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.
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
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.
Pls make my yahoo to Yahoo Beta Mail
Evidently you missed the bit where I said get on the waiting list.
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.
When is the New yahoo mail beta Calender going to come out.
What makes you think there is a Yahoo! Mail Beta Calendar?
Ryan,
I mean by,when I click on Calender in my yahoo mail, I am taken to the Old interface Calender.
log on to your yahoo mail account and open this link http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta/
Hit Try it now
DONE
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…
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%.
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.
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.
Love, Love, Love the new Yahoo Beta!
I like it very much. It’s simple and straight forward.
Is Y-Mail beta compatible with Apple OS Safari?
Not at this time, sorry.
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.
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?
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.
When will yahoo beta mail be supported on Opera?
Sorry it is mobile yahoo on a Nokia E61.
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
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.
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
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…
I have solved the problem between yahoo mail beta and opera
https://www.chip.com.tr/forum/konu.asp?TOPIC_ID=28746
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.
Have you tried clicking on the “Switch Back” link at the top?
i can’t login in yahoomail beta so plz give me suggetion how to come back to original yahoomail
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.
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
i want to end my beta version of mail box
i find it so had opening my mails these days. it’s quite fulstrating. i really need to switch to my normal yahoo homepage.