Yahoo! launches new home page

by Jordan Running May 16th 2006

Back in February we reported on stirrings related to a brand new design for Yahoo!'s home page, and today Yahoo! is officially showing it off. For me the new design shows up when I go to yahoo.com, but if it doesn't show up for you, try going to yahoo.com/preview. Read/WriteWeb's Richard MacManus has a nice overview of all of the new Yahoo!'s biggest features, but here are the highlights: A bigger search box, a lot more JavaScript and Ajax, more multimedia, an emphasis on news and community, and a new "Personal Assistant" that displays Yahoo! Mail messages, online friends from Y!IM, and local weather, traffic, movies, etc. The new design makes the home page wider, filling a 1024x768 browser window and accomodating a new left-hand navigation bar for accessing Yahoo!'s various services, but there's also a "Page Options" drop-down that lets you switch to a narrower view and even choose a color scheme. Like MacManus, I think the new design isn't just a pretty change of scenery; it really seems to improve on the home page experience and cut down on the "portal bloat" that Yahoo! has fallen victim to over the past decade or so.

Tags: ajax, design, homepage, new, readwriteweb, redesign, Richard MacManus, RichardMacmanus, yahoo

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Rick said 3:47PM on 5-16-2006

I've been seeing Yahoo's revamped web page intermittently at startup using Opera for sometime now, but thought that it was just a glitch. Looks like they were just testing it and I was just one of the lucky few. But now it doesn't support Opera...yet nor Firefox 2.

ham said 4:30PM on 5-16-2006

Flickr has changed dramatically too

Jesse said 4:33PM on 5-16-2006

Pretty slick

Eric said 4:13AM on 5-17-2006

It gives the feel of AOL.com prior to the current revision but with the categories on the left side. AOL has a box for it.

ulle53 said 5:12AM on 5-17-2006

darn, doesn't support Bon Echo yet :{

Razib Ahmed said 5:05PM on 5-17-2006

I love this new homepage but I cannot use it. I am a fan of opera and I do 99% of my browsing internet with opera because of speed factor. So, sometimes, I see the new homepage in IE. I just wish yahoo does something quick.

Claudiu Spulber said 3:57AM on 5-18-2006

I use the Yahoo mail service from time to time and the difference between the old interface and the new one doesn't really strike me. In the old one I was always looking only for the Mail button, probably that's why I don't realize the changes now as I didn't pay attention.

Why don't they just make it simple, with focus on the search engine and on the mail service?

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