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

That’s right all you Classic enthusiasts. The much ballyhooed update to our Classic Mail offering was postponed over the holidays, but I can confirm that it is back underway.

Many of you have already noticed some of the changes (auto-save to draft, anyone!?!?), and the rest of you should be seeing them soon. I’ll be back in the coming weeks with more details (how does flagging messages or downloading attachments with only one click grab you?!?!).

Stay tuned!

***UPDATE***
I’ve been closely monitoring comments on this post, and would like to thank everyone who has shared their thoughts. Two of the most common issues reported involved default font sizes and Compose Message links from areas outside of Mail. In order to troubleshoot these issues further it would be very helpful if folks experiencing them could email me directly (ymailblog1[at]yahoo.com) with their details.

If you feel your fonts are displaying too large please provide:

• complete URL displayed in your browser after clicking “Inbox”
• operating system (Windows NT, 2003, Vista, Mac OS 10.5.3, etc.)
• browser and browser version (IE7, Firefox 2, Safari 3.1.1, etc.)

If you are clicking compose links but are instead landing on the Home screen of Mail please provide:

• The location you are clicking FROM (MyYahoo, Toolbar, etc.)
• complete URL displayed in your browser after clicking “Inbox”
• operating system (Windows NT, 2003, Vista, Mac OS 10.5.3, etc.)
• browser and browser version (IE7, Firefox 2, Safari 3.1.1, etc.)

As I’ve mentioned before, I can only really be helpful to all of you if you help me by providing complete detail when you find some sort of issue.
***END UPDATE***

Ryan K.
Community Manager
Yahoo! Mail

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It may seem like a relatively minor development for all of you, but today marks a big day for the Yahoo! Mail blog.

I’m sure that most of you already noticed, given that you are all very security conscious net wanderers and always keep an eye on the browser address (after all it is Yahoo! Security Month), but just to be on the safe side I wanted to let everyone know that the blog is now officially at www.ymailblog.com. Not only is that FOUR whole characters (and one syllable) shorter than the ymailupdates.com address, but it is much more in line with most of the other Yahoo! Property blogs, is more intuitive, and I think just sounds better. All things that make me very happy.

It really is true what my mom always told me … it’s the little things in life that often bring the most joy. Granted I’ve always assumed that she was trying to sneak by some sort of subtle plug for having babies, but anyway, she was right!

If you shared the old URL with your friends don’t worry, all of the links containing ymailupdates will still work fine. The same goes for all of you who have subscribed to the RSS feed. Noone will have to change anything to continue visiting this blog, however you should all be aware that the URL that will display will now read www.ymailblog.com/…

Ryan K Community Manager Yahoo! Mail

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First off I want to thank everyone who responded to last weeks polls. It was very interesting to learn how our breakdown of New and Classic users is (almost 2:1 in favor of New mail), that the vast majority are using either IE or Firefox on Windows XP, and that we have such a passionate group of Linux users. I do apologize again to the Linux fans out there. As a longtime Mac user myself I should be more sensitive to users who stray from the majority . Thanks again for all of the great feedback, and I’ll be posting more polls soon!

For today’s post I wanted to accomplish a few things. Thank you for voting in the polls (check), refresh everyone on an important safety tip to foil fraudsters, and play with some fun software that I learned about at Blog World. Ok, that last one was really the one I was most excited about, but I’m glad I could fit in the other two. The Jing Project is the name of the site and it’s a great tool for grabbing visual content from your screen and sharing it with friends (it even features Flickr integration!).

Many of you have probably noticed that little folded down corner at the top right of the sign-in box. Well that is the Sign-In Seal, and this video will show you how it works. (more…)

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I guess it turns out that Field of Dreams wasn’t entirely on point with the whole “build it … they will come” stuff. Blog stats over the last week have given me a strong indication that the movie should have added “and provide a link” to the famous phrase. That being the case, we are in fact seeing a lot of new visitors to the blog, so I’m going to take another opportunity to ask you to bookmark, subscribe, make this your homepage, or if you want to be really nice … just never leave.

This is VERY important for you folks who check that box, during sign-in, that keeps you signed in for two weeks. If you are signed in for two weeks, that means you probably won’t be seeing that sign-in page for two weeks. And since the link is pretty much only on that page (fear not, I’m working on that!) you need to make sure you know how to get back here. Rest assured, there are also links in the “other blogs” areas on other Yahoo! blogs, but why not just save yourself some trouble and jump on board while you are here? You’ll be glad you did.

Repeated apologies to those experienced readers who have already seen this stuff, but fear not I will try to find you guys some breaking news next week. On that note I’m going to leverage some content from my post last week…

Whether you are looking for the:

• latest news about Yahoo! Mail,
• tips from users, or from Yahoo! staff,
• links to the latest tutorials,
• screencast demonstrations,
• a peek behind the scenes here at Yahoo!,

… or what have you, this is where you can go to find it. You can also subscribe to the RSS Feed, or even better you can add it to MyYahoo by clicking and you can see updates there! I look forward to seeing you back here in the future.

Ryan K.
Community Manager
Yahoo! Mail

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