Yahoo! Mail Beta Unleashed
I had to wait until 9:00pm Pacific time to talk about this, but we’re finally out. If you know me, you know I’ve been dying for this day to come, personally and professionally. If you’re one of the lucky ones to have been invited to the limited public beta, welcome. I really hope you enjoy the new experience and I hope you give us a ton of great feedback. If you weren’t lucky enough to get into this first beta, it was nothing personal. Please be patient. We’d love to have everyone in the world using the new product, but we’re starting (relatively) slowly right now.
But now let’s talk about what you all came here to hear…
The new application is amazing, the guys that came over from Oddpost have totally outdone themselves. I’ve worked with some decent DHTML guys in the past, but the people that came over from Oddpost are an entirely different breed. When I saw the first cut of Yahoo! Mail Beta, I was astonished. I knew you could do some crazy things with a browser, but the things they make that browser do are incredible.
The top image is a quick view of the inbox with the preview pane showing one of my mail messages (you’ll noticed I’ve blacked out some parts of the UI…the app doesn’t actually have those black boxes). As you can see, it’s a typical three panel layout. There’s a folder list down the side, a message list on top and a preview pane below. Clicking a message in the list automatically updates the preview pane below. Messages can be dragged and dropped into other folders or into the trash. You can also double-click messages to open them into a seperate tab (see the second image) if you’re into that kind of thing. Once you’ve opened the message into its own tab, you can also rip it out into a seperate window.
There’s tons of DHTML goodness in there. No full page refreshes. The message list is completely scrollable, there is no paging…even if you have 10,000 mail messages. There’s address autocomplete in the compose page. Most features are accessible via keyboard shortcuts. It will check periodically in the background for new mail. Oh, and did I mention it’s FAST? It’s nearing native client speed. I actually once mistook my browser window for my Thunderbird window.
There’s support for Internet Explorer and Firefox, something that was missing in the original Oddpost. Rich text compose is available on Firefox too, something that is lacking in the current Yahoo! Mail offering. Search has many of the goodies from the newly enhanced Yahoo! Mail Search like snippets, although refinements aren’t currently available.
If you look under the hood, you’ll get to see what I spend all of my time working on. The DHTML client talks to a web service in order to access the mailbox. Myself and another engineer have spent the last many months refining that service (we still have work to do), tuning performance, working out the bugs and adding a slew of abuse protection. We don’t want to give those nasty spammers an easy outlet to flood all of us with their crap, now do we? While I think the new interface is amazingly cool, I’m hoping that the web service is able to garner as much attention (with the technodweebs, anyway). Certainly Gmail was dissected by third parties. I, personally (not speaking for Yahoo!), welcome people to dig as much as they can to learn about this product.
This is the first product I’ve worked on in many years that I’ve been really excited about. I’m back working on something that’s going toe-to-toe with the biggest and baddest applications out there. I honestly believe that this new beta is by far and away the nicest webmail out there. Better than Gmail. Better than AOL Mail. Better than the Laszlo-powered EarthLink mail. Leaps and bounds better than Hotmail’s Kahuna (that was a total disappointment). I’m really hoping that this new application not only spurs innovation here at Yahoo! but in our competitors as well. Such competition is fantastic for the end users.
The best part is…this is just the beginning. We have so much in store for the beta that it’s not even funny. I wish I could talk more about what’s in the works, but I’m guessing I’m probably not allowed and I love my job too much to go and get myself fired.
Update: If you’re interested in talking about the new beta but don’t want to have a conversation in the comments, feel free to mail me at ryan AT unclehulka.com. Better yet, join the Y-Mail Yahoo! Group and talk about it with over 100 other Yahoo! Mail users.
Update 2: The Unofficial Yahoo! Weblog has reviewed the beta. They mention a whole bunch of features I completely forgot to mention like the context menu. This is my favorite quote, “Gmail is suddenly looking a little clunky.” Yes, I think so too.
Update 3: If you want to join the beta, see the Yahoo! Mail What’s New page. There’s currently a link on there where you can ask to join the beta.
September 13th, 2005 at 9:24 pm
Hey, congrats! I’m not one of the lucky ones who gets to beta test this stuff, but I was a huge fan and early adopter of OddPost (I was “me@oddpost.com” if I remember correctly), and I’m excited to see Yahoo! raising the bar.
I currently use and love Gmail, but — as you said — competition is a wonderful thing.
Definitely looking forward to checking out the new Yahoo! Mail
September 13th, 2005 at 9:53 pm
Thanks! Hopefully you’ll get an invite soon. I’d love to invite everyone, but we’re not quite ready for that…yet.
September 13th, 2005 at 9:57 pm
Any chance that @sbcglobal.net users will get to test drive the new UI?
September 13th, 2005 at 10:18 pm
You know, I’m not sure what the criteria are for admitting beta users. I wasn’t involved in the process of building this initial list.
September 14th, 2005 at 1:55 am
Ryan, congratulations on the release of the new Yahoo! Mail Beta. I am really looking forward to testing it. Unfortunately, I am not in the first group of beta users (yet), but I do have a question. From the screen shots posted, it is not clear whether the new Yahoo! Mail has a message threading capability (i.e. grouping by conversations). Is that feature incorporated in the new Yahoo! Mail?
September 14th, 2005 at 8:36 am
The new beta doesn’t have conversations/threading. I’d love to add that because I think it’s one less reason for people to use Gmail instead of us.
September 14th, 2005 at 9:42 pm
Hi. Okay, the Yahoo beta looks really great but keep in mind that many people around the world are still running Windows 95 with IE 5.5. Don’t you forget that, please. I won’t purchase a new computer in order to use the new Yahoo mail…
September 17th, 2005 at 5:39 pm
Hi Ryan,
I’m glad you mentioned message threading/conversations. I asked 5 Gmail users to comment on the latest Ymail beta, and they all say they won’t consider changing over to Yahoo if it doesnt have message threading.
Also, instead of folders, why not tags and subtags like in MyWeb and flickr? This way an email can ‘belong to’ more than one tag.
We’re also wondering if Yahoo’s about to go ‘limitless’ with its mailbox limit as there’s no reference to how much disk space we’re using or even size info of individual emails.
Finally some of us really miss the Notepad/Addresses/Calendar tabs. Why not put a list of customisable icon-tabs down the left-hand side of the page like on MSN Messenger, e.g.
Mail
Addresses
Calendar
Notepad
Briefcase
Photos/Flickr
My Yahoo
MyWeb
360 ?
Users can choose to hide the bar or deselect what’s on it.
September 18th, 2005 at 10:25 pm
Okay, I’ll try to respond to all of this inline.
We definitely hear the plea for message threading (aka “conversations”). Even before the new beta, people wanted it in the current product. We even get plenty of people within the company asking for this. The best suggestion I can give is for you to beat the hell out of it in the feedback. If the product managers see a ton of feedback begging for threading, you’ll eventually get it.
As for the folders vs. labels/tags, I’m totally unsure where it’s going. I do know that folders are a much easier concept for the average mail user to understand. That being said, there is a very large set of users who are clamoring for tagging. Again, beat the hell out of us in the feedback and I imagine you’ll eventually get it.
Regarding both of those points (threading and tags), realize that these are features the engineering team wants as well. So there’s definitely internal pressure to add these features.
I really can’t say what’s going to happen with storage limits in the near future. I do think there’s pressure from all sides, however. Gmail, Hotmail Beta (Kahuna) and AOL Mail are all offering 2GB or more to free users.
This first pass on the beta we’re really focusing on getting the core mail functionality up and running so we can get it into the hands of some users. We’ll be adding more stuff in the coming months. Don’t be surprised to see tighter integration with the other services.
September 19th, 2005 at 3:24 am
Please, please, please don’t ignore us Opera users. For a long time Gmail didn’t fully support the Opera browser, but they finally saw the light and added Opera support.
I’m pretty sure that the Opera guys worked with Google on this, even going so far as to make changes to Opera 8.0 so it would work better with Gmail, so I’m sure Opera would be more than happy to work with you guys too.
October 28th, 2005 at 3:48 pm
I have been testing the yahoo mail beta,
Is the Full Release going to have different Features than on the yahoo mail beta Release
October 28th, 2005 at 10:36 pm
The full release will have more features than the current beta release. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you what goodies we still have in store for you, so you’ll just have to wait and see.
November 1st, 2005 at 12:58 am
hi
please sens me a yahoo beta mail invitation.
thanks alot.
November 1st, 2005 at 5:46 am
If you want access to the beta, go to the What’s New page (http://whatsnew.mail.yahoo.com/) and click “join the beta test” to submit your account. It’s not a guarantee that you’ll be invited to the beta, but it’s your best bet for now.
November 5th, 2005 at 3:49 am
thank you
November 14th, 2005 at 7:12 pm
How about getting me in on the beta… a long time yahoo user, web developer, debian linux user, and firefox fan… surely I could contribute to the beta goodness.
November 14th, 2005 at 8:23 pm
Karl, the best I can do is point you to the What’s New page where you can submit a request to join the beta. Unfortunately I don’t have any magic wand I can wave to let people in, otherwise I’d have let everybody in by now.
November 21st, 2005 at 10:58 pm
Karl, I’m in the same boat…been a Yahoo! user since 1997/1998: pay for POP3 access, subscribed to YME since almost day 1, used their webhosting for awhile, yet I’ve never gotten on an ‘early invite’ or beta list. I have yet to figure out how Yahoo! decides these things, but it’s really frustrating to not get ‘early looks’ when you’re such a long-time user. Yahoo! 360? Same deal…
I’m not here to flame, or threaten not to use it, just to vent frustration…you’d think the people who use it the longest and most might get first try? Almost makes you wonder why be so loyal? Once again, not a threat, I’m just saying it’d be like ignoring your repeat customers if you were a brick-and-mortar business
There, finally got it off my chest…
November 21st, 2005 at 11:34 pm
Craig and Karl, this initial round of the beta has been limited in the number of users who were invited. It doesn’t mean you’re any less important of a user to us, it just means that the people who DID get in were very lucky, statistically speaking.
November 24th, 2005 at 2:08 pm
Ryan, congrats on the work, the screenshots and other feedbacks forshadows a huge success when this product is official.
Several comments (that are not already here):
1) Y! mail plus: add support for getting pop3 mail via SSL as many server now forces users to use SSL
2) Pay attention to the alligment, text size etc when people increase their browser font size, this setting could make things out of sync.
3) One of the main attractions of Yahoo Mail is its well integration with other services (Address, Calender, Notepad, Groups etc). Please make sure this integration still applies in the new product.
4) The Filter option should support boolean logic … it is very awkward to have X filters instead of just 1 (e.g., if A or B or C then D instead of if A then D, if B then D, if C then D)
5) I believe the new product use AJAX technology hence much faster in response time. Nevertheless, while it’s still not out yet, the current version time is horribly slow recently, takes 20-30 seconds to respond and most of the time just report not able to connect .
November 24th, 2005 at 11:29 pm
ThanhVu, thanks for the message. To address your points:
1) Yes, we know we need to support SSL POP3. It’s not a new request.
2) Yeah, it’s true. I saw a demo of Kahuna (Windows Live Mail) and they showed off how it’s able to cope with the user tweaking the browser font size. It was slick. Yahoo! should definitely take a cue from the Kahuna guys on that one.
3) These initial releases have been focused mainly on getting the core features of mail finished. We can’t branch out to the other areas if we still haven’t licked Mail itself.
4) Filters (and user preferences in general) haven’t received enough attention in the beta. That’s intentional (for better or worse). We’ve really been trying to focus on the hard parts of getting the application up and running. User options, such as filters, should be getting some more attention.
5) I’ve only ever noticed slowness on startup. That’s a problem we’re aware of and actively fixing. Aside from that, I’ve always found the application to be fairly responsive. Be that as it may, I know performance is a hot topic at the moment. Expect to see improvements in the near future.
November 25th, 2005 at 5:29 pm
Thanks for the quick reply … just want to clarify that in (5), I am refering to the ‘current’ mail version and NOT the beta one. I am not among the few who were invited to test the beta but I am confident that it is much faster than the current mail version.
Also in (3), there are rumors that Notepad is being removed. I understand that the main concentration is on the Mail part but at least just leave other components there as they are instead of abandon them.
November 25th, 2005 at 10:37 pm
ThanhVu, I see…I thought you were refering to the beta. The current webmail doesn’t implement very much AJAX. So virtually everything you do in it requires a full round trip to the server. That being said, I wouldn’t expect it to be REALLY slow. When I still used the current webmail (I’m a full-time beta user now) it was fairly snappy.
The only rumors I’ve ever heard surrounding the other components (Calendar, Address Book and Notepad) going away have been fabricated by people outside the company. I know the people who work on those products and I’ve never once heard any mention of them going away. The fact that those products are still staffed should tell you something.
November 29th, 2005 at 1:51 am
can u gv me a invite??????? pls.. im currently usin gmail.. wuld luv to test it.
December 5th, 2005 at 9:52 am
Hi, kindly send me an invitation for Yahoo Mail Beta. My email address is rb.murli@gmail.com
December 5th, 2005 at 1:05 pm
There is no public invite system for the beta. If you want to get into the beta you have to get in line with everyone else.
December 6th, 2005 at 7:00 pm
can you give me a invite???????
December 10th, 2005 at 9:15 pm
Can you read?
December 11th, 2005 at 2:30 pm
where can I get Yahoo!mail beta for my yahoo!mail ?
January 2nd, 2006 at 8:47 am
Is there going to be any changes to yahoo mail beta in the month of January.
January 2nd, 2006 at 10:15 am
Kurt, we’re always making changes. Some are more outwardly visible than others. There are efforts underway to work on performance (frontend and backend) and various bugs. So any fixes there might not be immediately evident to you.
January 2nd, 2006 at 2:35 pm
When is the yahoo mail beta update RSS Feed going to be update with the changes that yahoo mail is going to back to its beta
January 3rd, 2006 at 10:05 am
Kurt, I wish I knew. I’m not involved with the updates blog. I think that chore belongs to the marketing people (I could be wrong on that) who don’t seem all that interested in talking (judging by the lack of posts).
January 5th, 2006 at 5:40 pm
When will the new Yahoo mail going to be out of beta
January 5th, 2006 at 11:30 pm
Whenever it’s ready. Obviously there are still some issues to be worked out in beta testing (bugs, performance, feedback, etc).
January 8th, 2006 at 12:29 pm
I like your yahoo mail beta blog updates because with your blog they are update everyday or week.
January 15th, 2006 at 10:46 am
How long do you have to wait after you get an email that says:
Your Yahoo! Mail Beta is coming soon.
Thanks for your interest in the new Yahoo! Mail Beta. Your turn is coming soon.
We know you can’t wait to get your hands on the new Yahoo! Mail and we’re just as excited about delivering it to you. Right now we’re working around-the-clock to make sure it’s everything you expect and more.
So stay tuned for further word. In the meantime, there’s no need to do anything. Your place in line is secure, and you’ll get the green light as soon as possible.
Thanks again,
Yahoo! Mail Team
Thanks
January 15th, 2006 at 2:17 pm
Reed, I’m not sure. I don’t work on the team that’s handling the invites. My job puts me more behind the scenes.
March 11th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
Can I get an invitation, you can send it to me @ epohcj@yahoo.com
March 20th, 2006 at 4:40 am
[...] :: Short & Neat Take on Live’s + & - :: :: Coupre Live Review :: :: A slightly biased Live Review :: :: Yahoo! Beta Mail vs Gmail :: Yahoo! Mail beta Unleashed [...]
March 23rd, 2006 at 7:03 pm
anyone got spare invites?? if so,pls can u fwd it to cool_techie_tvm@yahoo.com ??
April 22nd, 2006 at 2:19 am
anyone got spare invites?? if so, pls can u fwd it to
abiralo@yahoo.com
April 22nd, 2006 at 8:57 am
Can some one plz …..help….i need Yahoo Beta……. Thanks
May 16th, 2006 at 7:35 am
I love the new mail beta!!
Can you provide a feedback link in the UI?? Or at least an easy way to provide feedback?
I just sent some in through a more generic Yahoo feedback, but I want to be sure it gets to the right place…
One item is a simple expanding/collapsing thing and the other is a feature request….
Thank you!! and Great Job!!
May 16th, 2006 at 8:14 am
On the far right is a “Help” link/pulldown. Click on that and a small context window pops up. Look at the bottom of that window and you should see an option that says “Send Feedback”.
May 28th, 2006 at 10:25 am
No “send feedback” under help
May 30th, 2006 at 7:43 am
plz send yahoo mail beta to my id plzzzzzzzzzzzzz
June 1st, 2006 at 4:34 am
Does anyone knows how to configure the beta version so it will show size of the e-mail in the inbox? It wouldn show the size of any mail i’ve got.
June 1st, 2006 at 1:10 pm
We only recently made it so the message sizes are displayed. If you don’t see them right now, just hold on. When the update gets pushed to your farm you should start seeing message sizes.
June 12th, 2006 at 2:11 am
As mentioned before, is there any chance the guys will work on Opera support?
I have a lovely purple “Switch to the Yahoo! Mail Beta” box with a link on the top right hand corner of my mailbox where my quota usage bar used to be and when I click it it does nothing. (I assume it detects Opera and redirects me back to standard but at least a message detailing the reason would be courteous!)
June 29th, 2006 at 11:25 pm
Tried yahoo mail beta. Unfortunatly it doesnt work in both ‘Opera’ and IE 7. Any possibilities of support of opera and internet explorer 7 would be appreciated
June 30th, 2006 at 8:47 am
The latest update does support IE 7. Try the beta again with it, that was released within the last month or so.
As for Opera, I don’t know when support for it will be added.
July 13th, 2006 at 5:01 am
Pls make my yahoo to Yahoo Beta Mail
July 13th, 2006 at 3:36 pm
Evidently you missed the bit where I said get on the waiting list.
July 15th, 2006 at 8:27 am
I’ve started using Yahoo Beta mail & like it because its interface is similar to Outlook Express, which is familiar to me — why Yahoo has to wait for this long to incorporate this, though? Hey, don’t be ashamed to pick up what’s working from others’. Isnt’ it that Microsoft “borrowed” Apple’s Macintosh graphic interface to develop Windows; and Apple, in return, had borrowed Xerox’s graphic prototype to develop Macintosh anyway!
My 2-cent. 
One feature I would love to see being incorporated to the Beta Mail, that is the PhotoMail. In the current beta, it takes forever to attach multiple files, then they become too heavy to e-mail unless you want to mail them in multiple messages. My… 5-cent.
Many thanks, again.
July 20th, 2006 at 4:50 pm
When is the New yahoo mail beta Calender going to come out.
July 20th, 2006 at 11:13 pm
What makes you think there is a Yahoo! Mail Beta Calendar?
July 21st, 2006 at 4:42 pm
Ryan,
I mean by,when I click on Calender in my yahoo mail, I am taken to the Old interface Calender.
September 13th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
log on to your yahoo mail account and open this link http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta/
Hit Try it now
DONE
September 16th, 2006 at 1:14 pm
I’ve been using Yahoo mail for years now with the Opera browser. I don’t know why the new mail beta supposedly doesn’t work with Opera, but if it isn’t made compatible eventually… I’ll just switch to Gmail.
Finally something comes along that gives a reason other than convenience to stay with Yahoo and not switch to Gmail, and they screw it up like this. Whatever…
September 16th, 2006 at 3:33 pm
Bob, I think you’re being overly harsh on the frontend guys. If you had any idea what hoops these guys have to go through to get the beta working on the platforms that 95% of the population use, then maybe you wouldn’t ride them so harshly for not having it ready for the other 5%.
September 21st, 2006 at 4:37 am
Hey Ryan,
I noticed yesterday when I logged into my yahoo mail account from Opera 9, that I was directed to the new mail inteface. Have the ‘Oddpost’ guys been working on Opera support? If so, that’s great. I did notice that not all the functionality was working correctly yet but, hey, this service is still beta.
p.s. I really like new interface.
September 21st, 2006 at 9:03 am
I wasn’t aware of them adding Opera support, but they can be quite sneaky. Maybe one of them did it while nobody was looking.
September 29th, 2006 at 12:12 pm
Love, Love, Love the new Yahoo Beta!
October 2nd, 2006 at 1:15 am
I like it very much. It’s simple and straight forward.
October 6th, 2006 at 6:53 am
Is Y-Mail beta compatible with Apple OS Safari?
October 6th, 2006 at 8:23 am
Not at this time, sorry.
October 8th, 2006 at 2:32 am
I tried yahoo beta a few weeks ago, then switched back to the old version. Ever since then, when I open “any” e-mail, it opens, but with errors, namely reply click not defines and when I try to delete an open e-mail I get an error saying object expected.
I have tried to switch back to the beta version, but it will not accept me.
I hope that others do not encounter this problem.
Incidentally, I have sent several inquiries to Yahoo asking for help, but todate, I have not received a response.
I hope I haven’t bored anyone.
October 20th, 2006 at 6:59 pm
I used beta mail for a while but after downloading IE7 it won
t show rich text in compose, and other buttons in the inbox are not there anymore, any suggestions?
October 20th, 2006 at 8:53 pm
I know the frontend team was dealing with some IE 7 compatibility issues. My suggestion is be patient. IE 7 is completely new. It’s reasonable to think that there might be bugs in IE 7 and compatibility quirks in the applications you use.
But rest assured, the frontend team is very proactive about dealing with IE 7 problems.
November 10th, 2006 at 8:56 am
When will yahoo beta mail be supported on Opera?
November 10th, 2006 at 8:57 am
Sorry it is mobile yahoo on a Nokia E61.
December 27th, 2006 at 12:29 am
how do i download it, because i accidentally changed it to the original one and now i dont no how to get it back to the yahoo beta?
thanks,
Courtney
December 27th, 2006 at 10:07 am
It’s a web application, you don’t download it. If you’re back in Classic Yahoo! Mail, click on the “Options” link. You should see a link there to try out the Beta. That should get you back in.
January 24th, 2007 at 9:38 am
Ryan:
How can I increase the text size in the beta version. The previous yahoo mail remedie: “view” “increase text size” does not work on beta
Thanks
April 29th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
how can i switch back to yahoo mail original setting? im having a problem loging in to mail beta.. can’t read my mail and everytime i want to login, the msg “yahoo mail beta experience login error, object expected” always appear.
appreciate if you could help me…
May 4th, 2007 at 8:30 am
I have solved the problem between yahoo mail beta and opera
https://www.chip.com.tr/forum/konu.asp?TOPIC_ID=28746
May 26th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
Please return me to the original Yahoo Mail (not the Beta)–I can’t access my Address list to direct my return EMail. I do not like the format—please get me back.
May 26th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
Have you tried clicking on the “Switch Back” link at the top?
June 10th, 2007 at 12:34 am
i can’t login in yahoomail beta so plz give me suggetion how to come back to original yahoomail
June 12th, 2007 at 5:33 am
I am having the same issue with the beta login. Suddenly I get a “page cannot be displayed” “cannot find server” error. So since I can’t open beta, I cannot get in to switch back.
July 21st, 2007 at 11:48 pm
Hi,
) Anyway I suppose I’ll stick with the new interface now as it is doing its stuff and its must faster too than the previous time (maybe the code was streamlined?) .
I was one of the early beta invitees.However, I had to revert back a couple of times to the classic interface because of many issues (incl one in which my Inbox never showed up! I had left feedback too). Today I just upgraded my account to the “plus” version and debated if I should try the beta again and I did. I must say, there certainly have been lots of changes since I last checked. I see a lot of improvements now (and yes my Inbox shows
Cheers
Peter
August 6th, 2007 at 11:32 am
i want to end my beta version of mail box
August 22nd, 2007 at 6:20 pm
i find it so had opening my mails these days. it’s quite fulstrating. i really need to switch to my normal yahoo homepage.