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March 28, 2006
Yahoo! Mail Beta
Why does the blogosphere overlook Yahoo? I haven't seen any links to posts about the new AJAXified Yahoo Mail Beta client. Which is sad because, so far, it looks super tight. Features that I noticed in a cursory inspection include:
- AJAX message retrieval. So your inbox stays visible when you're reading messages ala MS Outlook's reading pane.
- Custom right-click menu. More web apps need to support this. Detecting right-clicks and working with them isn't difficult but it adds a ton of options for customization of the user experience.
- A 'Switch Back' link at the top of the page - Making it easy for users to revert to the old interface is, to me, a sure sign of Yahoo's mature web app design philosophy. Feature sniffing allows web apps to adapt to whatever browser a user happens to be running, but maybe the user really just wants their older app back, or maybe the feature sniffing failed and the user is stuck in a non-responsive UI. Including a revert link puts the user's needs front-and-center.
- RSS feeds - Wait is this new? I don't remember. Let me check the old version... okay it's new. So, RSS integration.
