Thursday 22 February 2007

Yahoo! Mail Beta - Not on Linux

Update: The issue below has been resolved. I got another response from Yahoo! stating the following:

"Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Mail.

We're glad to have this opportunity to assist you with this issue. We
understand you are seeing an error that your browser is not compatible.
We apologize for the inconvenience caused to you.

To fix this issue please update your browser with the latest Firefox
Version 2.0.0.1 "

Indeed, updating Firefox from 2.0 to 2.0.0.1 fixed the problem. If you suffer from Yahoo! Mail beta not working on Linux, check that you are using Firefox 2.0.0.1.

Original Text:
It seems that the new version of Yahoo! Mail is Operating System dependant. Yes, you read that right, Operating System dependant as well as browser dependant.

I've been using Yahoo! Mail for years. Some of the messages in my folders are from the year 2000. I applied for the Yahoo! Mail Beta as soon as I found out about it and have been using it now for several months. I'd log in from my Kubuntu machine at work, my Kubuntu machine at home and OS X from home. All of those machines are running Firefox 2.0 and I never had any issues. Two weeks ago that all changed.

After clearing my browser cache, I logged in to Yahoo! Mail from the Kubuntu Dapper work machine. I was greeted with a page informing me that my setup was not supported and was taken to the old static mail pages. I thought they had changed something, so I raised a bug. Here is part of the response I received from Yahoo Support:

"Yahoo! beta does not support both mac and linux which you are running.
We advice you to upgrade an another OS from the information provided
below:

Operating Systems Supported

" Windows 2000, XP or later versions
" Mac OSX or later versions

Hope the above mentioned steps will help your concern and if not, then
please feel free to contact us again. We will be glad to assist you in
this purpose.
" [sic]

So, according to Yahoo!, I should "upgrade" from Kubuntu Dapper to Windows 2000 or Windows XP. I don't think so. I sent them another message telling them as much and have not received any response yet. I'm shocked and annoyed that Yahoo! would even suggest changing my OS just to use their service.

The real question is: Why does Yahoo! Mail have to be dependant on Windows or OS X? It's a web application after all. Interestingly, if you look at their browser support chart, Linux is not even mentioned.

I'll post updates as the matter progresses.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting, I just logged into yahoo mail beta using Ubuntu 6.10 and firefox 2.0.0.1

Anonymous said...

I can confirm the broken Linux support for new Yahoo Beta! For maybe three months now I have an issue where sending an email would put my Firefox 2.x into an endless busy state and no mail was sent.

I posted a question on Yahoo's forums and got no answers. Finally I gave up and reverted to old Yahoo mail. That at least I know, works on all the platforms I use, and on all browsers including Konqueror.

Anonymous said...

I am not sure what to say. I run solaris on sparc and i use FF 1.5 .I have been accessing Y! mail beta for quite some time now and it works fairly well(i have faced minor problems such as right click doesnt work properly at places).

Anonymous said...

That may explain the problem I had some weeks ago with Yahoo! Mail Beta. Whenever I tried to add an attachment Mail just sat there doing nothing. No error message, no attachment, no cancel operation. The only thing I could do was kill my browser. I reported it to Yahoo! and they came back with "could not replicate" problem. By that time I had upgraded to 2.0.0.2 and the problem was gone. I assumed it was a temporary Yahoo! issue, but perhaps it was my browser version?

Anonymous said...

I`ve had the same problem while uploadin attachements from my Ubuntu Dapper and Firefox 2.0 .. i plan to stop using Yahoo!Mail.. I`ll stick to GMail, at least they are consistent

I R A Darth Aggie said...

Why does Yahoo! Mail have to be dependant on Windows or OS X?

I would guess because they're foolishly looking at browser strings and attempting to gauge your browser's capablities beforehand.

I haven't had your issues, but then again I'm using Iceweasel 2.0.0.1. The only time Y! griped at me, I was presented a dialog of "go use the old version" or "no, continue using the beta version".

Naturally, I clicked "continue" and it's worked perfectly ever since.

Rory Curtis said...

Thanks for the feedback all. As the update states, everything has worked well since updating to Firefox 2.0.0.1.

Anonymous said...

I've been checking on the Yahoo mail beta for a while. It strikes me as little in the way of functionality improvements, but more eye candy, and ... *slower!*