Keyboard Shortcut Use in Yahoo! Mail Encouraged

Article by George Norman (Cybersecurity Editor)

on 18 May 2009

For the development team at Yahoo! the focus is not all on the iPhone and the IM app that Yahoo! developed for the Apple branded device – the one that had its login issues solved recently. One other area of interest is Yahoo! Mail, the email client that is used by over 260 million people all over the world. The one thing that the Yahoo! Mail team wants to draw your attention to is the fact that there are several keyboard shortcuts in the new Yahoo! Mail that you can take advantage of.

“Now, I know, for most, when using a computer reaching for the mouse is almost second nature. You probably don’t even realize you’re doing it. My first computer didn’t come with a mouse, so I learned to use a computer using nothing but a keyboard. Which is why - for me - the keyboard shortcuts in the all-new version of Yahoo! mail are fantastic. I can go almost a whole session without ever having to reach for the mouse. Who needs drag and drop, or point and click, when you can do the exact same thing with a single keystroke?” comments Program Manager, Andrew Molyneux.

The keyboard shortcuts available in Yahoo! Mail that Andrew Molyneux mentioned are as follows:
- Up/Down arrows to highlight the message you want to read; press “Enter” in order to read it; press “Esc” when you are done reading it and the message will close. If you do not want to keep the message in your inbox, just press “Delete” and it will be erased.
- In order to compose a new message, press “n” while looking at your inbox; this will open a new message window, with the mouse’s cursor placed in the “To” field. Just start typing a contact’s name and the Auto-complete function will present you with a list of possible matches; just tap the up/down arrow to highlight the one that interests you and press “Enter”.
- To move from one field to another (like from “To” to “Cc” or “Subject”) just press “Tab”. By repeatedly pressing tab you will eventually reach the message body, where all you have to do is type in the message you wish to send out. When you are done composing your email, you need not click on “Send”, you can simply press Ctrl + Enter.

“Those are two of the things that we do most with email (reading and writing), completed without touching that mouse,” adds Andrew Molyneux. “I know! It IS very cool!! And I guarantee – once you get used to it – it’s quicker and easier to do than the same with a mouse. There’s a lot more keyboard shortcuts than the ones above. You can do almost everything in Yahoo! Mail with a single keystroke. It’s easy to find out what they are too. You can navigate on over to this help page, which lists all the available keyboard shortcuts.”

In related news, Google is touting the fact that migrating from your current email client to Gmail is quite and easy task thanks to a special tool the search engine giant has rolled out (details here).


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