Yahoo overhauls Yahoo Mail with heaps of new features

Drag and drop and RSS added to new look mail

16 March 2006 5:30 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Yahoo has extensively updated it's mail services today launching a host of new features including drag and drop functionality and RSS feed support.

The new service, which is currently in beta, will be available to all UK Yahoo Mail customers today and users will be given a choice as to whether they wish to try out the new service when they next log in.

Yahoo! is claiming that the changes are the most significant enhancement to the Yahoo! Mail interface and user experience since its launch in 1997.

The new service will offer faster connection speeds and enhanced features such as drag and drop email organisation, message preview and an integrated RSS reader.

Like the current Yahoo! Mail experience, the new version is free and browser-based.

Highlights of the new beta version of Yahoo! Mail include increased speed and features such as a reading pane to instantly view messages, an RSS reader which you can either chose to subscribe to Yahoo's own news feeds or input your own URL and support for both Firefox and Internet Explorer as standard.

Customers not wanting to try out the new version can opt to stay as they are and in an interview with Pocket-lint Yahoo said that there are no plans to retire the current version.

Pocket-lint was given a behind the scenes look at the new interface yesterday. The interface was extremely easy to use. The best way to describe the new look, was that it looks very much like an office-based web service, but for personal use.

We especially liked the RSS integration and the ability to sort your mails out by simply dragging them to a new folder. What was very clever, was that the application wouldn't let you drag the email into the wrong folder. So if you were trying to drag something from the inbox to the inbox for example the interface let you know that you were going wrong.

The service is available from today.