Wednesday, January 25, 2006

yahoo! mail beta

I know school just started, but something more important just came up... the premiere of Yahoo! Mail Beta (at least for me...)

Alright, this long-awaited debut finally came to my inbox this evening, and looked a little something like this:



Of course it uses all sorts of brand spankin' new web functionality like AJAX and whatnot. After playing with it for just a few minutes, I decided I like it a whole lot. It's much more convenient than the old Y! mail, and I even *gasps* like it better than gmail. I use Y! for my day to day email as opposed to gmail because, well, gmail is pretty creepy, plus I've had my Y! account for so long it's a PITA to switch now.

As we web developer/programmer/whateveryouwanttocallit, I am very interested in how this kind of stuff works, and after looking through the source code just a tiny bit, it's very clear that there is lots of technology behind this. Take a look at a tiny snippet here:

<iframe id="submenuBackerIFrame" class="hiddenIframe" src="about:blank" frameborder=0></iframe>
<iframe id="menuBackerIFrame" class="hiddenIframe" src="about:blank" frameborder=0></iframe>
<iframe id="historyFrame" name="historyFrame" class="hiddenIframe" src="./browserHistory.html" frameborder=0></iframe>
<iframe id="reloginFrame" frameborder=0 style="display:none"></iframe>
<iframe id="framePooler1" src="about:blank" class="TabItem"></iframe>
<iframe id="framePooler2" src="about:blank" class="TabItem"></iframe>
<iframe id="framePooler3" src="about:blank" class="TabItem"></iframe>
<iframe id="framePooler4" src="about:blank" class="TabItem"></iframe>
<iframe id="framePooler5" src="about:blank" class="TabItem"></iframe>
<iframe id="framePooler6" src="about:blank" class="TabItem"></iframe>
<iframe id="framePooler7" src="about:blank" class="TabItem"></iframe>
<iframe id="framePooler8" src="about:blank" class="TabItem"></iframe>
<iframe id="framePooler9" src="about:blank" class="TabItem"></iframe>
<iframe id="framePooler10" src="about:blank" class="TabItem"></iframe>
<iframe id="framePooler11" src="about:blank" class="TabItem"></iframe>
<iframe id="framePooler12" src="about:blank" class="TabItem"></iframe>
<iframe id="framePooler13" src="about:blank" class="TabItem"></iframe>
<iframe id="framePooler14" src="about:blank" class="TabItem"></iframe>
<iframe id="framePooler15" src="about:blank" class="TabItem"></iframe>
<iframe id="framePooler16" src="about:blank" class="TabItem"></iframe>
<iframe id="framePooler17" src="about:blank" class="TabItem"></iframe>
<iframe id="framePooler18" src="about:blank" class="TabItem"></iframe>
<iframe id="framePooler19" src="about:blank" class="TabItem"></iframe>
<iframe id="framePooler20" src="about:blank" class="TabItem"></iframe>
<iframe id="captchaFrame" frameborder=0 style="display:none"></iframe>

Yeah. Lots of hidden iframes, huh? In addition to this, there are several thousand lines of javascript that runs the new Yahoo! Mail beta. Way too overwhelming to go through tonight, but if I find anything interesting I'll post it.

I can't wait to go through all the new features. It looks like there's a new RSS reader too... Anyway, this may be old news, but it's cool for me :)

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