The new Yahoo Mail !
Edited on : Nov 28, 2013 - It looks like there are several features which are available on the iPhone version of the app, and not on the Android one. Take 'swipe on a message' for instance. My android app does not reveal the quick options that the iPhone version does - 'delete', 'search all messages from this user' and 'star as important'. Added several new points (read on!)
Edited on : Nov 12, 2013 - Yahoo has added the Recent link on the sidebar in Yahoo Mail! A good alternative to the Tabs feature that a lot of users wanted to see again. 'Recent' gives you a list of recently opened emails - this seems better than Tabs because now you won't have many tabs cluttered at the top. This is another neat feature introduced in a series of changes in Yahoo Mail. Read the following for my earlier analysis :
Continuing with my review of the revamped offerings from Yahoo, it is time for a personal analysis of the new Yahoo Mail. Of all the yahoo products, I use Mail the most. I have used it for as long as I can remember. While I was pretty happy with the earlier version too, the new look has certainly brought some pleasant surprises! I am aware of the many complaints that people have been posting on YahooCare, but on a closer look I realized that quite a lot of them have just been repeated. Anyhow, I hope to cover them too in this article.
Positives:
1. Compose Mail window gives the look and feel of Tumblr.
2. Themes from Flickr: Yahoo has made a fresh and instantly noticeable change by integrating themes as images from its popular photosharing service. This has lightened up the look and feel of the app. Find Themes under Tools, and you can select from an array of options. Yahoo has also incorporated the design tactics of its much appreciated Yahoo Weather app, with a clean, translucent UI. High-quality, colorful and pleasing touch to the interface.
3. Swipe through emails to go to the next or previous emails.
4. Loads faster than Gmail : After listening to Marissa Mayer say that, I checked to see if it really did. Yahoo mail does seem to open up faster than gmail on average, although with little noticeable speed difference. Like the CEO said, the aim is to keep Mail simple and fast, so it doesn't have to load video chat (like Hangouts in gmail), which they may experiment with but it may get in the way of users using the product everyday. It might also have to do with the fact that Yahoo Mail, by default, does not load with https (HTTP Secure).
5. Preview Pane: Instant previewing of emails is a great feature. You can add the preview pane to the right or to the bottom.
6. Recent Searches: A list of last 5 recent searches is shown when you click/tap on the search box. Nifty!
7. Quick reply button at the bottom of email. Makes intuitive sense as one would reply to emails after having read the whole mail. To preserve the older view, the reply buttons are provided at the top too.
8. Quick search feature on hovering over an email (desktop). Really handy when you want to see all messages from a sender.
9. Group messages functionality - Having the context of the full conversation intact is important, so Yahoo group related messages together to give you a quick way to add to the conversation. Must say it has been very well managed with the Collapse All/Expand All button.
10. Text Editing options: Yahoo retains its text editing options, something which its competitive offering like gmail doesn't provide.
11. Powerful email search: Yahoo gives options to search emails by sender, recipient, subject, attachments and photos. These categorizations, which are missing in gmail, are handy.
12. Provides features like disposable addresses for free, which were originally provided only with a Mail Plus paid subscription.
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Suggestions:
1. Bringing the Tabs back would delight many Mail users. According to YahooCare, thousands of people have voted for this option to be retained in the new Yahoo Mail. - fixed with the new 'Recent' feature
2. HTTPS should be enabled by default - this change will be rolled from January 2014.
3. The email swiping action on the Android app should reveal quick options like Mark as Read, Mark as Spam, Delete and others which are available on other offerings like Gmail. - only available on iPhone as of now.
4. Add a shared folders/shared travel plans functionality. As a student or an employee who collaborates with other teammates on a project, sharing of notes/plans/project-files is highly important. Including this feature in Yahoo Mail would also differentiate it from Gmail, which doesn't have this functionality.
5. Remove the sponsored add from the top. As soon as the app loads, I want to read the top email because that's the most recent. However, the sponsored add slides down a couple of seconds later at the top, and I almost always click on it unintentionally. I would want to see a better placement for the add. Somewhere in the middle of the stacked emails is a good position to place an advertisement.
6. The kind of ads delivered through partnerships: It isn't only important to provide ads, its more important to provide relevant ones. It would be nice to see ads which tell me about stuff happening around me. Yahoo has always been great at partnerships. With Yahoo's already increasing focus on local search, collaborating with Groupon and Facebook Deals to give relevant local ads can help a lot.
6. Resizing the preview pane. On the desktop, when the Preview Pane has been enabled and placed on the right of the inbox list, it would give the user more flexibility if he could resize the width of either column according to his own preferences. As of now, the width of the inbox list can be increased to a certain size only. Also, the preview pane to the right is not supported on several resolutions.
7. When I click inside the preview pane, and press the down arrow key with the intention to scroll down the message, Mail instead chooses to list the next item in the inbox list. This is a bug I suppose, and something that should be taken care of ASAP!
8. The link to Tumblr has not been provided. As a Tumblr user, it would be nice if I had that link at the top along with other Yahoo products.
Overall, Yahoo Mail looks fresher than ever. It has been kept simple and fast, and it fulfills all the requirements for a normal user. There are several minor issues which can lead to a major impact in how Mail is perceived among users. But this latest Yahoo Mail offering has surely spurred my interest.
