Post number 5669

danwalker — Sat, 03 Feb 2001 13:59:04 -0800

Altavista redesigns. Again. Seems they're trying a Yahoo/DMOZ feel this time, with LookSmart results as their directory. Didn't they do this once before?

By: tomalak

tomalak — Sat, 03 Feb 2001 14:34:30 -0800

Yeah, Succa posted a link to the redesign on MetaFilter last July which started off a good thread of comments.

By: tomorama

tomorama — Sat, 03 Feb 2001 14:54:31 -0800

I liked AltaVista way back in the days of 1998, but really don't find any reason to visit them anymore. The only thing they still have that draws me back from time to time is BabelFish, and even that doesn't spit out the greatest translations.

By: Brilliantcrank

Brilliantcrank — Sat, 03 Feb 2001 15:17:14 -0800

How boring, I mean come on, if you're going to bother redesigning then lets see something worth while, some kind of new interface or taxonomy. Sigh. The Internet is becoming a brown paper bag.

By: gluechunk

gluechunk — Sat, 03 Feb 2001 16:18:10 -0800

I'd like to know how many people and meetings were required to decide upon that "new look."

By: lizardboy

lizardboy — Sat, 03 Feb 2001 16:28:06 -0800

Yeah, well, who wants to have product identity, anyway?

By: owillis

owillis — Sat, 03 Feb 2001 21:18:09 -0800

Or a beer bottle with "XXX"

By: Aaaugh!

Aaaugh! — Sun, 04 Feb 2001 01:54:46 -0800

The look may be vanilla, but perhaps this redesign is a good thing. They've dropped their aspirations of being a portal, something they never did very well, and this redesign puts search front and center, literally. Now that they're concentrating on the search engine, hopefully they'll work on improving its results.

By: fullerine

fullerine — Sun, 04 Feb 2001 05:49:04 -0800

Does anyone like a front page with more than say fifty links on it?

By: gleemax

gleemax — Sun, 04 Feb 2001 18:15:46 -0800

It's a lot less confusing than it was. That's the only good thing I have to say.

By: tomorama

tomorama — Sun, 04 Feb 2001 18:56:07 -0800

At least Yahoo is a lot easier to understand. When I load the ICQ page, I have absolutely no clue where I'm supposed to look. It's just a bunch of columns with text and links, with nothing that jumps out at my eye and yells "look here first!". I didn't even go so far as to read any of what was on the page. Another case of Way Too Much Information.

By: m.polo

m.polo — Sun, 04 Feb 2001 19:25:44 -0800

That ICQ site is completely baffling to me... Suffice to say, it only gets worse the deeper down their page heirarchy you go. We were using the ICQ client in an R&D thing, and I ended up bookmarking individual pages all over their site because in many, many cases there was one and only one (nonintuitive and frequently unlabelled) path to that page. It's a miracle ICQ users connect to each other at all, considering how unusable this site is coupled with how heinous the UI of their actual client product is.

By: sonofsamiam

sonofsamiam — Sun, 04 Feb 2001 19:30:24 -0800

A beer bottle w/ "XXX" has broad iconic significance. I hope the "portal" never reaches that level of recognizablity.

By: rodii

rodii — Mon, 05 Feb 2001 06:28:21 -0800

Is there an archive of the various Yahoo! designs anywhere that anyone knows of? (I know, I know, what various designs? That's the point--I want to look at how Yahoo has tweaked their interface without really changing their basic look.)

Comments on: Comments on 5669

Post number 5669

By: tomalak

By: tomorama

By: Brilliantcrank

By: gluechunk

By: lizardboy

By: owillis

By: Aaaugh!

By: fullerine

By: gleemax

By: tomorama

By: m.polo

By: sonofsamiam

By: rodii