Thursday, April 9, 2009

Yahoo Mail, Is there a problem here?

I was logging into my yahoo account, when I realized when I had logged in an hour back the home page was different. I thought, the homepage might have been updated? Or was there a difference the way I accessed the Yahoo! Mail home page the last time?
Then upon little investigation, I realized that the last time I had traversed to the home page was in the following way– I went to
www.yahoo.com and clicked on the ‘Mail’ option. The second time I had reached homepage through – www.mail.yahoo.com
This got me interested and I wanted to have a quick comparison of the two homepages which had opened. So for discussion sake, I want to use the following conventions -:
Option 1 -: Go to
www.yahoo.com and click on ‘Mail’ option
Option 2 -: Go to
www.mail.yahoo.com
[NOTE -: Option1 took me to ‘Yahoo! India’ homepage, while Option2 took me to ‘Yahoo! Mail’ default homepage.]

I did a quick round of comparison and following are my observations -:
(i) Option2 (The default ‘Yahoo! Mail’ home page) had a link to go to ‘Yahoo!’ homepage But in Option1 (‘Yahoo! India’ homepage) I couldn’t find any link to traverse to ‘Yahoo!’ homepage.

(ii) I noticed that the Window Title in Option1 showed “Sign in to Yahoo! India” while the Window Title in Option2 showed “Yahoo! Mail: the best web-based mail”. I wondered why Option1 didn’t have ‘Mail’ in their Window title.

So I opened the Yahoo! UK and Canada sites. Oh, there the Window title was “Sign in to Yahoo!”, Country names were not mentioned (although it is mentioned within the respective homepages). So Yahoo! doesn’t seem to have uniformity in naming the Window titles.

(iii) In Option1 (‘Yahoo! India’ homepage) there is an amazing link “Forget your ID or Password?” . Wow!!, it seems Yahoo might want to help its users to Forget their UserID or Password. What an innovative idea?
I had first found similar message a couple of weeks back when I was testing a website during the Finishing School session that
Pradeep was conducting. That site was still to go Live, but it could be that they may have picked up the idea from Yahoo!.

Again I got curious, is this message present only in Option1 or is it also available in Option2 ? Luckily, Option2 had “I can’t access my account” link. But here too, Yahoo! doesn’t seem to have uniformity in naming the links. For same functionality it has got different names.

(iv) I decided to move on and have a peek into the ‘Sign Up’ page for both Option1 and Option2. Hey surprise!! , there is another “Forgot your password or Yahoo! Id?” link when entering Sign Up page through Option1 AND you know what, there is a “Forget your password or Yahoo! Id?” when you navigate to Sign Up page through Option2.

First, why do you need “Forgot you password or Yahoo! Id” within the Registration page? May be because if the user cannot see this link on the homepage, he could dig into the Registration page and find this option. Highly probable!!.

Second, even for people entering Yahoo! site by Option2 have a chance to ‘Forget their password or Yahoo Id’ by going to the Registration page. Good, why should the people using Option1 have all the fun alone?

(v) Finally l had a look at the ‘Security Question’ for both Option1 and Option2 and interestingly there were different set of Security questions asked. Why is it so? Once again I got curious and looked into Yahoo! UK and Canada sites and found that those sites have got exactly the same set of Security questions which is available from Option2 -> ‘Registration Page’. So probably Yahoo! Might have come up with special set of questions for Indian users.
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The intention of this post is to demonstrate that if anyone wants to practice testing, he can begin with almost any application he can get. I have nothing personal against Yahoo!, it is just my observations which I have listed here. And maybe, Yahoo! has got its own reasons for implementing things the way they are.

The title of this post is inspired from
Ben Simo’sIs There A Problem Here?’ blog.

4 comments:

Shikhar.K.Singh said...

Hi Manoj,

How are you friend ? Hope you remember me…

What a post buddy seriously nice one, I can’t appreciate your work because, I am small to you (in age), comparison to your designation, your knowledge, your skill and many more…
But, I can at least thank you for sharing your experiences with the new one’s (like me) as well as inspiring us to practice software online or any where.

I truly understand that there are many a things which we assume to be wrong but, no one complaint about it so it goes on…
Same like yahoo problem, when I got to know about the www.testrepublic.com, jumped directly to the Sign Up, so that I can explore as well as learn and discuss more about software testing. This is what I found on the registration page, an ungrammatical sentence according to Microsoft words say’s “ Problems Signing Up? ”. WOW!!


Didn’t any one recognize that?
This was supposed to be tester’s perfect website but, as said earlier no complaint so, let it go…

Here’s another one,
When I click the above link, it means I have a problem in “signing up” Right?
But, there is a statement saying “Problems Signing Up or Signing In” now, where did that ‘signing in’ came from?

Here’s another one,
When I click the above link, it means I have a problem in “signing up” Right?
But, there is another statement on that same page saying
“Forgot Your Password? Click here to reset your password” now, before signing up how one has forgotten the password which is not yet created?


Looking forward for your reply...
Kind Regards,
Shikhar.K.Singh…

M.V.Manoj said...

Hey Shikhar,

Welcome to my blog. Good to see you here.

<< Same like yahoo problem, when I got to know about the www.testrepublic.com, jumped directly to the Sign Up, so that I can explore as well as learn and discuss more about software testing. This is what I found on the registration page, an ungrammatical sentence according to Microsoft words say’s “Problems Signing Up?”. WOW!!
>>

Good find. This may or may not be an issue.

But what I liked here is your idea of putting up the sentence (which you probably felt could be grammatically incorrect) on Microsoft Word and advocating it as a problem as per MS Word.

<<< When I click the above link, it means I have a problem in “signing up” Right?
But, there is a statement saying “Problems Signing Up or Signing In” now, where did that ‘signing in’ came from?

Here’s another one,
When I click the above link, it means I have a problem in “signing up” Right?
But, there is another statement on that same page saying
“Forgot Your Password? Click here to reset your password” now, before signing up how one has forgotten the password which is not yet created?
>>>

Very good questions asked. How about doing more exploration of ‘testrepublic.com’ or any other site/application and coming up with a blog post of your own?


Shikhar - I like your enthusiasm to discuss and write along with your willingness to learn.


Keep it up!!,
-manoj

Shikhar.K.Singh said...

Hi Manoj,

Thank you very much for your reply and for remembering me...

as you said, i had explored test republic a bit and hope that nobody is offended by my testing work...

and a good news that i have a blog of mine " http://self-certified-testers.blogspot.com "

you can visit my blog to read the full post on testrepublic registration page.
and please your feedback is important for me so, looking forward for your reply on my blog...cheers !!


Kind regards,
Shikhar...

Santhosh S Tuppad said...

Nice post. I will be waiting for more posts from you :).

www.testersblog.com - Santhosh S Tuppad