Yahoo! Mail Blog, UK and Ireland

I don’t know about you, but I have this funny feeling that this summer is shaping up to be a repeat of last summer (not in a good way). Well, at least here in London, things have been grey as all get out. So to brighten your day, I thought I’d share with you, a new feature that’s recently launched in the all-new version of Yahoo Mail.

If you use the all-new version of Yahoo! Mail, and if you email a lot of photos, you probably have already seen this feature, but just in case you haven’t come across it, there is a new feature that was added that allows you to view the photos that are attached to your yahoo mail directly from your Inbox.

Here’s how it works (easy as 1-2-3):
For this example, I’m working with an email that includes three photos, but the same applies whether there are 2 or 200 photos attached. When I open up the message that has photos attached to it, the bottom of the message is going to look like this (without those crazy red boxes and numbers):

1. If you click ‘1’ you will be able to view the image directly from within the all-new Yahoo! Mail interface.
2. If you click ‘2’ you’ll start a slideshow that will allow you to scroll through all the images attached, which is very similar behavior to number ‘1’. (For more detail on ‘1’ and ‘2’, have a look further down this post to the next image where I’ll talk about the image viewer.)
3. But, after all the oohs and ahhs have worn off, this is what I REALLY like about this new feature… If you liked the download all feature, you’re really going to love this. ‘3’ allows you select from the attached pictures and only download the ones that you choose. All you have to do is put a check in the box of the pictures you want to download and then click the “download selected”. Of course you can still download all, but let’s face it I’m not that good of a photographer.

So what’s this image viewer all about?
If you’re still reading, let’s take a look at what happens when you click ‘1’ or ‘2’ from above. A sort of window pops up (it’s really an overlay) with the image you just clicked:

So here’s what you can do with the photo-viewer when it pops up (staying with the easy as 1-2-3 theme):

1. Whether you click on a picture or the slideshow link, you can scroll through the pictures that are attached to the image. So what’s the difference? Well if you click the slideshow link, then it starts with the first image, and if you click a specific image, you’ll then go to the next image.
2. Clicking ‘2’ will stop and start the slide show. If the slideshow is playing the text in the red box above will say “pause” instead of “play”.
3. Clicking ‘3’ does exactly what it says on the tin. To close your photo-preview or slideshow, just click the “close” button.

So that’s it. The beauty is in the simplicity, and I still think the ability to download selected photos is fantastic!! Unfortunately, this feature is only available to users of the all-new mail, so if you’re a classic mail user, feel free to switch.

Happy Photo Viewing!
Andrew – Yahoo Mail! Team