Yahoo Mail brings back popular tabs feature

When Yahoo overhauled its Mail product in October, many people howled at the redesign, and particularly missed a tabs feature that allowed users to multitask while writing and reading e-mails.

On Thursday, the company reintroduced the feature with three small, excited words: "Tabs are back!" Jeff Bonforte, Yahoo's senior vice president of communication products, wrote in a blog post. Now the e-mail service allows users to turn on the tabs feature if they so choose (the blog post has a helpful how-to).

One of the chief knocks against tabs was that it became confusing for users who had too many of them open to find what they were looking for. Yahoo has added a "preview all" that allows users to see a thumbnail version of all the tabs they have open in one screen. The tabs feature will be available globally "over the next few days," wrote Bonforte.

It's a welcome return for many of Yahoo Mail's power users, especially those who took to Yahoo's forums to complain about the revamp, and even signed a Change.org petition protesting the overhaul.

Yahoo Mail is still trying to appease consumers, especially after a multiday outage last week that affected a small number of its users. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer eventually apologized for the prolonged loss of service.