WTF Yahoo mail?

[EthelMercaptan]

I log into my email to find a POPUP!!!YAY announcing the implementation (apparently at noon today; it wasn't here this morning) of the NEW CHAT AND MOBILE TEXT FEATURE!!one!one! which is TURNED ON BY DEFAULT!! and is also BRIGHT ORANGE and apparently CANNOT BE REMOVED FROM MY SIDE MENU when I open my mailbox. When you log into your email, you can now be INSTANTLY RECEIVE INSTANT MESSAGES FROM ALL YOUR CONTACTS, INSTANTLY! And wow, look, I already have two REQUESTS TO BE A PERSONAL CONTACT. One I actually know, my fervidly onlinely-connected cousin-in-law whom I haven't seen since the last family wedding; and someone named jsbear79. No other information provided. Who do I know named jsbear79? Hmmm. Hmmm. Nope, not ringing a bell. But I enthusiastically await the requests of my other close friends, rf8xughp744t83, v!aGr4Fr33, xXxluvD0llxXx and thousands of others who are sure to be throwing MORE POPUP REQUESTS onto my login page soon.

Fuck you, Yahoo. If I want to follow someone's miniblog, I'll use Twitter. If I want to make announcements to personal friends, I'll use Facebook. If I want to check my email, that's quite frankly ALL I want to do; I don't want little popup windows clogging the page and I don't want everyone to KNOW I'm currently checkin' mah email and try to pepper me with "hey whutr u doin." You've done email for me just fine for years, and even your spam blocking has gotten pretty darned good, but I've been considering swapping over to gmail for other reasons, and this "waah we wanna be a social network too" BS just might be what pushes me over that line.

[XJETGIRLX]

You know that gmail has gchat, which is essentially the same thing, right?

[Liberal]

Hmm. That's not happening to me. (If you switch to gmail, watch out for frying pan to fire.)

[EthelMercaptan]

You know that gmail has gchat, which is essentially the same thing, right?

As I understand it, gmail has a slightly better cachet than a yahoo address does, so if I have to put up with a stupid chat feature, I may as well take the "cooler" address.

Can you turn gchat off? Can you bury it somewhere where you don't have to see it, and it doesn't bump your desired features (like folders and address book) further down the page? If so, it has a leg up on this damned thing.

[Diana]

As an added bonus, I'm finding my yahoo mail to be excruciatingly slow today.

I moved the chat thingy down below my folders and changed my status to offline (after receiving no fewer than five porny IMs in the time it took me to figure out how to do so, which wasn't long), so it's not bothering me at the moment.

[hatesfreedom]

www.google.com/a/

get your own domain and then use google email anyways. best of both worlds. and i know in the appcontrol there's a turn off gchat feature. i can't be bothered to actually tech support it up for you though.

[XJETGIRLX]

You know that gmail has gchat, which is essentially the same thing, right?

As I understand it, gmail has a slightly better cachet than a yahoo address does, so if I have to put up with a stupid chat feature, I may as well take the "cooler" address.

Can you turn gchat off? Can you bury it somewhere where you don't have to see it, and it doesn't bump your desired features (like folders and address book) further down the page? If so, it has a leg up on this damned thing.

You can log out of chat, and you can collapse/expand the chat buddy list, but there's no built-in feature to bury or hide it. If you use firefox you can get the greasemonkey extension, and that allows you to download user scripts that can change how your gmail is displayed.

Here is a picture of what the default gmail inbox looks like. The bar on the left that says "Bob T. Monkey" and then under it has a field for "search, add, or invite" is the collapsed chat buddy list.

Edited to add: FWIW, I highly recommend gmail. It takes some getting used to, since there is no concept of folders like most people are used to, but I like the way emails are grouped in conversations and I like that I can find anything anyone ever sent me in just a few seconds.

[Chefguy]

You don't call, you don't return my emails. Tell me what I did that was so bad.


Love,

jsbear79

[EthelMercaptan]

Aaaaaannd now I can't log into my mail at all. Fabulous.


Eta: and it's back. Cripes, these people are taking lessons from Ed...

[garygnu]

You can, at least, set it to be below your list of folders.
I’ve already sent feedback, but it’s telling that “Negative Feedback” isn’t one of the choices for what type of feedback you’re sending.

My wife’s account has some stupid “Connection Suggestions” taking up space on her front page that, likewise, she can’t get rid of.

No connection issues, though.

[Astroboy14]

I just logged out and then back in to my Yahoo mail... I don't see it either. Huh.

[featherlou]

I don't see it either. I'm thinking they don't like you, Ethel.

(Actually I am running PithHelmet on a Mac - it takes a lot of the garbage out for me.)

[EthelMercaptan]

You don't call, you don't return my emails. Tell me what I did that was so bad.


Love,

jsbear79

My dear lamented jsbear79,

It is my greatest regret that we cannot be together. It was a long hard pull and we gave it our best, but it is not to be. I can no longer abide the stream of ads for cheap medications, sex, and printer cartridges. I will always hold our relationship in a special place in my heart.

Ethel

[EthelMercaptan]

Wanna know something weird? On my junk mail yahoo account, the one that got too cluttered with spam ten years ago but I still use when I sign up for newsletters and crap? That one doesn't have the chat window.

[Cervaise]

Maybe switch back to "Classic View." When they went to the "New! Snazzy! Superduper! Interface! with Scripts! and Flashy Crap!" version, it was fairly predictable that delivery of this sort of stuff was coming soon. So I forced the switch back to Classic and haven't worried about it since.

[EthelMercaptan]

I am on Classic View. The Super Happy Fun Shiny version made me gag.

I am suspecting I have the Chat Box because I've answered questions on Yahoo Answers before. Somewhere, somehow there's a checkbox or something I missed, and they've got me down as someone who wants to participate in their pseudo-social networking crap.