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Last week MobileMe underwent a complete redesign. With only 2-hours notice, members didn’t really know what to expect other than the service was just going down for regular maintenance. But when MobileMe came back online, it had a completely redesigned user interface that’s fresh and inviting, and a few new features were thrown in as well.

Instead of having you fumbling around clicking like a mad person trying to figure out what Apple added to their service, we checked out the service for you and here are 10 new features that make MobileMe better.

Navigating Around

 
The first thing you might notice when logging into the new redesigned MobileMe is that the navigation bar has been redesign (erm... by “redesign, we mean “gone”). In order to navigate to the different sections, you click on the small MobileMe button in the top-left of the page. When you do, you’ll see a new pop-up that will have 6 icons: Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Gallery, iDisk, and Find my iPhone. Click any of the buttons to be whisked away to the different sections.

There’s also a short-cut for bringing up the application switcher. Just press Shift + ESC to instantly bring it up.

Another change you may notice is that there’s no account option in the application switcher like there was in the old MobileMe design. To get to your account settings, click on your name in the top-right of the page and select Account. You can also navigate to the help section or logout from here as well.

Mail

Mail now has several new features and a completely redesigned interface that resembles the mail application on the iPad or iPhone. You can now switch between three different email views, including: Widescreen, Compact, and Classic. To do this, click on the Switch View drop-down at the top of the email listing column. Widescreen gives more screen real-estate to your message contents, while compact gives you more options in one nice 3-column view. Classic is the old MobileMe view that resembles Mail.app on the Mac.

Mail Rules

Completely new to Mail on Me.com is the ability to use rules to keep your email organized. These rules are different from those in the OS X Mail client. These rules are enacted on the server level instead of the application level.

To create a new rule click on the gear next to your username in the top-right corner of the screen and select Rules.

You can start adding a rule by selecting its action from the Add a Rule drop-down menu. A rule can move a message to a folder, to the trash, or forward to another email address. Select a starting point and you will be given additional options that you can configure.

If you have two or more rules, you can drag them around to adjust the order in which they are applied. For instance, you could have a message forwarded to another email address, then moved to a folder for more permanent storage.

Archiving

Many MobileMe users have wanted the ability to archive messages similar to the way Gmail handles archiving. Well, with the new MobileMe online mail, you can do just that!

You can select one or more messages, then click on the small archive button in the toolbar to send the messages shooting into a new folder named “Archive.”

NEXT: Find My iPhone and Additional Email Accounts>>