Yahoo! launches new home page
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.













Comments
7
Subscribe to commentsRickMay 16th 2006 3:47PM
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.
hamMay 16th 2006 4:30PM
Flickr has changed dramatically too
JesseMay 16th 2006 4:33PM
Pretty slick
EricMay 17th 2006 4:13AM
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.
ulle53May 17th 2006 5:12AM
darn, doesn't support Bon Echo yet :{
Razib AhmedMay 17th 2006 5:05PM
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 SpulberMay 18th 2006 3:57AM
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?