The New Yahoo! Mail Beta – Lots to be excited about
By on April 1st, 2011

On Friday, I was invited to try out the latest Yahoo! Mail Beta shortly after signing into Yahoo! Messenger when I arrived at work.  Knowing this would provide writing material for next week, I quickly clicked “yes” about half a dozen times, and was greeted with a much more aesthetically pleasing email home page than I’ve seen from Yahoo! in a long time.  Frankly, I’d stopped using Yahoo! Mail several years ago because I was tired of the garish, flashing adds that made me feel nauseous or slightly inclined to have a  seizure (unless I wanted to pay for Yahoo! Mail Plus, which would let me get by with text ads instead of those terrible ones) — and why should I put up with that when Google’s free Gmail already offered text-only ads at no cost?  It wasn’t (and still isn’t) going to happen.  Sorry, but if I pay for premium email, it’s going to be completely ad free and that’s an article for another day.

Yahoo Mail Beta

Back to the Yahoo! Mail Beta —  Here’s a look at what’s new:

Appearance  I have to say, the new interface is much easier to look at.  It might only be because it’s still in beta, but the ads seem much more tolerable in this lovlier setting than they were before.  The default color is purple for the frame surrounding the message and folder panes, but you can change it to any of several colors and patterns by clicking Options, More Options above your email folders.

Preview Pane  Yahoo! Claims that in this new beta, our beloved Preview Pane returns to us once more, eliminating the need to click and scroll through all the messages in order, or otherwise obliterate our view of what’s in the Inbox every time we read an email.  If I could just get it to work, it would be great!  Allegedly, there is a Preview button above the messages in the Inbox that allows you to activate this feature but mine is a no show.  (Also noteworthy here: I am using Google Chrome (10.0.648.204) a browser supported by the new beta but I keep getting a suggestion from Yahoo! that I upgrade to one of the latest browsers, and lists Firefox and Internet Explorer as viable options.  I suppose Firefox is.  ;)

Email Address Blocking  New spam controls allow you to block email addresses you positively don’t want to see messages from ever again.  My ISP, roadrunner.com, has similar spam blocking filters for specific email addresses blocking in place, but it is limited after a certain number of blocks.  So far, I am unable to tell whether there is a limit to the number of specific email addresses that can be blocked by a single Yahoo! Mail Beta account.

spam blocking in yahoo mail

Unlimited Storage  Yahoo! makes good on its promise of everlasting, unlimited storage for emails.  With so many companies putting limitations on their  unlimitedservices lately (here, I’m talking VirginMobile’s Broadband2Go plans, and AT&T’s retirement of their unlimited data plans for iPhone), it’s nice to see someone sticking to their guns.  Sure, there’s a big difference in email storage and broadband data connections but good business is good business, no matter what’s for sale.

More Connections  Similar to a feature Gmail has had in place for years, now you can view which of your contacts are currently online in a column located beneath your mailbox folders but you can also sign in to Facebook and have those contacts listed separately from your Yahoo! Contacts. Nice.
Improved Search  The old search feature in Yahoo! Mail was laughable in its complete inability to find anything.  Anything at all. The new search feature is actually useful, and works!  Kudos, Yahoo! Mail Beta.

Yahoo Mail Search

There’s a lot more under the hood, but I’ve only had a few hours to play with Yahoo!’s latest beta product.  Hopefully I will soon find the legendary Preview button and if any of you give the new mail a try and discover something great that I haven’t noticed yet, I’d love to hear from you.

==== About the Author ====

Melonie McLaurin enjoys writing about gaming, technology, and social networking.  She currently writes for Allied Satellite Tv

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  • http://www.idonthaveone.com Ildiko

    Please, please, please tell me if you track down that Preview panel button! I really miss it and mine’s a no-show too. On FF4, Vista.

    • Kelly

      Go into options
      then more options
      under the first menu item – “general”
      change the scroll feature to “scroll each panel on the page individually”
      Now you have the preview pane.

      • Andy

        The solution above works, but only for the session. If you come back to Yahoo mail later, you have to repeat the steps. (At least on IE8).

        • Leilani

          Hi, Once I made the change (to allow preview panel), it stuck. Sorry it hasn’t worked for you. I’m using Firefox but don’t know the version, it changes so often! I recently disabled (you can’t uninstall) IE8, due to many odd/weird problems w/laptop in general – Win 7.

        • Holly

          You have to save your changes!!

    • Leilani

      Hi, There is no preview panel “button;” I don’t know why. But you can have the panel! Click on Options –> General –> Messages then choose “Show all messages in a scrolling list (with Preview Pane option)” This seems as non-intuitive as they get, but it worked for me – Win 7, Firefox. good luck

  • Stephanie

    Any luck with the preview pane option? It also seems to be a no-show on my Win7 system (no matter if I use IE or Firefox)

  • prem, india

    The worst ever mail i have seen in my life. I dont know which b*tard desinged this layout. JUST GO TO THE HELLLLL…..

    reason 1: right margin of the mail is cut down due to ad on right extreme side.

    reason 2: bottom control buttons are missing.

    totally bull shit design

    • Mike

      I could not agree more with reason #1… I can’t handle the ads on the right side completely obscuring 1-2 inches of my email message! I can expand my browser size to be full screen and the message appears in full, but I don’t always view my web browser in full screen mode. If Yahoo insists on having ads on the right side, they NEED to resize the message frame so ads don’t block my email content.

    • Vicki

      I had the same problem with being unable to read the right side of e-mail messages until I activated the preview pane (as indicated in the post above). Once the preview pane was turned on, the bottom controls appeared and I can now scroll over to see the right side of messages. The bottom controls are still there even if I subsequently click on the hide preview button. Hope this helps you.

  • Tona

    If you think the beta version is better, you are using a different beta than I am. I can’t even get help because 99% of the time I click the help link I just get a message that says connection refused. When I do get the help, it is not user friendly and I find no answers. The only help I have gotten is through Google searches, not yahoo. When I upgraded my calendar lost all of my events and they don’t allow me to switch back to the old calendar. When I get emails, I can’t see the recipient list. It says You and x others with x being the number of other recipients. If I click show details it just shows me. I have to click reply to all to see the other recipients. I liked the old version, but I really hate the new one. Looks like it’s time to stop putting off the switch to gmail.

  • http://twitter.com/AHinMaine AHinMaine

    Until yahoo stops actively refusing to enable full-time https mode, there is absolutely NOTHING about yahoo mail that is exciting. The number one type of account that Firesheep is able to pwn is yahoo mail. Because operating systems are getting better and better and protecting themselves, hackers must find more clever ways of breaking and entering. Spearfishing attacks are ramping up at a phenomenal rate and their success is in direct proportion to the apathy of companies like yahoo. For shame.

  • Eric

    On my testing, the page hangs for a minute or so every time I click Delete, which is annoying. And all previous recipients now load in the To box. Even those not marked as contacts. Looks like it pulls in anyone who is copied on any message string you send. This is a deal breaker – I don’t want to accidentally send a message to someone who I emailed once 6 months ago. And if someone sends me a message from more than one email address, now I have to think of which one to use each time.

  • Joe D

    New mail is awful. I’m having to forward over 300 e-mails to myself at Google acct.. I cannot open mail I’ve sent to me! I send sites (addresses) to visit & it will not let me open them. It did before “improvement”. So much for “YAhoo”. Tried live chat, HA HA. Waited 30mins & got just a few minutes more. Next day busy all time. I say good-bye & riddance to YAhoo.

  • Norma Teabo

    I really have a lot of issues w/the “new” Yahoo! The main one being that when I want to forward an e mail, the address does not automatically come up when I write the name and even when I write out the whole address, they keep telling me that it’s not a proper address! I’m sure I should be telling this to someone in charge, but due to the fact that I’m very green at this (80 yrs.) I hope someone who gets this will tell me what’s going on….thanx

    • Ade

      Yahoo Mail is most disappointing.. for the simple reason that THE PREVIEW PANE CANNOT BE PLACED SIDE BY SIDE TO THE MESSAGE LIST!!! WHHHYYYYY!!!!! THIS IS SO MADDENINGLY FRUSTRATING!! PLEASE FIX IT. I WANT TO BE ABLE TO SEE THE PREVIEW PANE BESIDE (NOT BELOW) MY MESSAGE LIST!!

 
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