Yahoo!'s new front page

June 10, 2002 11:35 AM

Yahoo!'s new front page went into beta today.
I know the story was posted, but I thought the actual page deserved a link that wasn't buried in day-old comments...
posted by kfury (32 comments total)

Well, it looks... the same?
posted by esch at 11:38 AM on June 10, 2002

It looks mostly the same... which is the idea. They don't want a _total_ disconnect from their loyal users. Of course, changing it at all my be troublesome.

A couple of comments: they _still_ refuse to set link colors. Dumb, dumb, dumb... cuz my link colors don't necessarily show up well (or look too goo) on all the backgrounds that they use (argh!); the bottom part for local Yahoos is much easier to read. So that's at least one bonus!
posted by silusGROK at 11:41 AM on June 10, 2002

I like it... their masthead has been begging for a little more resolution for a few years now.

They left the search box right up at the top, but otherwise it looks like they're downplaying the "web directory" image by putting those links in a spot where you must scroll to find them, while bumping up the shopping, news and membership features. Obviously they're giving more play to things that bring income.

And back to the aesthetics, it still seems to me like too much on one page, but it's more organized than the current design and still loads quickly with few graphics.
posted by tomorama at 11:41 AM on June 10, 2002

Deck chairs on Titanic.
posted by Voyageman at 11:43 AM on June 10, 2002

Day old comments? I posted it 4 or 5 hours ago.
posted by Irontom at 11:44 AM on June 10, 2002

Upon inspection, the markup is rather fooey. There's no doctype and there are a plethora of font tags and tables. Also, what's the purpose of things like this:

<small><small><br></small></small>

Of course, I realize Yahoo! needs to be more concerned with appealing to everyone and making a profit than supporting web standards. It's just disheartening that some people still worry about 5 year old browsers.
posted by tomorama at 11:49 AM on June 10, 2002

3 day old story, 3 hour old MeFi link. It all averages out... :-)
posted by kfury at 11:49 AM on June 10, 2002

"...I thought the actual page deserved a link that wasn't buried in day-old comments..."

Today's posts aren't good enough to comment in anymore? Not everyone has a Delorean, futureboy.
posted by mikhail at 11:51 AM on June 10, 2002

Well, it's definitely an improvement over their original layout.
posted by brownpau at 11:56 AM on June 10, 2002

Its... craptacular.
posted by wfrgms at 12:00 PM on June 10, 2002

HAHAAHAHAHAH futureboy.
posted by Satapher at 12:06 PM on June 10, 2002

Probably a bigger conversation than this story warrants, but two words: information overload. A few years back in the quest to be everything to everyone, portals -- er, search engines -- were among the first to cross the line into this text-heavy mess of a website. I'm sure one of the reasons Google is so popular is because it forgoes all of this crap to offer what users expect: a search engine. Granted, Yahoo is a "directory", but I don't know what the answer is to website with 50+ links on one page. Customization?
posted by robbie01 at 12:09 PM on June 10, 2002

I liked it when it was this.

After that I gave up a went here instead.
posted by linux at 12:12 PM on June 10, 2002

I think it was Cameron Berrett who wrote some months ago that Yahoo, that classic search portal, is little-by-little losing it.
posted by tranquileye at 12:17 PM on June 10, 2002

Yeah, Punkrockrat posted this link to the beta page on the existing Yahoo discussion about an hour before this link was posted on the front page. I hardly think Yahoo really needs two posts per day.
posted by dejah420 at 12:35 PM on June 10, 2002

It reminds me way too much of Altavista. Yuck!
posted by eas98 at 12:35 PM on June 10, 2002

Any of you guys still actually use Yahoo for anything?
posted by dagny at 12:49 PM on June 10, 2002

One word: Literati
posted by bloggboy at 12:53 PM on June 10, 2002

Needs less duplication of 'Yahoo! Shopping' in the main bar and side bar, or they could just stick the web site directory directly below the search box. Otherwise, I kinda like it.
posted by darukaru at 12:58 PM on June 10, 2002

in the wake of Google, anything that Yahoo does with their design is a mere afterthought, however, i feel they were at their peak when they sorta looked like (self link, beware) this.
posted by tsarfan at 1:17 PM on June 10, 2002

It seems to be all about shopping. Shopping in the masthead, shopping right under the search box, shopping (loud & ugly) breaking up the main column, shopping in the sidebar (twice), shopping in the first entry in the directory (again in the first column).

If they're this desperate for shoppers, maybe the problem is with the shopping sites, not the home page.
posted by joemaller at 1:24 PM on June 10, 2002

Tomorama: The mishmash of tags you quoted are probably a lazy hack coders way of making a smaller line break than would be usual. This is probably connected to the use of FONT tags you mentioned. Sure, they don't need to support web standards fully, since none of the browser do, but just about everything supports the basic text formatting stuff that makes FONT tags unnecessary.
posted by Su at 1:28 PM on June 10, 2002

The World Cup is plastered in the old logo.
posted by vbfg at 1:46 PM on June 10, 2002

They can redesign it a million times, but any page that tries to be all things to all people (Altavista anyone?) tends to scare me. Even more if it screams "buy" all over.

Let's just hope Google doesn't ever get infected of this page gloat disease.
posted by betobeto at 2:06 PM on June 10, 2002

Muddled layout, bad choice of colours, lots of clutter, poor HTML. I guess the icons are OK.

It seems noone at Yahoo! has the courage or talent to make real improvements, which is disappointing.
posted by malevolent at 2:13 PM on June 10, 2002

The page doesn't work in Mozilla (which I downloaded yesterday btw, I'm very impressed)...error message says something about "document contains no data". Works in IE though...
posted by mfbridges at 2:37 PM on June 10, 2002

Any of you guys still actually use Yahoo for anything?

webmail.

more space (though they just cut back from 6 megs to 4, seems like), bulk mail filter works pretty good, takes about thirty seconds to make one, login/logout for multiple accts. is pretty quick.
posted by fishfucker at 2:54 PM on June 10, 2002

also i like their maps service.
posted by fishfucker at 2:57 PM on June 10, 2002

pretty well, that is. damn you s&w.
posted by fishfucker at 2:57 PM on June 10, 2002

Yeah, I second the webmail sentiment. Sometimes I use it for news and sports stuff, and occasionally shopping... Despite its problems, their webmail is convenient and reliable.
posted by insomnyuk at 3:02 PM on June 10, 2002

I bet they paid BIG BUCKS for that. Rip off.
posted by aaronshaf at 3:06 PM on June 10, 2002

Any of you guys still actually use Yahoo for anything?

i run pings/traceroutes on yahoo to check net reliability when it seems to be a glitch in connectivity. other than that i use it for maps on occasion and i've got a mail drop box there. but i haven't used it as a search engine for a good three, maybe four years.
posted by boogah at 10:18 PM on June 10, 2002