Open beta testing of new Mail
- From RSS
The Yandex.Mail team announces the start of open beta testing of the new interface. Anyone can switch to it right now (in the mailbox settings ).
Even a year has not passed since the launch of the previous version - Neo - and we are already preparing a new one.
What has changed?
We drew a new design. Lighter and more comfortable. More simple.
But the main changes are "under the hood." If visually everything seems to be similar to Neo - folders on the left, letters on the right, buttons on the top, then inside everything has changed completely.
Before starting the development of the new version, we asked ourselves: what do we want to achieve? What is missing in Neo?
Speeds, we answered. We want it to be fast. So that the Mail instantly loads and responds to our actions.
What happens with the normal use of mail now, in Neo?
We open the mail and get into the Inbox. We see a new letter there and open it. We read, we return back to "Inbox".
In order for us to be able to read one letter, the browser had to load three rather voluminous pages. At the same time, the first differs from the second only in one block (the text of the letter instead of the list of letters), and the third simply coincides with the first. To generate html for these pages, you need to request almost the same data from the database three times, generate xml from them and apply the xslt conversion.
Wasteful!
We decided what could be done easier and faster. Now we are sending to the browser not html, but directly the data in xml format - exactly those that are needed to generate the page. This xml is cached in the browser and is not re-requested again. The page itself with all the necessary resources (css, js, ...) is loaded once at the very beginning and is no longer overloaded.
When moving through the mailbox, we only hide some blocks and show others in their place.
Still, the html of these blocks is generated using xslt, but not on the server, but directly in the browser (despite the fact that browsers are primarily associated with technologies such as html and css, in all modern versions it is possible to work with xml / xpath / xslt).
The html blocks themselves are also cached so as not to waste time regenerating them and inserting them into the page (and this is one of the most expensive operations in most browsers).
The load on servers and databases
is reduced : - The browser makes fewer http-requests, the data itself is more compact, faster loaded and cached in the browser;
- When navigating between folders and letters, the browser only changes the necessary blocks.
- In particular, returning to previously visited pages is instantaneous - you just need to hide some blocks and show others.
What else have we improved in the new version of Mail?
We made a new html-layout in accordance with the concept of completely independent blocks .
In addition, we refused to emulate “special effects” (rounded corners, shadows, translucency, etc.) in older browsers. For example, in IE6 you will not see rounded corners, but in modern browsers we use their fast built-in implementation.
To notify the user about new letters, we use web sockets technology - this is the ability to receive messages from the server in the browser immediately at the time the message arrives. Traditionally, a periodic request to the server is used for these purposes, which does not allow achieving instant delivery of new letters.
In addition to the fact that xslt server technology migrated to the browser, the opposite happened. Javascript came to our server code from a browser. It is used to generate xml data. The fact is that the xml, which is used in the browser to impose xslt on it, has special requirements - it must be compact and convenient for xslt. And now we can change xml on the fly as we need without recompiling and restarting the server code.
Much has already been done, but more remains to be done.
The functionality of browsers in recent years has greatly increased. Our task is to use all the capabilities of modern technologies to make Yandex.Mail even faster and more convenient.
Get ready!
Even a year has not passed since the launch of the previous version - Neo - and we are already preparing a new one.
What has changed?
We drew a new design. Lighter and more comfortable. More simple.
But the main changes are "under the hood." If visually everything seems to be similar to Neo - folders on the left, letters on the right, buttons on the top, then inside everything has changed completely.
Before starting the development of the new version, we asked ourselves: what do we want to achieve? What is missing in Neo?
Speeds, we answered. We want it to be fast. So that the Mail instantly loads and responds to our actions.
What happens with the normal use of mail now, in Neo?
We open the mail and get into the Inbox. We see a new letter there and open it. We read, we return back to "Inbox".
In order for us to be able to read one letter, the browser had to load three rather voluminous pages. At the same time, the first differs from the second only in one block (the text of the letter instead of the list of letters), and the third simply coincides with the first. To generate html for these pages, you need to request almost the same data from the database three times, generate xml from them and apply the xslt conversion.
Wasteful!
We decided what could be done easier and faster. Now we are sending to the browser not html, but directly the data in xml format - exactly those that are needed to generate the page. This xml is cached in the browser and is not re-requested again. The page itself with all the necessary resources (css, js, ...) is loaded once at the very beginning and is no longer overloaded.
When moving through the mailbox, we only hide some blocks and show others in their place.
Still, the html of these blocks is generated using xslt, but not on the server, but directly in the browser (despite the fact that browsers are primarily associated with technologies such as html and css, in all modern versions it is possible to work with xml / xpath / xslt).
The html blocks themselves are also cached so as not to waste time regenerating them and inserting them into the page (and this is one of the most expensive operations in most browsers).
The load on servers and databases
is reduced : - The browser makes fewer http-requests, the data itself is more compact, faster loaded and cached in the browser;
- When navigating between folders and letters, the browser only changes the necessary blocks.
- In particular, returning to previously visited pages is instantaneous - you just need to hide some blocks and show others.
What else have we improved in the new version of Mail?
We made a new html-layout in accordance with the concept of completely independent blocks .
In addition, we refused to emulate “special effects” (rounded corners, shadows, translucency, etc.) in older browsers. For example, in IE6 you will not see rounded corners, but in modern browsers we use their fast built-in implementation.
To notify the user about new letters, we use web sockets technology - this is the ability to receive messages from the server in the browser immediately at the time the message arrives. Traditionally, a periodic request to the server is used for these purposes, which does not allow achieving instant delivery of new letters.
In addition to the fact that xslt server technology migrated to the browser, the opposite happened. Javascript came to our server code from a browser. It is used to generate xml data. The fact is that the xml, which is used in the browser to impose xslt on it, has special requirements - it must be compact and convenient for xslt. And now we can change xml on the fly as we need without recompiling and restarting the server code.
Much has already been done, but more remains to be done.
The functionality of browsers in recent years has greatly increased. Our task is to use all the capabilities of modern technologies to make Yandex.Mail even faster and more convenient.
Get ready!