It may seem like it’s been a while since our last major release of Yahoo! Mail Beta, but rest assured we’ve used that time wisely. We’ve been focused on three major areas: bigger, better and faster.

Bigger

Nothing’s bigger than infinite, so I guess nothing’s bigger than Yahoo! Mail now that we’re offering infinite storage.

Better

Many users complained that the checkboxes from classic mail were gone. They wanted an easier way to select multiple messages at once. They wanted to move, delete and mark as spam messages without opening them in the reading pane. We heard you loud and clear, so checkboxes are back. A new column down the left side of the message list allows you to select messages (without opening them in the reading pane) and take action on them as a set. Of course, for those of us accustomed to rich mail applications, you can still Shift-click and Ctrl-click to your heart’s desire when selecting messages.

We’re very sensitive to user feedback. When you switch from Yahoo! Mail Beta back to classic, we actually pay attention to why you’re switching back. As a result, many changes made in this release are the direct result of you telling us what you want.

Users are getting smarter and smarter, learning the ways of the spammers and phishers. Many users are conscious of opening messages because of the possibility of image beacons and JavaScript security attacks. Several users complained that it was difficult to take action (delete, mark as spam, etc) on messages without actually opening the message in the reading pane. Voila! Now you can right click on a message and it won’t be opened in the reading pane. Once you’ve taken action on the message using the context menu, whatever you had selected before right clicking is restored.

We took feedback from users and reorganized the message toolbar. The “Delete” and “Spam” buttons are no longer next to one another, making it harder to accidentally click one when you meant the other. Additionally, a “Move” button has been added, allowing you to move selected messages to a particular folder (for users who are less comfortable with drag and drop). The “More Actions” button has been expanded to include “Darren’s Extended Navigation” feature (I mentioned it in the last post). Lastly, remember the “View” button? You know, the one that said “More View Options Coming Soon” forever? Well, some view options have been added: sort by unread, sender, subject, date, size, attachment or flag.

We’ve added an option for marking messages as read. Previously your only choices were: immediately, after 2 seconds and after 5 seconds. We’ve added a new option: never. That option allows you to completely control when (or if) your messages are marked read.

Additionally, this release significantly reduces the clicking sounds you hear when using Internet Explorer.

Faster

Launch is now significantly faster. A lot of work has been done under the hood in this release for performance. One particular change we’ve done involved what we call componentization. The short version is, several pieces of functionality have been broken up (componentized) and are now loaded on demand when they’re needed. So if you never use a particular component, you never pay the cost of loading it.

Selecting messages in the message list to view in the preview pane is also faster.

If you’re a keyboard person like me and you hate reaching for the mouse, then you’ll love this feature. Select one or more messages in the message list and press the “d” key. The “Move” menu will drop down, allowing you to use the up/down arrow keys to select a folder to move the messages to. Slick.

Yahoo! Mail Evangelist

At the Web 2.0 conference in November, we took the wraps off of one of our newest, coolest features: Yahoo! Messenger integrated with Yahoo! Mail Beta. But, that was just a preview of what was to come. Today, we will start to release this exciting new feature. But, we’ll be rolling out the feature gradually, so, unfortunately, not everyone will have access immediately.

As part of this release, we put together a screencast that runs through how the integration works and what you can do now that Messenger and Mail are sitting side by side in your browser. Aside from the obvious of being able to instantly connect with 73 million Yahoo! Messenger users worldwide (according to comScore, 12/2006), you also get a seamless experience melding instant messaging with email.

This is the first screencast, so don’t be too harsh.

Update: Some people have been asking for higher resolution versions of the screencast so they can read the witty banter in the chat sessions. So, we have put up a higher resolution screencast for your viewing enjoyment. You may want to stick with the embedded video below if you’re on a slower internet connection or if you’re running a screen resolution lower than 1024×768.

The Yahoo! Mail Beta Team

We’ are just starting to roll out this new release. As always, we’ will be upgrading systems over a period of time, so if you don’t get the update right away, please be patient.

Performance Updates

We hear complaints about the speed of the beta from time to time. Fortunately, we have some superstar developers dedicated to optimization. In this latest release, there have been some good performance gains. You should notice the preview pane (the message reading area below the message list) loads faster. We also did some work to make tab switching a bit more speedy. We even did a bit of work on the compose message tab. In addition, message sending should be much faster, particularly if you’re sending to a large number of recipients.

Not enough? Never fear. Our superstar DHTML gurus are hard at work on the next release, working to cut down the start up time of Yahoo! Mail Beta.

Features

The welcome page has a welcome addition: the weather! The top of the welcome page now displays your local weather. Even better, the location is taken directly from your Yahoo! location preference. You can select other locations as well by clicking on the city name.

You do use Yahoo! Calendar, don’t you? Well, good news then. The calendar strip in Yahoo! Mail Beta now allows you to set reminders when adding and editing calendar events.

One usability complaint we received had to do with search results. When viewing search results, it wasn’t always clear that something had happened when you deleted a message (we update the location column, but that’s too subtle). Now we strikethrough the from, subject and date to let you know the message has been moved to the trash.

Bugs

Yes, it’s true…we’re not perfect. To atone, we’ve gone back and tried to fix some annoyances people may have been seeing in the previous release.

And speaking of annoyances, if you’re an Internet Explorer user and you hate hearing all the clicks while you’re using Yahoo! Mail Beta, raise your hand. You’re not alone, we don’t like them either. So we did some work in this release to decrease the number of click sounds you hear when using the beta. We didn’t entirely eliminate them (we’re still working on that), so if you want to disable the clicks for good in Internet Explorer, see our help page, Can I turn off the “click” sounds I hear?.

We’ve added Windows Vista to the list of supported operating systems. No more seeing the “rough seas” page for Vista users!

Lastly, if you’ve explicitly set a reply to address, you may notice that it’s being ignored when sending mail. N ot anymore! We fixed that one too.

Language Support

I can’t say that I speak any of these languages, but the important news is that Yahoo! Mail Beta does. We’ve added support for five new languages in this release: Mexican Spanish, Spanish for the US, Argentinean Spanish, Indonesian and Malay.

Is that it?

It might sound like we took an awful long time to get those changes out, but that’s not all we’ve been working on. Our engineers have been hard at work on IM integration and it’s awesome. So awesome that I’m going to need another post to do it the justice it deserves. So keep your eyes open in the near future for a big post about one of the most exciting new features ever to come to Yahoo! Mail.

If you can’t wait, here’s some external posts from the unveiling we did at the Web 2.0 Conference:

• Techcrunch: Single Ajax Interface For Yahoo Mail & IM Coming
• CNET News.com: Yahoo to embed instant messaging in e-mail
• Download Squad: Yahoo! Mail to get integrated IM

A fresh new version of Yahoo! Mail Beta is here, and your ideas and feedback are at the core of what makes it stronger and more useful. Here’s what you asked for, so here’s what we did:

Integrated Calendar

The new calendar timeline (hanging out down there, along the bottom of your window) is like a ticker view of all your upcoming appointments. It makes it super easy to add and edit events, see when you’re busy and when you’re free, and generally stay on top of your schedule. We’ll provide a lot more detail about it in an upcoming post, but no need to wait – give it a try now!

Smarter attaching

Attaching has gotten a heck of a lot easier, and now you can attach a big file and continue working. Files upload in the background, instead of stopping you in your tracks.

New Options

We cleaned up and integrated Options, made them much easier to navigate, and fortified ‘em with even more of the features you’ve put on our list. Like being able to choose the delay before a message is marked as read (leave it bold and deal with it later), set the font for reading and composing plain text emails (ASCII art nerds rejoice!), and more. Righteous!

Spam and Size columns

We’re proud to announce a brand-new vertical in your Inbox and other folders. It’s the Spam column, right next to Flag. Now, when you see a piece of spam and want to fry it without even blinking at it in the Reading Pane, all you have to do is click. And guess what? The Size column is back from its sabbatical, tanned and refreshed. Get an immediate look at an email’s mass, from many K to negligible K. K?

Also Improved

For those using Firefox, composing’s faster now, and scrolling’s smoother too. Also smoother? Search results – which no longer have the gall to occasionally overlap. And contact editing, which no longer happens in a novelty-sized uber-dialog. You want more?! How about seeing the # of unread messages first in the browser rectangle in the taskbar (appearing at the bottom of PC screens everywhere). By your request, it’s the quickest look yet at the state-of-the-Inbox.

Cheers and happy emailing,

The Yahoo! Mail Beta Team