Thousands! of! Yahoo! Mail! users! driven! crazy! by! revamp! Yahoo! Mail's redesign has not gone over well with users, who are miffed at the Purple Palace's axing of features like tabs and changing how folders work. Yahoo! has been busily redesigning a number of its products, as well as tilting its exclamation mark a whimsical nine degrees as part of a logo revamp – much to the …
"1990 is still a bit early. Text-only Internets were all the rage back then.."
Think you might find it's pre-WWW too.
Errr, that's kind of the point. WWW is the webby stuff. He's referring to telnetting into BBS at best, dialing in at worst. Xmodem! Zmodem! The fun!
Or maybe Fidonet, which doesn't predate the actual internet but was all the rage back then.
Same thing with Opera. What idiot still writes web interfaces that are browser dependent? The only other place I've seen that in the last 10 years is Windows Update. There's a company who's client experience you want to emulate...
Two screens between clicking to open email and actually getting to see email is just stupid.
AND...
Every "upgrade" of yahoo mail has made it worse and slower. I've been happily on Yahoo email since it was first made available, with two email addresses. I've been able to bypass each crappy upgrade with different tricks, like have Firefox provide a different user agent.
But now, Yahoo has adopted Google's mantra of "upgrade or go die", so I have no choice. Now I dread checking my Yahoo email.
There are ways to switch back to classic Yahoo Mail, that is with tabs, folders, and so on. You can get the latest developments at the Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/yahoomailfail/ and a short tutorial how to get tabs and folders back permanently, that is without switching back to the good Yahoo Mail after you turn on your browser again at http://morepleasuretolife.com/2013/10/15/permanent-tabs-folders-yahoo-mail-tutorial/.
Of course the biggest problem here is not any changes made to the interface, it is that there is an interface at all. It is an email service, the clue is in the name, Yahoo! Mail, so why are people trying to use a web browser ? It is like complaining that the hammer you used to use for driving in screws is no longer available. Well use a screwdriver then.
Use a mail client for mail, there are plenty available, and as long as the standards are supported by the mail service, then you can choose the client/layout/features that suit you.
If Yahoo! had start changing the mail protocols to their own ends that would be different, until then.....
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We must be from the same decade. I also remember when people were able to type obviousurl.com in the address bar instead of googling absolutely everything. Things are not what they used to be anymore, and it saddens me a bit.
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I get the ones when I am doing internet/router support who don't even know what the address bar is, I say to type the router URL in the address bar in the browser and get asked if I mean type it into Google. Am I just getting old ?
" It is an email service, the clue is in the name, Yahoo! Mail, so why are people trying to use a web browser ?"
You sir, are an idiot. Yahoo Mail is not a traditional e-mail provider, it's WEB BASED e-mail. therefore it is meant to be read / used / accessed within a web browser.
IIRC - accessing Yahoo Mail with a traditional POP based e-mail client isn't free, when I last looked, this required payment of a $50 per year for Yahoo MailPlus.
The free sevice include POP3 and AFAIK IMAP these days. About the oulny thing you get for paying is no adds in the webmail interface, and IMHo if that's want you want there are several smaller webmail services like Fastmail who will give you ad-free webmail (and POP and IMAP) for far cheaper than what Yahoo charges for their premium service. Although Fastmail has become a bit pants since Opera bought them.
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You sir, are an idiot. Yahoo Mail is not a traditional e-mail provider, it's WEB BASED e-mail. therefore it is meant to be read / used / accessed within a web browser.
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Think of me as an idiot if you will, but if so then I am an idiot who understands what an oxymoron is.
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IIRC - accessing Yahoo Mail with a traditional POP based e-mail client isn't free, when I last looked, this required payment of a $50 per year for Yahoo MailPlus.
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Try checking rather than recalling if you don't want to be shown up then.
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Sound advice but not having to use a client is the main reason web mail exists.
Um.... nope. The main reason webmail exists is because it allows people to keep their email addy if they ever switch ISPs or their jobs. Of course, it later started turning into a given to have email access everywhere via a web interface, but the main reason for using free webmails is still the ISP/work independence.
"People still use an email client by choice?"
Absolutely! Anybody that is using email professionally should be using an email client rather than a web based interface. Being able to access email with a web browser is a good option to have for the times that you need to use a computer at a hotel, internet cafe or a customer's location but a specific client can be much more functional and secure.
A dedicated email client gives one the option of choosing an application with the best combination of options to suit the user. There is also the issue of consistency brought up in this article. Providers are often changing their interfaces and features around for no better reason than to change the appearance whether it improves functionality or not. With a separate email client, you get to choose if you want to "upgrade" your feature set at a time that is most convenient to you. The change is not rammed down your throat at the whim of the provider.
Remember that in many countries the contents of your email can be subpoenaed. Spy agencies such as the NSA will have a much easier time indexing your missives if they are stored in a place where they already have free access. If you are storing your email on your own computer and deleting it off of your ISP's server, outside entities will have a hard time proving that you are not fully complying with a subpoena and the spies will have a harder time gaining casual access.
Yahoo, Gmail and other free mail services can be handy to maintain a consistent personal address as your life changes. If you want to use their services (and become their bitch... umm product) you have to put up with their fanciful whims.
the clue is in the name, Yahoo! Mail, so why are people trying to use a web browser ?
You remind me of someone who in all seriousness posted the question, "Why do drivers bother putting their sidelights on? Do they only want to see a little bit?"
Try looking beyond your own nose once in a while. Are you telling me, with your huge intellect and all those years of schooling, that you can't conceive of a single instance where people may only have the option of accessing Yahoo Mail through a web browser?
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You remind me of someone who in all seriousness posted the question, "Why do drivers bother putting their sidelights on? Do they only want to see a little bit?"
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What has not knowing the need for sidelights got to do with knowing the correct tool for a job ?
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Try looking beyond your own nose once in a while. Are you telling me, with your huge intellect and all those years of schooling, that you can't conceive of a single instance where people may only have the option of accessing Yahoo Mail through a web browser?
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Yes there may be times that having an ALTERNATIVE way to access email may be useful, just as a hammer can be used as an alternative way to drive in a screw, but if you cannot get a screwdriver for your home toolbox, then would you buy screws ?
I've not liked the previous 3 updates and on each occasion I've managed to keep the old version until I was forced to upgrade. However I no longer have this option, Yahoo seems to force me to change with no choice. This is absolutely awful, stop f'ing around with it, the Yahoo Classic Mail worked fine, each version since has had epic faults/missing important stuff.
Well done Yahoo.
On the upside, I hated those tabs. For glancing over emails ( most of what you want to do on Spamhoo messages ) it was a total pain in the ass because it wasn't obvious that you were in tabs, closing them was counter-intuitive and there was no way to use the back button, which is pretty much #1 on the list of classic web usability gotchas.
Doesn't sound vastly different to the howls of pain when google G+'d the gmail interface. I had to start using a firefox addon that puts colour back into the buttons and generally makes it usable again (also neatly removes the adverts, which I wouldn't bother to do if they hadn't made the interface so fecking ugly).
Ooh what's that addon? I'm using Gmelius, they have an addon for firefox and chrome.
http://gmelius.com/
As for themes putting colours back, that's not exactly what I meant. I meant colours in the buttons, so they're not all black (or any other single colour), so you can easily identify them without having to recognise one black shape from another.
With gmail, selecting a theme will give you colour back & doesn't appreciably slow anything down. I also find selecting the compact view (if you can find it, they seem to move settings very frequently these days.) means you can get greater info density.
I am seriously considering killing my gmail account, but I know when I delete the 4gb or so of mails I have acquired since 2002 I'm sure some important stuff that I don't even remember exists will go to. I have actually downloaded a back up to a local mail client, but finding anything important in that lot will be a lot harder than a simple search in gmail <sigh>
Honestly the web is so broken these days :/
"I am seriously considering killing my gmail account, but I know when I delete the 4gb or so of mails I have acquired since 2002 I'm sure some important stuff that I don't even remember exists will go to. I have actually downloaded a back up to a local mail client, but finding anything important in that lot will be a lot harder than a simple search in gmail <sigh>
Honestly the web is so broken these days :/"
Huh? The web is broken because if you want to stop using a web service you have to download your data and access it some other way? How else would you expect things to work? I'm really not following your complaint here.
If you don't like the GMail interface, it's stupid easy to set up any mail client to use GMail as a backend. I've been using GMail ever since it started and I almost never use the web interface.
After everything else that Yahoo! has redesigned the UI for (Flickr, Groups etc)...
Yeah, it's going to be f***ed up. Someone needs dragging out into the car park to, on webcam, have exclamation marks inserted into every bodily orifice available until they eventually get the idea not to pi55 off the internet.
I've done that already. I've had Flickr Pro since the beginning of the site. I've only one public picture now, and that is just telling everyone how much Flickr now stinks. I store a few new photos in there for my own use, and I don't visit it everyday like I used to; it's just too painful to look at.
Good job I don't have any friends and social media is dead to me.
>Too many websites these days are far too bloated
Hear bloody hear! The 60kB Rule, while certainly up for recalibration in this day and age, is still a good principle. Do devs even weigh their pages any more?
On-topic, my own webmail client of choice, Horde, now can't do jack without JavaScript turned on, even in "basic" mode. Coincidentally, they proudly proclaim that they outsourced the UI design for this version. Hmmmm...
For some strange region, they added a /neo to the URL, breaking many user shortcuts. As a list adminstrator, I've had to reassure group members and change the URL on our other social media outlets.
Personally, the new management strategy looks like this to me:
1. Get job to 'save' Yahoo! Don't forget the golden parachute.
2. Move everyone to the office so that they get commuting stress, decreasing productivity.
3. Change red to purple.
4. Annoy mail users into leaving Yahoo!
5. Annoy group users into leaving Yahoo!
6. Drive company bankrupt taking parachutes with them and leaving employees used to commuting which they'll need to do in their new jobs, should they be able to find one. If stockholder suits emerge, blame employees for anything that went wrong (that is, the successful implementation of the management plan.)
I don't see the happy ending of Mel Brooks' "The Producers" coming out here...
Well, you can tell how invested the staff were in the revamp of Yahoo!Groups by the default picture thay plaster on every single group - a picture of a load of balls. I'm not making that up.
The groups were a useful and easy to use feature that built on the old Yahoo CLub format, but have been "enhanced" of late so that homepage pictures must conform to the banner size and shape (which isn't easily found anywhere).
The message streams which used to be easy to navigate have become a nightmare, catering as they do to a tablet of smartphone user (I think) at the cost of completely ufpucking the interface for old fashioned access through a computer for, say, administrative reasons.
Not only is over half the screen real estate given over to ads, they are now interpolated into the conversation threads as if they were postings by members. We used to call this "spam" and I went to great lengths in my most active group to prevent it happening so thank you Yahoo.
But best of all is the process that demands I change my password to Yahoo's idea of a "strong" one, then cannot remember the ****ing thing a week later. I try my password, get refused, ask for a reset and try using the password I *thought* I set (but obviously didn't because if I did it should work, right?) only to be told I can't pick a new password that matches the current one.
I can guess what is going on here - another disagreement on exactly how many characters should be in the password between the routine that judhges it "safe" and stores it away and the routine that grabs it for comparison afterwards. My password is too long for the ****ing checker, which submits a truncated one to the DB and, of course, gets a mismatch error back.
I worked in a UNISYS mainframe shop for umptytump years and learned to fear The Coming Of The New Crop Of CS Graduates who would start their illustrious careers by dropping support for the old and therefore obsolete FIELDATA encoding scheme from various high-visibility products, only to discover that they didn't know half as much as they thought they did, had completely broken the products they'd enhanced and were facing a right bollocking and unpaid overtime to put things back the way they were. It took about four years for each crop to ripen, move on and be replaced at which point the comic opera was played out again.
I thought I'd seen the last of this particular madness when I left the mainframe world, but I see it is alive and well at Yahoo. The sooner they re-employ someone who knows how the **** their systems work the better for everyone including the shareholders.
As for me, this has given me the impetus I needed to start seriously working on my own server, a project I've been wanting to try but had no earthly reason to do until now.
Um, yeah. I've been going round and round since 30-AUG-2013 (yes, seven weeks and change) about how the "neo" version of yahoogroups does not work on either of my browsers (Opera, Firefox) and they simply don't seem to give a flying fart. Instrux to clear cookies, clear cache, check javascript enabled, check java enabled, send another screenshot (showing that yep, it's STILL broken, page layout still looks like a dog's breakfast), and other rubbish, but no attempts to make the code work (honestly, how hard can it be? It's HTML, not neuroscience), no "rollback" to the last known good version, nothing. Pages are bloated with useless cruft to boot (I'm guessing the creators of this mess have T1 or other fat pipe access and hell, it works just fine for us in the "lab" talking to our servers, so what's the problem?). And these people get paychecks when people who actually have the brains God gave toast are unemployed. Amazing.
You can't get ahead in any corporation unless you make something new. There is a place for those who want to keep on delivering the same steady service . . . the redeployment pool. Wall Street does not want to see steady earnings, they require stock price growth. And you don't get that unless you change things.
GODDAMMIT. DID YOU ATTEND MAINSTREAM ECONOMICS CLASSES AGAIN?
First, who cares what Wall Street wants? And then...
"...they require stock price growth. And you don't get that unless you have a government that prints money"
I'm a flickr user, have never used Yahoo! Mail!, will never use Yahoo! Mail!. Yet, I still got multiple ugly spams to my email address on another webmail service, telling me all about the thrilling changes. When I followed the included link, to "opt out" of further crap, the "marketing preferences" page showed that I was suddenly signed up for about twelve different categories.
While http://www.kitguru.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/121128_marissa_mayer.jpg can usually shut me up by distracting my primitive hormonal male brain, this did not impress me one bit.
There is a trick to bring the old interface by editing the URL, change the url from:
http://es-mg42.mail.yahoo.com/neo/launch?
to
http://es-mg42.mail.yahoo.com/neo/b/launch?
That is, add a "/b/" between "neo" and "launch". It will go to the javascript-less version, which is mostly like the yahoo mail of old.
Actually you can make that the default interface in the Yahoo Mail Settings as someone pointed out above.
Click on the menu icon (top right next to the identity avatar), choose settings and go to the 'Viewing email' tab. At the bottom choose 'Basic' as opposed to 'Full featured'.
Not quite everyone, I suspect: before I bailed, there were a truckload of folk (pretty sure triple digits) on the bugzilla begging (and voting) to be able to have message composition in a tab too. That one's been on the go for nigh on a decade (though to be fair there are quite a few actual bugs that old in there too). The legacy code is apparently too hideous for anyone to go near it :(
I'm not in the habit of putting anyone but family in my Address Book. Probably a good quirk to have since the NSA is hoovering Address Books up with wild abandon (confirmed today).
But I must say that it took me the better part of a week to figure out the sequence I had to go through just to add addresses from old emails.
Thanks, Yahoo, for supporting our Intelligence Services by making it so damn hard NOT to keep a "proper" Address Book that your Social Engineering leads the sheeple to the Surveillance Society slaughter. Thanks a whole lot.
Like their first changes to the rest of the website, the page itself will not stabilize. It literally keeps jumping around and reloading itself. It took them months to stabilize the news page and even then they still get quirky and unusable at times.
They need to fire all their developers. But then, that's always been one of their biggest problems: a piss poor excuse for a website.
The Mayer woman should win the Mann Booker prize for fiction! She has single-handedly wrecked Yahoo! Groups, with the abomination that is 'neo' and Yahoo! Mail is almost as unworkable. The downgrade Yahoo! has made to its once excellent Groups has made them useless for 99% of the users; moderators and owners can no longer moderate, spam is rife and goes unchecked, because owners and moderators cannot moderate. She and her minions show callous disregard for the users, ordinary Group members, owners, moderators, the disabled, blind and suicidal; we are all fobbed off with weasel words by Yahoo! who do nothing to help us and everything to ensure that 'neo' doesn't work on any platform, even the one she claims to be aiming at( smartphones), where it doesn't work at all! She clearly has no concept of what Yahoo! Groups are ( were) all about; if we wanted a clone of Facebook,Flickr or Tumblr we would be using Facebook, Flickr or Tumblr already, you stupid woman!
The app updated itself without even asking me if I wanted it to. Then I got asked to select a theme, which I did. Now it takes quite a while to start, then I get to see my inbox. Progress of sorts I guess, however it doesn't seem to matter which email I select from my inbox, all I see on the right side is a little spinny icon going round and round. It still seems to be running (ie it responds to the touch and exits cleanly) but my emails simply won't open.
I have gone back to the web-based version in disgust. I won't be using the app until I know it is out of mass-beta-testing and shows signs of functioning.
Bit crap really but it's free so my expectations are low.
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