Web Mail Blog

Yesterday we added a new option to allow Ad-Free Web Mail for any account.

Click on MyAccount at the top of any EarthLink page and log in there using your master account or primary email address. Then on the left side of the page click on "My Plan Details".

You'll then see all your upgrade options displayed on the right, and Ad-Free Web Mail is the first one at the top. Just click on Enable or on More Info and follow the instructions.

Regular readers of the blog know this is something I've been working on for a while but didn't have specifics of how it would ultimately come out. Many users have asked for this option and have been eagerly waiting for it. I got you the best deal I could (details below), and I know many users will find it attractive. EarthLink allows you the freedom to access your mailbox using any email software of the your choosing, and Web Mail is one convenient way to manage your email. Web Mail doesn't require you to install any software and it can be accessed from any computer and any browser. But Web Mail has always displayed banner advertising and some users object to that. See the FAQ for more discussion on that topic.

If banner ads cause you any trouble or slowness when using Web Mail, or you just find them annoying, or you have a small display and would benefit from recovering that extra screen space, now you can. For 99 cents a month, all Web Mail advertising will be turned off for all your mailboxes, no matter how many mailboxes you have on your account. Most users have 2 or 3 mailboxes, many have 8 or more. The upgrade is just one flat price for all your mailboxes, and it's $0.99. You can make a couple of clicks on your MyAccount page and turn the ads off, and if at any time you want to discontinue the upgrade, you do that the same way.

        Continue reading "Ad-Free Web Mail option now available" » »

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Tomorrow, users with banners turned on will notice a change to the banner layout in Web Mail. About a year ago the main banner on the Inbox page was moved from the top of the page to the right side of the page. At the time that move was made, 15% of our users were running an older 800x600 display size on their computer, and those users benefit from the side placement. There are fewer of those users today, but it is now being put back for two other reasons as well. We now think it is more intrusive on the side for most users, after having it for a while and getting feedback. And, the banner industry is fickle and they are moving away from that skyscraper style now, and they prefer the top placement again.

There were no other changes in this release.

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We updated Web Mail today, adding a few improvements and fixing a few bugs. Here's a list of the changes you'll notice.

1. One big change is an improvement to the Preferences views. We've organized them into a tabbed view, making it much easier to find the setting you're looking for and making it faster for dialup users. Clicking Preferences in the new release, you'll see this:

   

   All the same settings as before are present, but they're just better organized and easier to get to. Click on any of the four tabs and the related settings will be listed immediately without having to load a new page.

   
   

2. We also updated the pagination control to make it easier to use. That's the buttons at the upper right over your Inbox list, where you navigate through the pages of your Inbox list.

   

   
   

3. Many users who use spamBlocker set to High wanted the default action in the Suspect Email folder to be Delete, since that is used a lot more than the other selections in the drop-down list. So the default selection is now Delete, but the list of options is unchanged.

   

   
   

4. You'll also notice some minor changes to the Date column format in your Inbox list. We made this column a little smaller to give more room for the Subject, and made the display format a little more friendly. Instead of seeing a full date including a 4-digit year, now you'll see something like "Apr 11" for any messages received in the past year, and the full year format will only be shown for messages older than 11 months.

5. And we fixed a few bugs in this release.
   • On the login page, if you have used the checkbox to remember your email address, the cursor will now come up in the password box automatically.

   • Some users couldn't edit their Blocked Sender List, getting an "internal error". That problem is fixed.

   • The setting for "Sign-out Destination" wasn't always being honored, and if certain actions were done during the session (including column sorting) the sign-out would always go to MyEarthLink regardless of your setting. That is now fixed.

As always, please let us know if anything isn't working right, and keep the feedback coming.

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After a number of user reports, we were able to reproduce two bugs that seem to have been introduced in this latest release. We're working on fixing them now. Both are just minor annoyances so it may be a few weeks before we get the fix out, but I wanted to let you know that we are aware of them already.

Here's the two bugs:

• ( FIXED ) - When you have checked the box on the login page for "Remember my login" this prefills your username when you navigate to that page. When you use that feature, the input cursor should load in the password box automatically so that you can begin typing, but it isn't. The cursor is coming up in the username box whether you have that saved or not. So you have to click the password box or press the tab key to put the cursor in the right place. It will take that extra step until we get this fixed.

• ( FIXED ) - When you have changed your Preference setting for the "Signout Destination" and set it to go to the Web Mail login page, that's what you expect to happen. There is one circumstance where this is failing, and the logout is always going to the MyEarthLink page (the other option in Preferences). If you have used the column sorting feature during that session, by clicking on the Sender or Subject column header (or any column) above the message listing, then when you sign out it will go to MyEarthLink regardless of your preference.

I've awarded this second one our "Bizarre Bug of the Year" prize, which began just this year (just today in fact). What does column sorting have to do with the logout preference? I'm sure the developers will figure it out.

Thanks for the reports that helped us find these.

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This morning we released a minor update to fix a few bugs. We're still working on some bigger changes and improvements that will be announced soon.

Today's release was actually a big update for our domain hosting customers who access Web mail at webmail.hosting.earthlink.net, since they have not gotten the past few releases and were still on version 5.16.4, while the regular consumer Web Mail at webmail.earthlink.net was already up to version 5.53. So our hosting customers are getting all the updates released in the past five months, all at once. Hosting users can read the prior release notes for 5.50 and 5.51 to catch up on the changes (other release numbers didn't have significant user-facing changes).

The changes included in release 5.54 today are:

1. We fixed problem that would sometimes cause the cursor on the login page to jump back to the username box while you were typing the password. This caused quite a few complaints from users who inadvertently had their password saved in plain text in the username box. It's fixed now and that shouldn't happen anymore.

2. New accounts will now properly save the user's "From Name" entered on the first time user screen. This was not being saved properly since the last release, and is fixed now. The "From Name" is what appears on outgoing email with your email address.

3. Users who have a blank "From Name" saved had been unable to update it and save anything, and that is now fixed. All users should now be able to set and save a "From Name". To set it, just click Preferences / Web Mail Options and scroll down to the From Name setting.

4. Fixed a bug where the Preference setting for Sign-out Destination was not always being honored correctly.

Stay tuned for more updates coming soon, and continue to let us know about any problems, either here or by using the Feedback link in Web Mail.

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We took your feedback and fixed a few things in the 5.50 release from two weeks ago (which you can read about in the two posts below this one) and got a new one out as quickly as we could. Here's the main things that changed in Web Mail today:

1. The order of the Delete and Spam buttons has been switched back on all views. The Delete is now first, where you are accustomed to having it.

   

2. The font used to display plain text messages is changed back to the familiar monospace font (the same one you see here, I switched this back to match).

3. We adjusted a few of the toolbar button sizes and spacing that was causing width problems on smaller resolution screens.

4. We made a change that will force an update of the style sheet file on browsers that were holding the old incompatible one in the cache, causing layout problems for some users.

5. The sizes of the icon columns in the left part of the Inbox list (reply arrow, attachment paperclip, flag, etc) were reduced to allow more of the subject line to show in the list. Also, when there are no icons present, those columns will now collapse and not take up any room.

   

6. The text on the Forward control is updated to show an ellipsis (...) as an indication that you must make a selection, to eliminate some confusion. This two-step control is still temporary while we work on one that will be a combination button and selection list, coming soon.

   
   

There were also a couple of minor bugs fixed. Thanks again for all the feedback, and we're still working hard on more improvements and will have another release in a few weeks.

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UPDATE - see this post for a response to feedback we've received.

Web Mail has some great new features today!

We're making progress towards Web Mail 6.0 and we've decided to make the updates in 3 phases. This is the first phase, version 5.50, and it includes a number of the planned improvements and some bug fixes. Next we'll have 5.60 in a month or so, and then hopefully we'll have the full 6.0 released by the end of this year. Change takes a little getting-used-to, so we don't want to change too much at once. This article explains what we updated in this first phase.

Important: if you keep your browser open all the time and you have not closed it and restarted it since the new release, there may be some issues with the page style that will be resolved once you shut down your browser and re-open it so it can refresh the style sheets that control the page layout. If that doesn't work, clear the cache and try again.

** If you are not seeing the layout exactly like the image below , including the lines between the message list, then you need to refresh your browser or clear your browser cache. This picture is IE7, but Firefox 2.0 or any up-to-date browser will look almost identical.

(click to see full size)

Once your browser has loaded the updated page, here's a list of the improvements you'll see:

• The button order has changed, and you'll see a new Print button there, making that feature easier to find and use.
  
• We shortened the "This Is Spam" button to just Spam but it still does the same thing.
  
• The "Move to..." selector no longer has a button associated with it. Now when you select your destination folder in the list, that click will go ahead and do the move. Fewer steps.
  
• On the far right you'll see a new selector for "More Actions...". This list contains features that already existed but were sometimes hard to find, so now they're all in one place and easier to use. The actions are View Headers, View Source, Mark Unread, and Flag Message. All of these work exactly the same as they did before; they are just in a more accessible place. Note that when you are using the Preview pane, there won't be a selection to Mark Unread. You have to turn off Preview to do that (which is also easier to toggle now).
  
• Last, notice the Forward selector. This is now a drop-down instead of a button, so that you can choose whether to forward a message inline or "as attachment". Previously it just defaulted to inline, which often caused problems with re-forwarding messages forwarded to you with attached files. In the next release, we're going to make this a combination control with a button area and the drop-down area, so that you will only have to click once for your default Forward type (which you can set in Preferences).

        Continue reading "Web Mail 5.50 released September 28" » »

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Up until today Web Mail had a limit of 40 folders, counting the default folders plus any you created yourself.

Many users asked for the ability to create more, so after looking into this I was able to get this increased to 200. That should be sufficient to satisfy just about all users. The change was made this evening and is in effect now for all mailboxes.

If you have never created a new folder in Web Mail, to do so you simply click the link to Folders on the left side of Web Mail.

This will take you to the Folders page where you can create new folders, delete the contents of any folder with a single click, and delete or rename any folders you created. If you use up the 200 allowed folders, the button at the bottom of the page to "Create Folder" will disappear until you delete a folder to bring you back under the limit.

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This morning we did a maintenance release with only one visible change.

This release fixes the bug where some buttons were not appearing on older browsers, particularly IE 5.5.

We're still hard at work on a number of new features and on the new Web Mail 6.0, which will be ready this fall. Stay tuned for more.

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In case you haven't been following recent releases, there are some new options to control the default page shown on login and after logout.

To set the first page you see after login, click Preferences / Web Mail Options and use this setting:

To set the destination page for after you log out, click Preferences / Web Mail Options (while logged in) and use this setting:

Be sure to click Save when you're done.

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I'm on vacation and will publish and respond to your comments when I return. On Friday morning 7/6 a new release of Web Mail was put into production, labeled version 5.16.3.

This release has a number of important bug fixes and a couple feature changes. The main new feature is the addition of a new Preference for setting your Sign-out destination. The default will continue to be the myEarthLink page as it is now, but you will be able to choose the setting to return to the Login page. This will be particularly useful for users who check multiple email accounts, to avoid extra steps. To change the setting, click Preferences, Web Mail Options.

Other than that, this release has the following bug fixes:

• Forwarding attached files will now work properly.

• The bug where the spell checker would occasionally delete the message text, is fixed.

• The preview pane will now properly wrap text to the window and won't require a horizontal scroll if the content can be wrapped.

• Sorting the message list by the Sender column is fixed.

• The character limit for entering on the Bcc line has been removed. Note that there is still a limit of 100 recipients for Web Mail, in any combination of To/Cc/Bcc.

• You can now send a message out with the To line blank, as long as there is an address on one of the address lines (Cc or Bcc).

• Fixed the layout problem caused by long folder names displayed in the folder list drop-down for the Move messages feature.

• The spell-check dictionary has been updated and greatly expanded to include many more words. At the same time, we removed a few vulgar words from the dictionary that had been there before.
  

There are also some fixes that affect certain MIME types that didn't get displayed correctly by Web Mail, and in particular file attachments sent from Apple Mail should now be received properly.

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A couple updates:

First, and most importantly, we're listening to your feedback. Lots of people voiced an opinion about the new logout destination being inconvenient for them or otherwise undesirable. So we're adding an option to allow you to control that. If you want to have the old behavior of returning to the login page, you'll be able to do that. That option should be ready sometime in June. Thanks to everyone who commented on the change.

Secondly, we have fixed the issue that started yesterday, where links in some HTML emails were not clickable. That should now be be working again in all cases. Let me know if any problems remain.

And lastly, there are a couple other changes on the horizon that affect the impact of advertisements when using Web Mail. The change to the ad position yesterday got a mixed reaction, with some users liking it and some not. In Web Mail 6.0 (see preview here) you will have the ability to hide the left panel and gain a lot of horizontal real estate for your Inbox content. That recovers any width lost to the new ad position, and then some. And yes, I can confirm now that we will have an upgrade option in a few months that will provide an ad-free Web Mail. Look for more information on that later.

Thanks again for all the feedback.

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This morning in the wee hours we released Web Mail 5.16. This release has two main changes:

1. We moved the ad banner to a position that improves the usability of Web Mail. Instead of being across the top of the screen as it has been up until now, we moved it to a vertical location down the right margin. This allows your Inbox to start at the top of the page and reclaim that vertical space. We also made sure that the Inbox view (and every other view) has a minimum width that the banner must be outside of, so that users with a small display resolution like 800x600 will have at least the same amount of usable horizontal space as they did before, but now their content isn't pushed down off the page vertically. We still have about 15% of our users running 800x600 display sizes, so this should be a very welcome change for those users especially. And we believe all users will benefit from the change regardless of display size.

   Yes I know many users would love to see the ads go away completely (see the FAQ), but this change helps make them less intrusive for most users.

2. The "Sign-Out" link will now log you out of Web Mail just like always, but then load your myEarthLink page automatically, instead of going back to the Web Mail login page. I don't think many users got a benefit from going back to the login page, other than a visual confirmation that you had signed out. Now you'll get your customized myEarthLink page automatically after you're logged out, and you can use the handy Email Preview there to see when you have new messages and click back over to Web Mail. And if you are one who simply closes the browser when finished with Web Mail, that will still log you out too, just like it always has.

We're following this release immediately with final testing on some very important bug fixes that we're all looking forward to, and those should go out within 2-3 weeks. That build fixes the forwarding of attachments (and as a related bonus I'm told this also fixes some other troublesome MIME types that haven't worked quite right), fixes the spell-checker problem, fixes some issues with the Address Book import, and has some other welcome improvements. I'll provide a full list when we do the release.

I'll be posting an update soon on our new Web Mail 6.0 progress too, which includes many improvements throughout the application. You can see the early preview that I posted a couple of months ago in the Plans section. My next update will give some more detail for your feedback.

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This morning at about 2:30 AM EDT we released Web Mail 5.15. The only change in this release is the addition of the optional News Preview feature described in this post.

Let us know if you find this feature useful or if anything doesn't work as expected. As mentioned in the description linked above, a future release will give some customization options for choosing the type of news to show in your preview. Also, if you want to skip the news and have your login go straight to the Inbox, just click the link "Choose my default view" and set the option there.

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The maintenance release that I've been promising was put into production at about 3AM EDT today. The release is to fix the several issues that were introduced on 3/7. Thanks for your patience over the past 3 weeks waiting for these problems to be fixed.

The fixes in this release are:

• Sending attached files with spaces in the filename was failing. That is now fixed.

• When using Mozilla-based browsers including Firefox 1.x versions, Netscape 7 or 8, and Mozilla 1.x, users encountered problems with the message listing where lines disappeared, some subjects couldn't be clicked, and the page contained a lot of blank space. This is fixed.

• When using the Preview pane, deleting messages in the middle of the list would cause unread messages higher up in the list to be hidden until the user got a fresh listing by changing folders and back, or logging out and back. This is now fixed.

• Support for image map tags in HTML messages is now restored.
  

Thanks again for your patience while we resolved these problems.

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This morning we launched a minor Web Mail update to fix a number of bugs and issues reported by users. There are a couple of small enhancements to existing functionality in this release (we're still working on some exciting new stuff), but there are a lot of helpful bug fixes.

If you have trouble with the new release using the same browser that worked fine for you before, please try deleting the cached files in your browser, close the browser, and try again. In some browser this is called Temporary Internet Files or Cache.

First, we know about two new problems that were inadvertently introduced in this release, and hope to have them fixed late tomorrow night (3/6) and be working again on Wednesday 3/7. They are:

1. (FIXED)   When using the message Preview, unread messages in the Sent folder and other folders cannot be viewed. This doesn't affect the Inbox. The workaround until we fix it is to toggle the "Hide Message Preview" at the upper right. Messages that are already read (not bold) are not affected either way.
   
2. (FIXED)   The behavior of the "Delete All NN Messages" button in the Suspect Email folder was changed, and is being put back like it was.

Here are some of the main fixes that are already in the new release in production:

        Continue reading "Web Mail 5.13 released March 5" » »