browser!?), we’re now making Calendar a permanent tab within Yahoo! Mail. So, as soon as you login to your Yahoo! Mail account, you will see a ‘Calendar’ tab right next to the ‘Contacts’ tab. This tab will remain there even as you navigate around to other tabs within Yahoo! Mail.

• When you’re inside the ‘Calendar’ tab, you’ll be able to search for events/tasks on your calendar.
• Additionally, you will be able to access ‘Calendar Options’ under the ‘Options’ menu in the header.  Options include the ability to share a calendar (like with your spouse to make it easier to align busy family schedules!) or import holiday calendars from around the world.

2. Sending RSVP response for Calendar invites from within Yahoo! Mail:

• Now, when you receive a calendar invite from your friends, you can easily respond to the event organizer with ‘Attending’/’Not Attending’/’Maybe’, add comments and have the event added to your own Yahoo! Calendar.

• You can also quickly check your availability by navigating to the day’s calendar through the ‘Check Availability’ button.   When you respond, you can also set a reminder for yourself so that you don’t miss out on fun events like ‘Make your own pizza party’.

• When you open an invitation that has already been updated or cancelled, you’ll see an indicator telling you that ‘This event is out of date’ or ‘This event has been cancelled’.
• Best part is the invitation feature works for calendar invites sent by organizers using any calendar client like Google Calendar, Outlook, iCal, Windows Live Calendar, Thunderbird and of course Yahoo! Calendar.

These features have begun to roll out to all of our global users. Try out these new additions to Yahoo! Calendar and check back often! We’ve got more features coming later this year.

Ashish Parnami

Sr. Product Manager

Yahoo! Mail & Calendar

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If there’s one thing that most Internet users in Southeast Asia agree on, it’s Yahoo! Mail. The most popular email service in the region, Yahoo! Mail is number one in Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia, and a strong second in Singapore (Source: Comscore, Sept. 2010).

Last week’s release of Yahoo! Mail Beta gave our more than 16 million regional email users a reason to celebrate. Now that Yahoo! Mail Beta is live, we at Yahoo! Southeast Asia thought we would try to add one little cherry on top. After knocking around a few ideas with our crack UED team, designers of sights like Yahoo! OMG Indonesia and Yahoo! Movies Singapore, we decided that users in Southeast Asia and around the world might like a few wallpapers to trick-out their PC desktop with the same styles that we used to redesign Yahoo! Mail Beta. So, today we are happy to present two flashy Yahoo! Mail Beta wallpapers, a gift from Yahoo! Southeast Asia to our users in the region, and all of the 273 million Yahoo! Mail users worldwide.

Paper

Bubble

Yahoo! Mail Beta wallpapers are a way for Yahoo! Southeast Asia to say thanks for making an email product that meets the needs of users in our region. Yahoo! Mail Beta’s focus on speed is a direct response to markets like Indonesia, Vietnam, and Philippines, where fast Internet connections and computing power are harder to come by. Yahoo Mail Beta’s tight social integration will also be a big hit in our region, especially in Indonesia, home of the world’s third-largest Facebook user base and the world’s highest concentration of Twitter users (Source: Comscore, Sept. 2010). Better mobile email access is also a big win in Southeast Asia, where mobile Internet use is skyrocketing, and in Singapore, the country with the world’s highest penetration of iOS devices (Source: Ad Mob, April 2010). And of course, all of our users will appreciate Yahoo! Mail Beta’s great spam protection, unlimited storage, and easy-to-use interface.

Each Yahoo! Mail Beta wallpaper comes in four different sizes, since we know that all PC desktop screens are not created equal. To download the wallpapers, click on the links below to match your monitor resolution, and then right click on the image to set it as your desktop background.  And if you like them, let your friends know too. You could even send them an email with the good news!

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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.

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If you follow our blog, you’ve heard about Yahoo! Mail Beta and seen a sneak peak of the new product. Today, you will get the chance to try it yourself. I’m pleased to announce the release of Yahoo! Mail Beta, which delivers a faster, safer and more social email experience. Let me give you a tour of what’s new in the product.

Speed thrills
A faster email experience is at the core of Yahoo! Mail Beta. We built the product from the ground up to be fast so you can be more productive. In fact, Yahoo! Mail Beta is more than two-times faster than previous versions of Yahoo! Mail. You can learn more about how we enhanced the performance of Yahoo! Mail Beta at the YDN Blog.

Be gone, spammer!
Spam can be distracting, irritating and downright dangerous. We block more than 130 billion spam messages every month to deliver you a safer place to email. And, our focus on battling spam has earned us the highest marks among our competitors, as noted in a 2010 study by the prestigious Fraunhofer Institute.

Yahoo! Mail everywhere
If you use Yahoo! Mail on the iPhone, iPad or an Android device, the look and feel of Yahoo! Mail Beta will be familiar. We designed Yahoo! Mail Beta to be sleek, elegant and consistent across devices.

Beyond email
There are many ways to connect with the people that matter to you. That’s why we invited Twitter into our social stream. Now you can read your friends’ tweets, retweet or compose your own 140-character message alongside Facebook posts and Yahoo! status updates all from the What’s New page. In addition, we made our IM and SMS features more productive because you can organize your conversations in separate tabs, switch between text and chat conversations and dock the conversation window when you are multi-tasking.

Photos and videos
Email is a great place to share private photos and videos with friends and family. Now you can browse rich slideshows from Flickr or Picasa links and watch video clips from Flickr and YouTube right from your email.

Find stuff faster
We’re using Yahoo!’s wealth of search science and technology to make email search faster. A new left-hand column helps you navigate, sort and narrow your search results by sender, attachment file, date or folder location.

We’re just getting started
As you can imagine, we have big plans for Yahoo! Mail Beta. Our engineers designed Yahoo! Mail Beta in a way that lets us make changes fast, so stay tuned as we release new enhancements over the coming months.

Now it’s your turn to try Yahoo! Mail Beta. You can switch back to your original Yahoo! Mail any time. And, please note that Yahoo! Mail Beta will not be immediately available for Yahoo! Small Business users or users on some older browsers and operating systems.

We want to know all about your experience and we hope you will tell us what you think by leaving us a comment. Check back to the Yahoo! Mail Blog for more updates.

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