
Yahoo Mail is not catching up anymore - babuskov
http://www.backwardcompatible.net/178-yahoo-mail-catching-up
======
johnyzee
GMail is deteriorating. I loathe the new 'reduced' inline reply UI. Half the
time I am searching for how to reveal the sender address or subject field
because I need to change them, but GMail seems to think this is an edge use
case.

Today I got the new tabbed inboxes - 'Primary', 'Social' and 'Promotions'.
Lots of important email is now out of view from the primary inbox and buried
with unimportant crap. This is so far from what I want I can't even recognize
who GMail is trying to target with this. There is apparently no way to turn it
off, either.

~~~
vorporeal
Social and Promotions should basically just contain the "unimportant crap". If
something is mis-categorized, you can drag it to the correct section and Gmail
should learn from its mistake.

Also, as mentioned below, you can revert to the un-tabbed inbox by going to
the Inbox section of the settings and disabling all tabs other than Primary,
or by selecting one of the split inboxes (Unread first, Priority, etc).

Disclaimer: I'm a Gmail engineer.

~~~
auctiontheory
When I receive "unimportant crap," I either unsubscribe to the list that sent
it, or mark it as spam.

I do not leave crap lying around and then add another management dimension to
my Inbox to deal with it.

~~~
batiudrami
There are things that are interesting - news of upcoming band tours, shipping
updates, phone bills - but not of importance when I first check my emails in
the morning.

Plus, it has the added benefit that emails which land in anything but the main
inbox don't notify your phone, removing a distraction.

------
tshtf
1\. Yahoo Mail 2-factor authentication support is woefully incomplete:
[http://www.zdnet.com/a-half-assed-additional-factor-does-
not...](http://www.zdnet.com/a-half-assed-additional-factor-does-not-equal-
two-factor-security-7000017252/)

2\. Yahoo Mail does not enforce SSL unless you choose obscure menu options:
[http://help.yahoo.com/kb/index?page=content&y=PROD_MAIL_ML&l...](http://help.yahoo.com/kb/index?page=content&y=PROD_MAIL_ML&locale=en_US&id=SLN3610)

~~~
onli
Not having SSL as default is unfortunate, but the menu options doesn't seem
very obscure to me. _Turn on SSL_ is the correct name for the option.

~~~
tshtf
That is (Gear icon) -> Mail Options -> General -> "Turn on SSL"... Four mouse
clicks through menus is obscure enough, and then you have to do the same on
every browser. It should be enabled by default.

~~~
NoPiece
It isn't that bad. It really is only 1 click to get there. Mouse over the gear
and click mail options in the drop down. You are now on the general settings
page that has the SSL option. You don't have to do it for every browser; the
setting applies to your account.

But you are right, it should be on by default.

------
sourc3
Although my primary email is Gmail, I recently had the need to get an email
for a domain name I own. Since Google stopped offering free custom domain
emails, I gave Outlook.com a try.

I was pleasantly surprised. Things seem to make a lot of sense and I like
their metro/flat design on the web, easy on the eye.

If you are bored of the new UI changes to Gmail, I'd suggest you check out
Outlook.com as an alternative.

------
comex
There are only a few things I want from a Gmail competitor, whether it be a
webapp or desktop app:

\- Search. Good, fast search over 7 GB of email.

\- Speed.

\- Undo send.

\- Multiple aliases on the same email account.

It's definitely possible to beat Gmail in the first two, these days, but
importing all that email into another service takes a while, so there had
better be a good case that I'll get equal or superior functionality. A demo
would be nice.

Until then, I'll stick with the old compose, and probably find or write a user
script to make the new one work like the old one once it goes away.

(Incidentally, Mail.app comes quite close to meeting the first two, but its
search is a bit wonky, and there's no undo send.)

~~~
ineedtosleep
If one wants #2, I don't see #3 being viable in conjunction. How would an undo
send work (other than placing it in some sort of delayed queue/spool)?

~~~
gcb0
undo send is dumb and the worst name/implementation.

i'd either add a dialog (with default selected button being Cancel) or replace
the Send button with a Preview button, which would show the message the same
way you read a message, and there you would have the Send button.

~~~
nnethercote
Undo send is great. It lets you undo the one time in a hundred that you make a
mistake. Your solution would require that everybody click through an
additional dialog on every single email sent.

Letting people recover from uncommon mistakes is better than ham-fisted and
annoying mechanisms that attempt to prevent the mistake.

~~~
gcb0
"undo" email does nothing else than create a false sense of security.

It probably works for the impatient that is hitting ctrl+enter (or whatever
shortcut) too soon by muscle memory. but then it should be called delayed send
to not give a false mental model to the user.

the current model is preventing the real mistakes for probably 1/10 of the
cases it's needed. and enticing less care and probably bumping the rate in the
end.

------
harshreality
I believe currently Yahoo Mail is the only one of the big three (Gmail,
Outlook.com) that still puts the client computer's IP address in the message
headers for messages sent from the webmail interface.

------
robomartin
I've been using Yahoo mail for many, many years. I've always been happy with
it. I've tweaked some of it with my own custom CSS here and there and it's
great. At some level it feels very much like running Outlook on the desktop,
which is what I run for my businesses (I run multiple simultaneous instances
of Outlook accessing a separate database per business).

I tried Gmail a few years ago and it simply did not hold a candle to the speed
and convenience of Yahoo's offering. They've done a few things I am not
thrilled about on the last major update but they seem to be tweaking it behind
the scenes.

Beyond that, I've been very much against relying on Google for anything that
is critical to my business. Why? They can shut down your entire account and
every single Google service you use in a microsecond. When they do you will
not know why and you will have no sensible path to addressing or even
discovering the problem. That, to me, is the deal breaker. Why cares about the
minutiae of their UI, setup, lists, tabs, spam filtering, etc. Your email
account can evaporate overnight and you will not be able to do a thing about
it. I, frankly, don't cannot comprehend why any business person would even
consider using them.

------
alphakappa
I don't use Yahoo mail because they (used to) insert ads inside the body of
your email. Which meant that if I sent an email to a friend, the footer would
contain a yahoo ad.

I'm not sure if they changed it, but I don't like the idea of sending an ad
along with my email. Put an ad in my user interface all you like, but not in
my content.

~~~
insteadof
They did change it. Emails out no longer contain the hawking footer.

------
josteink
I remember back when I was _proud_ to have managed to get a gmail-invite.

Gmail was so ahead of everyone else it wasn't even fun. It was even ahead of
desktop-clients, which at the time was no small feat. Those were the days of
full-page-reload (X)HTML4 pages and the best webmail on the market made people
prefer text-mode clients like "pine" instead.

Web surpassing the desktop in user experience during those days were literally
_unheard_ of.

Those days are long gone. These days I'm looking for whatever looks like a
viable replacement. I really _want_ to get out.

------
colmvp
Speaking of e-mail, why does Gmail show a different total number of search
results depending on which 'page' you're viewing it from the search results?
At least Yahoo gives the exact number.

Example: [http://i.imgur.com/n1qeN3i.gif](http://i.imgur.com/n1qeN3i.gif)

~~~
eli
It's an estimate. It would add additional time to the search to calculate an
exact number.

~~~
medde
If it works like Google-Search, results are not an estimate, or not even
random, it looks like it is inflated .... for example, if you navigate to
[https://www.google.com/search?q=zzzfgh](https://www.google.com/search?q=zzzfgh)
, it tells you 5,900 results until you reach a page where there is no more
results and it tells you 484 results (for example, I never seen an estimate
that was lower then the real count)

~~~
tallanvor
Duplicate removal generally happens after the initial count is received.
That's why you can get major variations in the count and the actual number of
results.

~~~
medde
If I click: "If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results
included.", I still don't get anywhere close to the initial count.

------
ValentineC
I'm looking forward to a Yahoo Mail for Domains feature. If they introduce it,
it could mean the nail in the coffin for Gmail.

~~~
foxylad
Just checked:
[http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/email/](http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/email/)

I was stung by the loss of free apps for domains, because I use Appengine and
need several distinct email addresses per app. None of them need Drive or
anything but email forwarding, so $50 per year per address means a
considerable expense. Yahoo's $120 per ten addresses seems far more
reasonable.

~~~
calebegg
You can use Google Apps' "groups" feature to get forwarding. You can also set
a catch-all address that gets email sent to any valid address at your domain.

------
wellboy
The "best" email client now is one run by a non NSA-company using Ajax, so not
Gmail, neither Yahoomail.

Anyone knows good ones?

~~~
stock_toaster
I like fastmail. Their two-factor auth leaves something to be desired though
-- I also wish there was an imap/smtp only password type.

~~~
ReidZB
Agreed on the two-factor auth bit: their implementation seems a bit wacky. (At
least, their Google Authenticator TOTP implementation. It seemed like their
Yubikey implementation was pretty good, but I don't have a Yubikey.)

However, their "alternative login" thing is pretty useful. I have separate
(completely random) passwords for the IMAP sync for my phone and work machine,
so I can revoke those at any time without touching the master password. In
some sense, that setup is similar to the one Google has for two-factor auth
and service-specific passwords.

~~~
stock_toaster
Indeed. And the 'regular' alternative logins do have _somewhat_ limited
access, but to be usable for pop/imap/smtp they have to be of type 'full
access'.

'full access' regular logins can do _everything_ but modify other alternative
logins. If you happen to have domain admin rights added to your login (eg. not
the main domain admin account), regular logins can even do that!

I would probably pay double for an "imap/smtp only login" feature. ;)

------
s3r3nity
This year has seen really interesting competitive threats to Gmail in the form
of an improved Yahoo Mail and hotmail 2.0 (aka Outlook.com)

I'm glad others are noticing as well -- competition is good =)

------
masnick
If you're tired of the gmail interface (like I was), I'd highly recommend
[http://fastmail.fm](http://fastmail.fm).

I made the switch (moved 55k+ messages with
[http://protips.maxmasnick.com/export-gmail-to-fastmail-or-
an...](http://protips.maxmasnick.com/export-gmail-to-fastmail-or-any-email-
provider-supporting-imap)) and haven't looked back.

FastMail offers a similar infinite scroll feature. I was able to select and
move several thousand messages through the web interface when I was first
configuring it.

FastMail's highlights for me are:

\- Really good, customizable "personalities" (alternate email addresses with
their own SMPT servers, auto-BCC settings, etc.)

\- Sieve support -- SO much more powerful than rules in Gmail, see
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_(mail_filtering_language)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_\(mail_filtering_language\))

\- Customer support that actually responds and is super helpful in my
experience

\- Ability to use your own domain name(s) without all the overhead of signing
up for Google Apps.

\- Jabber support (not in-browser, but they do have a server that works with
Adium/iChat/Pidgin)

\- Very fast, modern web interface. Definitely faster than Gmail for me. Good
keyboard shortcuts too (very similar to Gmail's but with a few differences).

\- An archive folder that works well with the archive functionality in
Mail.app and other clients.

The only thing that isn't great is search. It works ok for everything but
searching within messages (i.e. from/to/subject searches are fine). I believe
FastMail does have support for a lot more search operators than Gmail and can
search headers as well. But I'm not an expert on the power user search
features for either.

This is because I actually use the search in Mail.app on my Mac, which is
actually better than Gmail's search capabilities for every search I've tried
(same good results, but way faster). Obviously works great with FastMail too,
and I figure it's good to have a local copy of email.

I also miss a few things from the (old) gmail interface, but I definitely like
FastMail's interface better on the whole than the new compose in Gmail. Things
I miss in FastMail are the mainly the ability to pop composing a message into
a new window with one click and sync with the address book on my phone.
Neither are deal breakers.

I actually use MailMate ([http://freron.com](http://freron.com)) for the
majority of my email access now. It's still a little rough around the edges
but being able to compose emails in Markdown and see the entire hierarchy of a
thread (not flattened into one level) is worth a bit of UX pain.

~~~
robk
I can't see how Sieve is significantly better than Gmail rules. Reading the
examples, I seem to have the ability to do everything listed, with the
exception of actually rejecting messages (versus quietly deleting/archiving).

~~~
masnick
For one, it's much easier to maintain complicated rules in Sieve than with
Gmail rules. This is just a function of having multiple lines and comments for
rules.

I use Sieve to push a summary of certain messages to my phone (with
[https://pushover.net](https://pushover.net), another great service). This is
not possible with Gmail rules (you can forward an entire message, but not
selectively send just the subject and sender). See
[https://www.fastmail.fm/docs/sieve/fm-sieve-
notify.html](https://www.fastmail.fm/docs/sieve/fm-sieve-notify.html)

Sieve also supports regular expressions:
[https://www.fastmail.fm/docs/sieve/draft-murchison-sieve-
reg...](https://www.fastmail.fm/docs/sieve/draft-murchison-sieve-regex-08.txt)

There are some example Sieve scripts that might give you a better idea of what
Sieve can do:

[http://ballz.ababa.net/jerry/sieve.txt](http://ballz.ababa.net/jerry/sieve.txt)

[http://fastmail.wikia.com/wiki/MichaelKloseSieveScript](http://fastmail.wikia.com/wiki/MichaelKloseSieveScript)

Note that you don't have to do all that crazy spam stuff -- the build in spam
filtering seems to work fine for me. The only manual rule I added was to spam
anything with common Russian characters because Russian spam was somehow
slipping through the filter.

------
nazgulnarsil
Which email client supports sub-addresses and sending such mail to
automatically generated folders?

For the email foo@foo.com, I want to be able to give someone foo+bar@foo.com
and when they email me it automatically goes into a generated bar folder
without any additional clicks or configuration from me.

~~~
nmjenkins
FastMail will do this if the folder already exists, but won't automatically
create the folder.

------
VikingCoder
\- Get a 1920x1080 monitor. No, really. Decent ones are cheap and awesome.
That said, sure, GMail could support other resolutions better. I have to make
my window tiny in order to make Reply remotely unusable - what's your problem
with it?

\- I have the "Undo Send" Labs features enabled, so I can undo a lot more than
your unintentional sends. I can undo my intentional but ill-considered sends,
too.

\- I can go to Google and search, "When is my next flight" and see (based on
my GMail mail confirmation message from the airline) when it is. That's
awesome. Better, that integrates with Google Now on my phone. I don't even
have to SEARCH, and I see when my flight is, what terminal, what gate, whether
it's delayed.

I hate to ask, but what browser are you using to access GMail?

~~~
babuskov
\- I cannot get 1920x1080 monitor on a laptop. It would defeat the purpose.

My problem is this:

[http://backwardcompatible.net/images/gmail.png](http://backwardcompatible.net/images/gmail.png)

* top posting is useless when you have long e-mail with 6-10 points to address in it. * being able to see 7 lines at a time is my real problem * the other real problem is when I have a 100-line email with 10 points to address in it and 10th point ends on line 34, I want to be able to easily cut the remaining 66 lines that come before the signature. I know that people using GMail won't see them anyway, but there are other people not using Google Mail and they will have to look through 66 lines to see if I replied to something else as well.

There is no way to simply select those 66 lines and cut them. If I press
shift+end, it selects to the end of the line. If I press shift+PageDown it
scrolls the GMail page in the browser down, and I also lose sight of the
cursor. Selecting it with mouse is also not straightforward, because of some
weird scrolling. The text entry box is simply too small. They shouldn't have
tried to fix something that was working perfectly.

I understand Google engineers are not using Firefox and they are not replying
to people who use products other than GMail and they have large screens. That
is precisely why they lost sight of UX issues their users have. They believe
everyone uses Google products only, and maybe they just don't care about those
that don't, I really don't know.

\- I don't want to have Undo Send. I don't want to wait when I send an e-mail.
I don't have time for that.

\- So, when you are searching for next flight, you should open GMail. I
thought it should be used for e-mail, not search. ;)

\- Firefox. Are you implying that I should only use Chrome and GMail is not
usable from other browsers?

~~~
VikingCoder
Your problem is that you have two lines of bookmarks all of the time? Your
problem is that you don't auto-hide your taskbar? Your problem is that your
version of Firefox shows a menu bar all the time for no reason? =)

Or is your problem that you've never clicked on the drop-down at the top left
of your reply, and clicked, "Pop out reply"?

You probably just didn't know about that last one, which is understandable -
it's a bit hidden. But I think it solves easily half of your complaint.

As to the editing quoted text, another HN'er responded adequately to that
point.

Google engineers do use Firefox, and they do pay attention to people without
large screens. Your assertions otherwise are baseless.

You don't wait for "Undo Send." The server politely waits a few seconds for
you - you're free to do whatever you want.

I was just curious if you were using some ancient Internet Explorer.

~~~
babuskov
Thanks for the tips...

As for my browser, it isn't 2 lines of bookmarks. It's one line of bookmarks
and Web Developer Toolbar is the second line. As for the menu bar, and this is
the way Linux version of Firefox works, although I would probably turn it on
even if it was hidden because I use History, Tools and Bookmarks menus all the
time (like 20+ times a day)

I don't want to auto-hide the taskbar, I like to see which applications are
running all the time. Not all people use the computer the same way, and I
surely wouldn't change my usage pattern of desktop environment just to please
one web application.

"Pop out reply" and Shift+Ctrl+End help, and GMail is now usable. So thanks
again. :)

BTW, I did try to pop out the message and then reply but, when it pops, it
opens a 800x540 window which still has text box with 7 lines of text. Even if
I maximize that window, the reply box is still 7 lines and I got half of
screen filled with blank white space. I missed that there is a second way to
pop it out. One could argue that even HN's default textarea is a better
textbox than GMail's.

------
iopq
I use Opera Mail for GMail, but I installed Y! Mail for Android after reading
this because GMail somehow sucks at sending pictures with my phone. Now that
I've tried it, Yahoo is much faster. Thanks.

------
malandrew
I'm honestly surprised that there isn't yet any open-source software (client
and server) that mimics Gmail but works with any IMAP service.

If there is room for many email apps (Sparrow, Apple Mail, Mutt, Outlook,
Thunderbird), there should be a market for many web-based email backends and
there should be room for an open-source Gmail analogue that be people can
extend and improve.

Someone ought to make a web-mutt.

~~~
lessnonymous
I run roundcube on my server for webmail access. It's a web-based IMAP client.
I'm not sure what you want from a server that isn't already available in the
existing open source IMAP servers.

------
lurkinggrue
Have not encountered the slowness he is talking about.

~~~
babuskov
If you have constant Internet connection, then it's fine. Try turning Internet
off on your phone for 6 hours and turn it back on. If you have 50 new
messages, it might take 5+ minutes for GMail to sync. Yahoo syncs in seconds.
FWIW, this is on default Samsung Galaxy S2.

------
toki5
I have to admit, I don't use Gmail for just e-mail. It's more or less my home
page -- it's a portal to the people I chat with, the documents I access (on
Drive) daily, and just so happens to be where I send e-mails from.

These days, (to me anyway) the fact that Gmail is an e-mail service is a
little incidental.

------
falk
I'd love to see Yahoo! differentiate itself from its competitors by becoming a
privacy conscious company.

------
barbs
Not to mention the fact that Yahoo! actually cares about their users' privacy:

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/yahoo-fight-for-
users-...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/yahoo-fight-for-users-earns-
company-special-recognition)

~~~
justinreeves
Do they really?

[https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013](https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-
back-2013)

~~~
wutbrodo
I sympathize with the attempt, but you're in the wrong place for anything but
incoherent babbling when it comes to Google.

------
bmy78
I really think Yahoo Mail has seriously improved over the past couple of
years. I've had an account with them for over 10 years and while gmail
originally had more features, I find Yahoo Mail's UI experience superior.

------
neovive
There doesn't seem to be any viable competitors for the combination of GMail +
Google Drive. The Drive Apps infrastructure and integration into one account
is above and beyond the competition.

------
SourPatch
Maybe I'm on the fringe, but the yahoo mail experience for me through a
browser has been terrible since their last big iteration. It is often
unresponsive to the point of being unusable.

------
inthepink
But, Ymail for the desktop still suffers... The back button is murder! And I
might understand tabs for drafts, but why for each mail I read? I am forever
trying to close them.

~~~
inthepink
Wohoo! They seemed to have fixed the back button issue to some extent. But it
still has a weird behaviour those in-app tabs.

------
evolve2k
So a yahoo.com account could be once again become the sign of the tech
hipster.

Is yahoo mail the new black?

------
mtgx
I'd rather wait for the Mega e-mail.

