Yahoo! Mail Beta Goes Public 262
prostoalex writes "After months of being tested via limited beta, Yahoo! Mail Beta, developed after Oddpost acquisition, is now available to the world. From the review: 'The new Yahoo Mail Beta is touted as being as functional as a desktop email client (such as Outlook). Other new features include an integrated calendar timeline (including mashups with Yahoo Maps), drag and drop e-mail organization, message preview, tabs for messages, plus an integrated RSS reader.' Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg was using Yahoo! Mail Beta back in September of last year and wrote the following: 'I've been comparing the new version of Yahoo Mail, which claims to be the leader in Web mail, with Gmail, the challenger Yahoo most fears. My verdict: The new Yahoo Mail is far superior to Gmail. Yahoo more closely matches the desktop experience most serious email users have come to expect. Gmail, by contrast, is quirky and limited. Its only advantage is its massive free storage, which exceeds what most people will ever need.'"
Ads (Score:5, Interesting)
I can only see so many half-page ads about going back to school to get a nursing degree.
Re:Ads -- vs. gmail adwords (Score:2, Interesting)
Plus, I remember the reasons I moved towards GMail in the first place:
Jabber vs. Yahoo Chat (Score:2)
The POP access is the main thing for me, and it is part of a trend. They also provide a Jabber compliant chat account, rather than some proprietary protocol that can only talk to Yahoo chat subscribers. Now the install base for Jabber is not huge right now, but for those who use it internally for their company or who just want a choice of clients it is a big bonus. Go open standards! Boo proprietary lock-in.
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I've been using Yahoo Mail for months and have never seen an ad...
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Just looking at my newly created Yahoo Mail (BETA!) inbox, I've got ads for a new mortgage, credit cards, university degrees, my credit score, internet stalking tools (find that e-mail!), and new telephone service. It's fricking spam before I even get any e-mail to get pissed off about. My Google inbox view has ads for ... none, nada, zip, zero, zilch. I wonder what happens when I actually get an e-mail - which they havn't delivered yet (sending or receiving).
The (Bayasian filter) score thus far:
Google =
Ads - and slow! (Score:2)
Is Gmail primitive in appearance by comparison? Sure, but it works, and it is significantly faster. Usefully faster. I won't be switching back.
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My Yahoo (Score:2)
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What I *really* like about google is that I can also format my personalized page for mobile access. Not only can I now easily read my RSS feeds on my blackberry, but google also filters/adapts links from the RSS for mobile access.
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Is it better enough? (Score:5, Insightful)
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What's particularly relevant here is that
I prefer Gmail myself, though — for exactly the reason that it doesn't try to be a desktop em
Re:Is it better enough? (Score:5, Insightful)
I love Gmail because the conversation threading is a great way to read a lot of of emails, labels are much more versatile than folders, and fast, fast search.
Oh, and like someone else mentioned, it doesn't stick a damn ad at the end of my e-mail like Yahoo does. Drag and drop is great, but labels are just as easy to apply and can work just the same as folders simply by moving the mouse as well.
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There is. IMAP.
My world: CommuniGate Pro, on a RHEL box. I run Outlook on the desktop, because:
Quirky indeed.. (Score:3, Informative)
-from the article.
It's important to note that this statement is no longer true, despite the fact that it was back in 2005. Gmail may no longer be as "quirky and limited" as Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg once thought.
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Fact: Searching with Gmail is quicker than sorting stuff into folders.
Fact: Conversation view makes it much more obvious the flow of communication between participants.
Fact: Labels are folders, if you want that to be true.
The only thing it doesn't have is drag-and-drop, a
ads (Score:5, Interesting)
I like it but... (Score:5, Informative)
I have not compared to Gmail however, but the lag gets to me.
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When I moved out the sticks there was no dsl, no cable , and satelite was too way expensive. That left me with modem over ancient phone lines (how 20th century!). A friend gave me a 56k modem with which I found I was able to connect at a MIGHTY 22k baud.
The new Yahoo mail was COMPLETELY unusable. It couldn't get past the loading screen.
Been using it for a couple of months now. . . (Score:5, Interesting)
Well I love it when I'm at work. because it works at work on my Windoz box. But it does not work on my Mac at home. I use firefox both at work and home (sometimes safari at home as well) and doesn't matter what browser I use at home cause it doesn't work. Now I did get an error message back when I first started using the beta, and it said something to the effect that Yahoo does not currently support Mail Beta on OS X, and that it would revert to standard mail, until further notice.
So the biggest question is. . . Why Firefox on XP but not Firefox on OS X??? AND. . . With it being now publicly available, does it now work with OS X as well?
Guess I'll find out when I get home.
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I don't use it often, the ads are way too annoying, and the interface is slow.
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Funny and sad fact is, Netscape mail "upgraded" to AOL mail and it is very similar to this Flash/Ajax thing yet works perfectly and supported perfectly on Safari.
I got Omniweb 5.5 stable here, it is running Leopard like Webkit, as it has spoofing capabilities I set it to show it like Firefox latest (Windows) and it didn't work. Doesn't go past login screen, a guy jumps up and down on a baloo
please define (Score:2, Interesting)
What does this mean? "Serious email users"...isn't this just a kind way of saying "people without myspace, aim, or irc".... i write tons of emails but most of them are far from serious
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"serious" is a relative term, apparently.
Yahoo Fanboy (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.moskalyuk.com/blog/category/yahoo/ [moskalyuk.com]
Re:Yahoo Fanboy (Score:5, Informative)
We changed the face of Yahoo! Tech front page today
That's a wee bit more than a fanboy speaking. Or you could just do the google thing and find this bio [zdnet.com] as the first link.
Alex Moskalyuk is a full-time Technical Yahoo!...
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But does it block spam? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yahoo! mail's filter is getting worse. I get at least 6-8 spam emails a week that make it past the filter and into my inbox. The recent influx has been from spam people linking to geocities websites (is it in Yahoo!'s interest to not block these?). That is my #1 complaint about Yahoo! Mail: Fix your damn filter. Its been broken for awhile, and I even consistently report the spam, yet it seems to do nothing.
OTOH, my Gmail account gets spam, but I have never yet seen any mislabeled messages.
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The XXXXX's in the to: field are commented out prefix, sent to common words @yahoo.com. The view status link goes to a different Yahoo user's geocities account (I have never visited, I am not sure what they contain: probably bad stuff). I'm not going to link it here, but they are generally some name and then a string of numbers (like the spam originator's account name). Note that these ema
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As for the beta it seems pretty good, I can't comment on the annoyance of the ads sence I don't see them (the mail plus transfers over to the beta it seems) but it does work under linux firefox
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Oh, right... indeed there are ads on GMail.
Took me a month or so of daily use to even notice them.
Oh, right... automated text processing, looking for keywords, matching that with their adwords... really creepy.
Actually, I've found it funny - nay: hilarious - on several occasions. For instance, I got a completely
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What Google ads are relatively unobtrusive, Yahoo! ads are quite the opposite. Google ads interfere with the experience less.
No. Google's computers are seeing every bit of my mail in any case. It should bother me that Google enhances my experience by serving me unobtrusive ads for things I might actually be interested in rather than just a random selection weighted on
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I would love to see your inbox such that you get 15,000-20,000 spam messages a day. If nothing else, a quick survey of about 80 messages in my Junk folder gives an average spam size of 28KB. Are you claiming you get /600MB/ of spam a day? If nothing else, based on retention policies of 7
Why would I want a desktop mail client? (Score:5, Insightful)
Gmail got me to give up mutt. It's pretty damn good.
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What I'm saying is, if you can implement a mail client that works just as effectively that doesn't need CTRL/SHIFT+Click selecting, drag & drop, or right click menus, why should you care if it's missing?
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I only use it for archiving mail since it does have a great search capability.
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A desktop-style mail client can read messages from the IMAP server running in my closet. I'm pretty sure Gmail and Yahoo! Mail Beta don't do that, though they could if they wanted to.
Advantages? (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember, Google means search. The reason why Google mail is "quirky" is that it is a completely different approach to organizing your saved mail. That means learning a whole different way to deal with looking back through old messages to find things.
Frankly, I haven't used gmail enough to really get comfortable with it, but I can see how some people wouldn't like it. However, comparing it with Outlook is counterproductive. Gmail doesn't even try to look like Outlook, because it has whole different vision of the world.
More behind the scenes than you think ... (Score:2)
For those who've been watching livehttpehaders [mozdev.org] while looking at Yahoo! Mail Beta would have noticed something cool and awesome. Here's a snip from my dump.
The client to server protocol is SOAP and pretty much should be accessible with a standard soap li
Gmail has free POP3 (Score:3, Informative)
Yahoo has that option but it costs money. Possibly that has changed.
Another of Gmail's "only advantage" [sic] is that you can change the "From:" header to other email addresses after authentication. Yahoo only offers "Reply-to:" modification. (Unfortunately, Microsoft Outlook uses the "Sender:" header in email display.)
Setting the bar pretty low. (Score:4, Funny)
Comparing to outlook, man, that's like comparing your product to a painful rectal itch.
As a long time Yahoo mail user (Score:2)
More GMail vs YahooMail (Score:5, Informative)
Yahoo Mail has an overall look/feel very similar to a desktop email client. *cough*Outlook*cough* The integration with RSS, maps and calendars is very nice, search is fast and relevant, being able to drag-drop everything is fun, and the tabbed email interface is a great way to quickly switch between different emails that you have open.
That said, there are some cons, and they're doozies. The first is the ads. Tons of 'em, each pretty flashy, and they're all over the place... and strategically placed near locations you're likely to click. The other is just an annoyance factor, and may in fact be limited to IE, since I haven't used Yahoo Mail in anything other than IE. Yes, I use IE. Anyway, whenever I do *anything* in Yahoo Mail, such as load an email for reading, or even click over to my inbox, I'm presented with at least a dozen "link-click" sounds. This is just annoying if you use the default XP theme, and if you use a Star Wars theme -- as I sometime do -- a single click action becomse a minute-long lightsaber battle.
Other than those two complaints, though, Yahoo Mail is a very solid mail client.
In comparison to GMail, however, I have to stick to GMail. I'd love to see some of the features available in the Yahoo Beta put into GMail, but I can live without 'em. I can't live without GMail's "Conversation" email grouping feature, and I'd rather have Tags than folders any day of the week. And GMail's Archive feature... I had to go searching for something I had archived as unnecessary a few months ago on my GMail account, part of an old somewhat silly conversation now dead. Had I had the conversation through my Yahoo account, I'd have deleted the emails outright.
M2 (Score:3, Insightful)
The POP vs Forwarding keeps me out (Score:4, Insightful)
In the end, their goofy policy leads to me reading email using someone else's site -- probably not what they intended.
It's broken for me (Score:2)
Anybody else see this, or is my browser foobarred?
I've been using this for several months already (Score:2)
1) It's not possible anymore when replying to have the original text indented with > and write your reply inline, gmail is better since if you scroll in the original text and press enter it allows you to separate the vertical bar and write
2) There is a right-click menu with a lot of functionality and shortcuts, but this is unusable in firefox as firefox's right click menu comes up on top (I assume they have a worka
Yahoo Mail experience (Score:3, Informative)
Stupid Question Time (Score:2)
Desktop functional client? (Score:2)
Yahoo mail is good if you like outlook express. (Score:3, Insightful)
Gmail is far more useful for anyone who wants more than basic mail functionality.
Functional? (Score:2)
Outlook is functional?
You're right, you do know what's best... (Score:2, Insightful)
I guess they're right...my Outlook PSTs are only 1.15GB. The size I've got isn't that uncommon from the five people polled in my office. Yes, that's four years worth of email; but when I've got to pull up something from two years ago, I need it.
what kind of idiot (Score:2)
My IMAP mail provides 100% 'the desktop experience' and has a web interface. By that account it beats Yahoo(!) hands down.
Unlimited space? Mine has that too.
You fools! (Score:2)
The name (Score:4, Funny)
Orig Article==Misdirection (Score:2)
YahooMailbeta
It looks nice enough, but... (Score:2)
I might give it another look if they bring those features up to the same interface standards.
YaWho? (Score:2)
I set them to "please don't email me ever", and from time to time they then reset them to their default "we will spam you as much as we can".
No thanks.
No Unicode support (Score:5, Interesting)
If a message uses Unicode (UTF-8), all non-ASCII characters are
displayed completely wrong.
They forgot about Unicode in a new e-mail application in 2006?
Are they out of their minds?!
Gmail on the other hand handles Unicode (writing and reading)
as should every single application developed today.
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But I did hate the Yahoo beta when I tried it, and immediately switched back. I'm not looking forward to it become the default.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
I can go Inbox->Bob->Wedgie
can tags to that visually?
The things I dislike about gmail:
1) Does not show the email in the from. I have 2 threads that say diane,me (different people)
2) cannot sort on subject or from only date.
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I'm not telling you how to organize things, or how to prefer to organize things :) I used to do the same thing that you do, but realized that I was being kind of silly when creating folders for things with existing metadata. In this case, "from". Now I just organize by "Wedgie" and if I want to see "Bob" I either search for "Bob" or sort by sender and scroll to all of the "Bob" emails.
I don't use gmail very much either, as like you I find the sorting options too restrictive. Outlook is actually very nice i
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Also I don't think gmail sorts by sender (the second og my complaints).
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
It *IS* hierarchal.... (Score:2)
There you go.
Search commands vs. visual interface (Score:2)
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Oh, and it's good to know that having issues with software is trolling...
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Yeah, Google does that just fine: you set your filters to apply the appropriate tags, and automatically archive the messages that the tags are applied to. Only the untagged stuff will be in your inbox.
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You are getting what you pay for.
Looking at their "upgrades" page, you can drop every ad completely for a whopping $20 a year. I think that is quite reasonable, and have done it myself.
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I've blocked all those floating ads and intellitxt scripts.
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Me too. But then again I still use SquirrelMail on a paid IMAP provider (with personal bayes and sieve filtering and more features than you can shake a stick at) and love it.
Re:So... (Score:5, Funny)
It's a... Swiss Army Hammer.
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You garden with a hammer?
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
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I second the statement of preference for the Yahoo! vanilla interface. The poor UI responsiveness was really dramatic... to the point that my parental units called me up one evening, after having accidentally enabled the Beta mode for their account, asking what they did to slow down "the internet" so badly.
At least, this was the case a couple months back. I haven't checked since... they've stayed away from any buttons labeled 'Beta', and as the new version isn't compatible with half my machines at hom
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I tried the new interface for a few weeks and just switched back to the old vanilla version a few days ago.
In general, I liked the interface and the way that it looked and acted like a desktop email client.
But, I have two big gripes with it:
1. It was too slow and unresponsive for me.
2. The third column (the one containing the ad) was proportionally too large for the interface. I understand that Yahoo makes their money from ads, but can't they make the ads a little smaller and les
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Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
I've been using both Yahoo Mail and Gmail since their respective launches and I just switched over to the Yahoo beta and immediately switched back.
I'm not sure where the idea is coming from that people who use web mail want a desktop style interface. Outlook isn't exactly known for its speed or intuitiveness, and that's what the new Yahoo Mail is emulating. I couldn't tell you if it has more features than Gmail or not, because the only features I need are compose, send, reply and forward. The ability to attach files is nice, but that's pretty basic (though a lot more useful if you have a lot of storage space, i.e. Gmail).
The new Yahoo Mail may appeal to a certain type of user, but it is outright bloatware for those of us who use email in traditional ways, which I would argue is probably the majority of users out there. It's pretty ironic, but Gmail actually works more like a traditional, old-school email application - no folders, no clutter, not a lot of options. What options do you really need?
I have a relatively fast computer - a Turion 64 with 1GB of RAM. Both Gmail and the old Yahoo Mail load in less than 1 second for me. The New Yahoo Mail took 5 seconds to load. That may not seem like a lot, but everything I did also took 5 seconds. That adds up when you consider that in any given email session, I might make 30 clicks. It gets frustrating fast when your email doesn't respond immediately, or takes noticeable amounts of time to redraw pages. I also didn't like the obtrusive ads in the new interface.
So I switched back. I don't use Yahoo Mail as my primary account anymore anyway, but if they switch to the new interface exclusively, I may just give it up altogether.
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Just like Yahoo!
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Yeah, and (except for a couple of serious flaws, including my kneecaps being broken) the new Bob's Diner is superior to Joe's Eats. :) I have poor enough vision as it is without being assaulted by a metric buttload of graphic ads.