It was just over two years ago that Yahoo! re-designed it's home page, one of my favorites thus far. Today, I logged onto my computer and thought I was being hijacked....virtually. The image you see on the left is the new Yahoo! homepage, only visible to those under a "bucket test", a pool of Yahoo! users who are lucky to see such things. At first I was confused, I didn't know where to click, or what to look at. It was the virtual equivalent of coming home and having your house completely re-arranged, rooms swapped, etc. after it had remained intact for many, many years.
The most noticeable feature is a "preview panel" area. That is the left navigation bar (yes, the one that's black) which allows you to quickly access your Yahoo! services such as Mail and weather. The panel slides across the page, thus overlaping the center news module. You have to click to activate the panel, then click again to close it. Two clicks!
I have to admit, I'm not a huge fan of the design.
The mixing of design components is confusing and the layout is compact. Too compact. The two center modules are for news, but one is marked "Today" and the other "News", with the old tabs gone for Entertainment and Sports and replaced with links instead.
The most disappointing is not only the preview panel, but the Featured Services in the upper right corner module. The bottom row of three are links for Dell, eBay & Old Navy. Is this the new "advertorial"? The links take you to those advertisers' pages, so how are they "featured services". It's misleading.
If I had to give the homepage a grade, it would be a C-. Yahoo! is known for design and simplicity, making it easy for anyone to get what they want, or making robust for people to get everything they need. This new homepage fails dramatically.
The current page:
The homepage circa 2006: