Axis, Yahoo's New Browser

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Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday May 23, 2012 @04:34PM from the new-kid-on-the-block dept.

markjhood2003 writes "Fresh on the heels of Slashdot's discussion of the lack of browser choice on mobile devices comes the announcement of Yahoo's new web browser Axis. According to VentureBeat, the browser runs on iPad and iPhone as a separate standalone browser and as an extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, with support for Android and Windows Phone coming soon. It actually appears to bring some innovation to mobile search, displaying results and queries on the same page for more productive navigation between the two."

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That is cool, but... by bonch · 2012-05-23 16:37 · Score: 4, Insightful

That search result display is actually really cool. I'd love to see that in other browsers (including desktop browsers). The problem is Yahoo's track record is poor when it comes to updating their products. For instance, Yahoo Mail is embarrassingly behind other web mail services. If Yahoo treats this like they treat their other products, I can't help wondering if it will just become another obsolete Yahoo thing.
1. Re:That is cool, but... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 17:31 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  keyboard shortcuts (something Gmail doesn't support at all)
  http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6594
  
  tabs on the interface, so I can have several messages composing at once (again, no such thing in Gmail)
  Click the button in the upper-right to detach the "Compose Mail" dialog into a new window, then click "Compose Mail" again and voila, you will be composing two messages simultaneously.
  
  folders (very important for me, very useful, and not present at all in Gmail)
  Labels are strictly more powerful than folders especially now that gmail has nested labels: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/06/superstars-and-nested-labels-now.html.
  Spend at least 5 seconds googling, or, umm, yahooing, before complaining.
2. Re:That is cool, but... by DMUTPeregrine · 2012-05-23 17:36 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Gmail aliases are unlimited. Not just 500. If you are more paranoid than average you can use a second address set to auto-forward as the base. That makes it take about as much setup as Yahoo's version.
  Gmail has keyboard shortcuts.
  Yahoo!'s storage space isn't unlimited, they just don't tell you the cap.
  You can detach the "compose mail" dialog to a separate window. You can make as many windows as you wish (or until you window manager/browser crashes.)
  If you only use one label per message then labels are identical to folders. Otherwise they have a strict superset of folder functionality (a message can have >1 label, but can only be in 1 folder.)
  
  What, exactly, does Yahoo! have that Gmail doesn't have? Other! Than! Excessive! Punctuation!
  
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  Not a sentence!
3. Re:That is cool, but... by aardvarkjoe · 2012-05-23 17:49 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  You can create unlimited spam decoys in Gmail too, just use "youremailid+arandomstring@gmail.com"
  This feature is worthless as a spam decoy strategy, as anyone can use it to find your real address. I would be amazed if spammers don't already strip off the "+whatever" from gmail addresses, and those that don't would certainly start if any appreciable number of people used it. It's got its uses, but spam prevention isn't among them.
  I wonder why Google hasn't stepped up to supply actual disposable email addresses yet. It doesn't seem like a difficult feature to add, and would have a lot of value to their users.
  
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4. Re:That is cool, but... by galaad2 · 2012-05-23 18:42 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  What, exactly, does Yahoo! have that Gmail doesn't have? Other! Than! Excessive! Punctuation!
  well, there's one thing: yahoo mail has stupid and obnoxious graphical ads, sometimes with flash&sound and sometimes the ads expand to fill the page if you accidentally mouse over them (happened to me a month ago when i was installing a new computer and i didn't had time to install AdBlock Plus. ABP was the first thing i installed after that).
  Gmail only has text ads and those are not even remotely as annoying as the crap that yahoo shows.
  
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  root@127.0.0.1
5. Re:That is cool, but... by galaad2 · 2012-05-23 18:56 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  This feature is worthless as a spam decoy strategy, as anyone can use it to find your real address. I would be amazed if spammers don't already strip off the "+whatever" from gmail addresses,
  [...]
  I wonder why Google hasn't stepped up to supply actual disposable email addresses yet
  oh, but they do have that but it's a bit hidden and it's only available via Apps for hosted domains. (even free apps has it).
  The way to set this up is to host your domain (or at least the mail receiving functions of it) with Google Apps and then you can set up the email service to accept wildcard emails, *@your-domain-hosted-on-google-apps_dot_anything.
  Now whenever you give out an address just invent one on the spot @your domain and it will be valid. I do this and i got into the habit of throwing a date stamp and the name of whoever it is for into the email address itself so that if i start receiving spam for that address i know who leaked it and when they were assigned that address. Such an address usually looks like: mail-for-my-name-from-slashdot-org-20120524@example.com
  And since my domain is set up at Gmail with a wildcard catch-all address, that will be routed to my actual mailbox (only if it passes Gmail spam filtering tests).
  
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  root@127.0.0.1
6. Re:That is cool, but... by hairyfeet · 2012-05-23 19:06 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Did you ever think that maybe, just maybe...yahoo mail users LIKE the current UI? The damned "everything is a chat" crap in Gmail is why i only use it for places like this (where the most I will be talking to someone is a single reply and i don't care about spam) while i use my yahoo for family and friends precisely BECAUSE of the UI. Thanks to its classic folders design i can have my mail nicely sorted just the way I like with a minimum of hassle and the same can be said of my customers.
  BTW here is something that will bake the noodles of the geeks here, you know what from working on PCs 6 days a week i've found to be the most popular home page by a loooong shot? Yahoo.com, that's right, the web portal page that so many of us hate. The reason why is it has replaced the traditional paper for most folks, hell I even installed a separate browser just for my GF so when she is staying the weekend she can have everything just like at home, with all her bookmarks and her Yahoo portal. She has her little morning ritual where she opens the portal, glances through the headlines, checks her mail before moving on to her FB games.
  So frankly I'd say the problem is NOT the mail or the portal at Yahoo and if I were in charge, hell if anybody that had a brain were in charge they could turn it around. How? Advertise. Playing around with the portal i found there is a ton of neat stuff there that frankly most don't know anything about. anybody try yahoo games? they have a ton of time wasters. they have got sports, comedy, a ton of really nice stuff, its just hidden way down on the far left bar in small print. That is STUPID. they should be highlighting a different one on the portal each week and making them easy to see and showing people how to get to them.
  They have all the right pieces there, they just need someone to show them how to market all this stuff to the masses and build some buzz. Like I said my GF starts with the portal every morning and even she didn't know they offered a ton of free games, but now that i have showed her where they are she and her GFs all have a blast playing all the little flash games. just advertise Yahoo, show folks what you have.
  
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  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
7. Re:That is cool, but... by Kalriath · 2012-05-23 19:54 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  They should. The RFC says so.
  
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  For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
8. Re:That is cool, but... by galaad2 · 2012-05-23 20:31 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  I do that, but it is limited in its usefulness because there is not a simple way of then killing off one of those addresses that you have made up on the spot. Eventually if spam to all these made up addresses becomes a problem, you have to turn off the catch-all address to stop the spam coming through. Which then means you have to actually set up another account or group in Google Apps each time you want an extra address, which is a lot less quick and easy.
  point taken but i don't usually give such an address to any site. I use mailinator.com / bugmenot.com for random junk like reading nytimes.com or stuff like that.
  The Gmail wildcard is useful for sites you want to receive stuff from but these sites are not trusted/appreciated enough to give them a proper email address. Also, in order not to fill up my main email account, i have a separate, dedicated account@my domain and that one is the target of the wildcard, not my main account.
  To access that quickly, I set up account access delegation rights between the wildcard-reception account and my main account.
  If one of the made-up addresses starts receiving spam i can always set a filter to delete that email as soon as it arrives (usually i just filter it with a label for sending to spamcop) and (usually) the owner of the site it was initially intended for will get a spam & abuse complaint sent on all contact email addresses i can find (via whois and their site)
  
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  root@127.0.0.1
9. Re:That is cool, but... by hobarrera · 2012-05-24 06:06 · Score: 3
  
  folders (very important for me, very useful, and not present at all in Gmail)
  Labels are strictly more powerful than folders especially now that gmail has nested labels: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/06/superstars-and-nested-labels-now.html.
  Spend at least 5 seconds googling, or, umm, yahooing, before complaining.
  Those "smart tags" make gmail a pain to use over IMAP, since you have lots of autogenerated folders, and deleting an email won't delete it, and moving it sometimes copies, sometimes moves. It's really a pain if you use any client which is not their own.
Huh... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 16:37 · Score: 3, Funny

So Yahoo! is still making stuff, that's good to see. You can't fault them for trying to stay relevant.
Unfortunately I tried to download it and got redirected to... I'm not kidding... /null
Can we get a collective, "doh!"
1. Re:Huh... by Richard_at_work · 2012-05-23 18:52 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  What's worse is that Yahoo have accidentally included their private signing key inside the Chrome extension, meaning anyone can now sign Chrome extensions as Yahoo....
The Chrome Extension Leaks Yahoo Private Certifice by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 16:40 · Score: 5, Informative

http://nikcub.appspot.com/posts/yahoo-axis-chrome-extension-leaks-private-certificate-file
Yo dog by Osgeld · 2012-05-23 16:41 · Score: 5, Funny

I heard you like browsers, heres a browser that runs in a browser. Pimp it!
Private Certificate File in Chrome Extension by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-23 16:43 · Score: 5, Informative

Nik Cubrilovic discovered that a private certificate file was left in the chrome extension source files:
http://nikcub.appspot.com/posts/yahoo-axis-chrome-extension-leaks-private-certificate-file
The Axis? by DNS-and-BIND · 2012-05-23 16:47 · Score: 5, Funny

Will this new browser only be available in Germany, Italy, Japan, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Finland?

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oh I get it by slashmydots · 2012-05-23 17:03 · Score: 4, Funny

Their market research division apparently found out that people want a slower browsing experience that uses more data and takes up more of the screen. Oh, and it looks like they also determine that and a non-unique and thus totally SEO dead zone name "Axis" with Hitler and communism ties that can also be in the title of dozens of games and apps, making it app store camouflage, is the way to go. Good job! I hope it works out as well as the Facebook IPO.
Release Code Names by reluctantjoiner · 2012-05-23 17:13 · Score: 3, Funny

Barbarossa, Sea Lion, The Rommel and maybe Mussolini for the Beta release?

(I didn't realise Finland was an Axis power; I thought it's fame in The War was due to being the only country simultaneously at war with both Ivan and Gerry.)

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Anyone else excited? by Lord_of_the_nerf · 2012-05-23 17:14 · Score: 5, Funny

I'm super excited that this relevant and forward thinking company is releasing a browser that will make me forget about using any other browser.
- Me from 1996
This can't be a browser due the Apple Store by Skuto · 2012-05-23 18:29 · Score: 5, Insightful

As covered in the article about mobile browser choice yesterday, just by virtue of being on the Apple Store this cannot be a real browser in any significant meaning of the word. So saying it's a "separate standalone browser" is just a flagrant lie. At best it's a shell around the existing WebKit/Safari browser on those devices.
Given that it's also listed as an "extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari", what is this really? Yet another privacy-invasion toolbar? :(
1. Re:This can't be a browser due the Apple Store by Rennt · 2012-05-23 22:06 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I believe the point is that if it is sold on the App Store we know it cannot be a stand alone browser by virtue of Apple's store policy.
I fucked up !! by Taco+Cowboy · 2012-05-23 19:26 · Score: 3, Funny

Help, I fucked up !!
I installed that "yahoo browser" while browsing on Chrome
Now I got a butt ugly shitty thing floating at the lower left hand corner on my screen !!
How do I get rid of that "yahoo browser" ???
HELP !!!

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Yahoo eh? by lewko · 2012-05-23 21:13 · Score: 4, Funny

Can't wait to see Altavista's entry into the mobile browser market.

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