Yahoo today unveiled an update for its email service that includes multi-tasking support. In a post, the company’s engineering director Ratan Hudda explains that the ability to switch between emails, search results, and drafts was missed by Yahoo’s users, so now the product includes a “Recent” view option that will allow you to multi-task from within the same browser tab.
After you log into Yahoo Mail from any computer, it will display up to three sets of your most recent activities that you’ve done previously. This can include things like messages you’ve composed or have in drafts, recently opened emails, and the latest search query that you’ve run. It will also display the last 10 recent email messages that you’ve looked at, something the company says will help make it easier to identify individual messages quicker.
To further support multi-tasking, Yahoo also revealed specific keyboard shortcuts that users can take advantage of, including Ctrl+[ and Ctrl+] on Windows and ⌘+[ and ⌘+] on Mac.
Today’s news comes more than a month after Yahoo revamped Mail, giving it a new look, threaded “conversations”, and 1TB of storage. It’s no surprise that the company is making more investments in its email service — it plays a big role in Yahoo’s 800 million monthly active users, which company CEO Marissa Mayer revealed in September.
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Of course it hasn’t been without problems: days after the revamp, there was a bug that automatically forwarded user emails to alternate addresses — all without the user’s permission.
The new multi-tasking feature is currently only available for the Web, not Yahoo Mail’s mobile apps. It will also begin rolling out today and some users may see it within the next week.
Photo credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
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