New Yahoo! Mail to be sexier, faster, and more social

Yahoo! Mail's upcoming interface refresh made its first public appearance today, and it's surprisingly good. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, of course, but to me, the overall layout is much more appealing than the Gmail default I've grown accustomed to.

The first thing I noticed was that, unlike Gmail, there are tabs provided to switch between inbox and contacts views -- instead of another handful of buttons crammed into the left-hand navigation. Yahoo! Mail looks quite polished and a bit more like a desktop mail app.

This update isn't just be about looks, however. The new Yahoo! Mail will also be faster and feature an updated inbox search page, as well as Facebook, Twitter, and SMS integration. There's also talk of new photo and video sharing tools and an updated version of the integrated Yahoo! Messenger.

Yahoo reports that the Mail update will become available to users sometime this fall, though no specific date has been given at this point. Users will have the choice of opting in to the beta once it's made available.

I'm going to assume the color scheme will be customizable. While that's a nice shade of purple, it wouldn't be my number one pick.

[via CNet]

Tags: email, gmail, interface, mail, refresh, update, webmail, yahoo mail, YahooMail, ymail