The Troubles With the Yahool Mail Beta

An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo Mail recently launched their new webmail service, dubbed Beta (yes just like gmail) no doubt hoping to win back market share in the world of webmail. Their prime competition is gmail, which they've modeled some of the new features on, but Yahoo Mail Beta falls very short of offering a similar experience. The ad infested new Yahoo Mail is patchwork of ideas halfway implemented and glaring usability problems."

Comments

will always prefer Yahoo mail over Gmail

[krell]

I'll always prefer Yahoo mail over Gmail because Yahoo mail doesn't scramble the message inbox so I can't find anything, and Yahoo doesn't have annoyances like having to click a link just to edit the subject when replying.

the important feature that Gmail lacks

[krell]

"On top of that, when you compare the sheer number of features that come with gmail, yahoo mail falls too short."

I'd consider Gmail if not for an important feature it lacks that Yahoo has: organization of the inbox. The useless scrambling of messages in Gmail is basically a black hole where I have to rely on "Search" to find anything at all (unlike Yahoo where I can page down through the inbox). All they need to add is an option switch. There's a reason that few if any other email services have copied the "scramble mailbox contents into an useless pile" approach that Gmail has.

Not a good "innovation"

[krell]

"Gmail has real innovation in an email client. Discussion topics are grouped,..."

They are grouped poorly by some sort of random criteria that basically renders looking at the inbox uselsss. I had two email exchanges with someone named Rob. Now I have these inscrutable "me, Rob" groups for them. One single conversation has been broken up by Gmail's inbox-scrambler into 5 or 6 of their "conversation" groupings. The "group by conversation" idea is bad one and is poorly implimented. It's senseless, annoying, and I sure with there was a configuration option to go back to useful, standard inbox/etc organization with complete email addresses and names showing. Not only that, there is the serious design flaw that Gmail has that no others have where they hid "change subject" behind a link. I guess they want to encourage users not to have accurate subjects! Even Hotmail makes it easy to edit the eubject.

I've used Gmail for well over a year, side by side with Yahoo, and with Gmail it's like everything falls into a black hole, and I have to "search" every single time I want to find something. At least with Yahoo, the organization makes a lot more sense, and I have to do "search" a lot less.

you aren't missing anything.

[krell]

"I use the Trilogy of Yahoo Mail, Messenger, and Yahoo Advanced Search, so I'm a customer for life unless they make the mistake of trying to charge."

Stay away from gmail. After using Yahoo's clean organization of what comes into your inbox, you will be sorely disappointed at Gmail's scrambling of incoming messages. Some like it, but most say "no way". They don't even give an option to switch to standard organization.

Re:you aren't missing anything.

[krell]

"I've read your other comments (which are bascially minor variations on a theme) and have come to the conclusion that you really don't know how to use Gmail."

Yes, the messages are TOO similar. However, I DO know how to use it. I just don't LIKE it due to the extra steps involved in doing things due to its design flaws. I don't LIKE it that emails are much harder to find and I have to use search to find everything. If you have used it, you have seen the "scrambling of the messages" into the "conversation groups": something which is half-assed as to be useless. Most of the time, my single email "conversations" are broken into several scrambled clumps. I do not like the threaded nature of the emails at all. I know how to use it, but prefer the superior standard. organization.

The "Gmail groups them all into one nice little threaded message" you claim just does not happen (unless there is a configuration setting that I am missing). One exchange broken into several variations on "me, Bob" just does not cut it. I'd also rather not have them grouped even if Google was actually good at doing it automatically (which it is not)

I'm not the only one who dislikes Google's scrambling. There's a good reason that the many other free services have not copied the idea. It's not a very good one. My opinion may not be important, but it is more important than yours here (as most users still prefer cleanly organized emails instead of random clumps).

Gmail's worst design flaw is not having a switch to let the users go to the superior (in the opinion of must email users) standard organization. Do you also defend the design flaw where you have to click on "edit subject" to edit the subject? Every other service I've seen has the subject in a text-box, no extra click necessary. That's a minor annoyance comapred to message-scrambling, but a flaw nonetheless.

Re:you aren't missing anything.

[krell]

"You say "design flaws" when you really mean things that you personally do not like"

Taking one flaw specifically, do you actually LIKE having to click "Edit subject" to get a box to edit the subject in, when all other email services already have the edit box (no clicking necessary)?

Author is clueless

[Wovel]

Odd to see a SlashDot article written by someone who does not know what a Beta is. In every sense this article completely misses the point. Yahoo mail has been around for over 10 years. They created an upgrade to their interface which is currently in BETA. The service is not named BETA (Either is Gmail) the NEW INTERFACE is in beta. Had the person done any research at all they would have noticed that yahoo mail and gmail are different services. I suppose any standard for an article being mildly are officially in the crapper.

Re:Is it so bad to have accurate subjects?

[krell]

"I would hate emailing with you. I prefer the new topic = new email thread method,"

I guess gmail works best with gmail, and the rest of the internet mail world workss best with itself. But tell me, what would you rather see if using eBay: 10 mails with the subject "EBAY ITEM #10021010" never changing, or descriptive subjects like "EBAY ITEM #1002101 PAYMENT SENT" describing each thing going on?

"I already posted the feature suggestion link in a prior reply in this thread."

It must be buried somewhere then. I expected to see it in the "you could go here" sentence, but you had no link on the "here" like I would have expected.