Reviews: Yahoo! Mail Beta

It seems that simplicity is often a forgotten art in today's world. From the quest to make everything as shiny and flashy as possible, to the seeming goals of complication, nothing seems to be able to get away with just being simple. Of course, this trend has even continued to websites. As technology gets better, we can only expect that websites will also come to improve and change, becoming more visually attractive and hopefully more functional as well. Recently, Yahoo! Mail underwent quite a change, and instead of using their classic, simplified formula, decided to opt with a new and feature filled interface. However, does this new interface and indeed, new version of Yahoo! Mail actually makes things easier and better for the user? Or does it simply add needless complication and frustration for those who may not want to have access to an computer in an inbox?

Perhaps the first thing to look at is what makes the new Yahoo! any different from the old version. For starters, the change in overall appearance can be seen as soon as one logs into their mail account. Gone is the simplistic and utilitarian design of the classic mail program. Before one was given a simplistic screen when logging in, given them the possible options of going to the inbox, outbox, etc. Now, there are a myriad of options and possibilities that one can access as soon as logging into the system.

Users are now given a bar that indicates the weather in their particular town, various new feeds in different categories, and tabbed email options similar to most newer web browsers. Of course, this does all sound very nice in idea and design. However, in practice it fails somewhat, and there are just a few things that keep this new design and idea from really being a better idea than the last one. For starters, Yahoo! Mail used to be one of the fastest mail programs on the internet. It was simple to log in, and users could easily read their email without massive loading times or an array of content and miscellaneous information to click through. That being said, the Beta version of Yahoo! Mail offers nothing of the sort. Users without access to broadband internet are likely going to be somewhat dismayed that it now takes longer to load their e-mail program than it does to actually read their e-mail. Everything about the beta mail program just seems to move slower and less efficiently than did the classic mail.

Users can also now send chat messages simply by pressing the "c" key while in the inbox. Again, this seems like an interesting option, but it is unlikely that those who want to use Yahoo! Messenger really want to use the cramped and over simplified version that is available through the email program. It just seems as though Yahoo! has tried to fit far too much content and features into something that really didn't need any advanced features or distinct options to begin with. It seems to be one sad fact of technology that simple is now considered to be a bad thing, and that all attempts seem to be sometimes made to eliminate that simplicity whenever possible. However, while sometimes new features and advanced options can make a service or program interesting to used and truly something different from the last version (the new version of "ask.com" seems to represent this notion quite well) sometimes progress or reinvention really isn't required of something that worked fine in the first place.

However, the new Yahoo! Mail program does have some things going for it, and the developers should be commended on their ability to make so many features and options fit onto a single screen and still manage to look visually pleasing. Therein, however, lies the single best feature of the new, beta mail program. Although the original Yahoo! Mail certainly didn't look bad, the beta version looks incredibly smooth, and the "colors" options that were given to users before now make sense to have, as the differences in the different available themes can really be seen. The beta mail makes the service a lot more attractive to use, and certainly one could make the argument that a more attractive program will garner more users. While arguments can be made as to whether or not the new mail program is actually any more functional than the previous version, it is certainly more attractive to use, and thus perhaps make the user feel a little bit more at home when sending and receiving messages as compared to the previous version, which, while effective, seemed to offer very little in terms of visual appeal.

However, the weakness of the mail program lies in what was discussed before. The many sometimes make simple tasks far more difficult than they should be. Also, the constant bubbles and boxes that pop up advertising the new features and telling users what they should be doing now definitely bridge the line between helpful and annoying. Yahoo! may have been much better off attempting to create a program which was more attractive, but did not bog users down in so many possible options, programs and features. While some may be very happy with these additional improvements, it is likely that the average user, who simply wishes to check his or her e-mail will find them to be an ever more annoying novelty. While the new features and options are somewhat interesting for the first few times that a user accesses the mail program, as time goes on, they strangely start to lose their appeal. However, Yahoo! should be commended in their attempts to bring so many different parts of a user's internet experience into a single program; as the inclusion of news and chat to mail would indeed seem to be an effective and appropriate fusion, it somehow fails to work in practice, much to the collective confusion of many.

Perhaps that is really the worse part of the new Yahoo! Mail, it simply doesn't feel professional and looks to be childish and somewhat like a novelty program. While e-mail has definitely been done in worse ways, it has been done in better ways too, and while the new mail program attempts to bring Yahoo! Mail into the future, it really only sets it back a few steps, and transforms a program which was once simple and fun to use into something which is bloated, difficult to navigate in a timely fashion, and simply has far too many features for its own good. Yahoo! may have made a good attempt, but perhaps the beta program could have used a little more time in development.