Does the New Yahoo Mail Deliver?

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2006/tc200 61030_803112.htm




Technology October 30, 2006, 12:10AM EST
Does the New Yahoo Mail Deliver?
The revamp comes with abundant bells and whistles. But be warned: This
is a product where beta truly means beta
by Justin Bachman

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Editor's Rating:
The Good: Tabbed windows; macro keys; cleaner interface; prominent RSS
feed bins
The Bad: Sluggish response at times; more obtrusive advertising
placement
The Bottom Line: A major improvement in features and design, but
decidedly still a beta e-mail product
Reader Reviews

A sizable chunk of the world entrusts its e-mail to Yahoo! (YHOO),
which has become the market leader, with some 257 million accounts. But
as it nears its 10th birthday, the service has grown quite long in the
tooth, an adequate but ultra-retro product that virtually shouted, "I
was cool in 1997!"
Last month, the Web portal unveiled a major redesign of its e-mail
product, incorporating technology from Oddpost, its July, 2004
acquisition. The San Francisco company was a premium Web e-mail service
that sought to bring the desktop application experience to Internet
mail clients. No more boxes to check or uncheck for moving or
deletions, pages to refresh, etc.
Yahoo's beta test of the new mail service actually rolled out in
September, 2005, but had been restricted over the past year, mostly to
former Oddpost users, Yahoo's broadband subscribers, and those who pay
$19.99 a year for a premium version of the e-mail service. The
Oddpost-cum-Yahoo interface, based on the Ajax Web programming system,
was built around the notion of having a server send only that data
which you're using or you request, leaving untouched on your screen the
bits of a page not being used. That frees up bandwidth and processor
resources to allow you faster Web driving.
Overload
That's the theory, at least. But in Yahoo's beta e-mail can be slow to
load; scrolling or clicking to older messages is sometimes sluggish,
which means you can spend moments staring at a "loading" message. Yahoo
says the sluggishness is simply a matter of reorganizing mail's
technical innards and doesn't indicate major operating hurdles to
resolve. Indeed, a new iteration of Yahoo Mail and its underlying
infrastructure that promises to deliver a speedier user experience is
expected by yearend, says Ethan Diamond, Yahoo Mail's product
management director and Oddpost co-founder.
Aesthetically, one must state the obvious: Yahoo's new three-pane
e-mail design with drag-and-drop box features will remind users of
other mail clients...er, Outlook. And not just a little. The new Yahoo
Mail incorporates your contacts, calendar, and notes in the user
interface, just like Outlook. Yet it's a cleaner design and more
intuitive, if bulkier and more dilatory than some of its rivals-at
least at this stage of its evolution. The new mail adds RSS bins to the
lineup, allowing you to customize your subscriptions and check for new
feeds whenever you query for new mail.
Yahoo's new e-mail system also offers tabbed navigation to let users
open numerous e-mails and jump among them. No need to close one message
to refer to another in the inbox or trash. Indeed, mail tabbing
presented one of those so-called lightbulb moments for me: Why had I
never been able to do this in e-mail before? This wonderful feature
alone might help to mitigate any perturbation from when you're waiting
on the program. I also like the new quick keys. Just hit the R key and
you get a reply screen, or F if you want to forward. M will check for
new mail, and N opens a new message window; control+enter sends your
message. O.K., it's minor, but it saves time with the mouse.
Giant Step
There are a few annoyances with the beta version, to be sure. The new
e-mail system works only with Microsoft's Internet Explorer and
Mozilla's Firefox browsers. That's not a major hassle, except that
Microsoft (MSFT) no longer makes new versions of IE for the Macintosh
OS. And because of the new navigation features, Yahoo Mail now places
its advertising strip at the right of the screen, which is more
imposing than in its former spot at the top. Diamond says his team is
tinkering with alternative placements. Also, if you want to revert to
the old mail and then back to the new, you must log out from Yahoo
entirely.
All in all, Yahoo's Beta Mail is a different animal, moving gingerly
toward a more sophisticated user interface through a technology that
may still have a few kinks to smooth out in the e-mail realm. "We're
not ready for mom and pop in Kansas to jump on this and feel
comfortable right now...like they're using the old Yahoo Mail," says
Diamond. And there's scant chance of that happening. But Yahoo pledges
to retire the "beta" tag soon and operate a free e-mail client to help
maintain its place in the field.