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2009

Yahoo Brings Out Restyled Homepages For Web And Mobile

May 27, 2009 0

Sunnyvale, California — Struggling search pioneer Yahoo has been once again experimenting with new homepage designs for mobile and Web both, emphasizing news feeds and applications as well as search results, and on Tuesday, it posted the latest concept.

The company is testing the very latest design with certain users to make them more personally relevant, the pages are more customizable than they have been before.

While it is somewhat similar and conservative in style than the first version that emerged in September and the second one that appeared in February. Gone is the big box that featured a “dashboard” of outside applications.

For example, the current make-up displays out the top 10 search results at a given time in the upper right-hand corner of the site, another box that is now located at the bottom of Yahoo’s current site was absent from the March mock-ups. Rather, there is a box of links to outside applications from third-party sites that looks very much like the box that currently links to other Yahoo services on the home page.

Yahoo also discarded the gray color on the left side rail of the page in favor of a white background, while also blending with more choices for users to add feeds from their favorite Web sites and services. That rail also includes applications developed for the Yahoo page that let users check auction results on eBay, for example.

In its announcement, Yahoo appears to admit that previous iterations might have been too radical. “We recognize that many of you like your homepage just the way it is, thank-you-very-much, so the overall look and feel of the page will be familiar,” writes Yahoo SVP Tapan Bhat.

Although, so far no time frame has been announced for the arrival of the new design, but further fine-tunings are probably not out of the question. Yahoo also announced that its mobile site redesign is out of beta and rolling out to a wider audience.

Here is some of the new and cool from the revamped homepage:

 

  • Lots More Apps: We are experimenting with a growing library of apps that lets you do more without leaving the page. Some of these apps include eBay and MySpace, and content sites like USA Today and NPR. We also have newly developed apps for popular Yahoo! services like Messenger, Movies and Flickr.
  • Social Pulse: A new Yahoo! Updates app allows you to keep up with your friends’ online activities directly on the homepage — such as a recently Buzzed article or a video uploaded to YouTube.
  • Easier Email: We have detached your individual email accounts as distinct apps, rather than a combined inbox, so that it is faster and easier to get to the exact mail you want. This was a request we heard repeatedly during testing.
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    The September design:

    The latest model:

    Yahoo’s latest home page redesign (click for to enlarge).