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.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-16-2006 @ 3:47PM
Rick said...
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.
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5-16-2006 @ 4:30PM
ham said...
Flickr has changed dramatically too
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5-16-2006 @ 4:33PM
Jesse said...
Pretty slick
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5-17-2006 @ 4:13AM
Eric said...
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.
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5-17-2006 @ 5:12AM
ulle53 said...
darn, doesn't support Bon Echo yet :{
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5-17-2006 @ 5:05PM
Razib Ahmed said...
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.
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5-18-2006 @ 3:57AM
Claudiu Spulber said...
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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