Comments on: Yet Another Yahoo! Home Page Redesign

By: » Responding to Jared Spool on AJAX - iQ Blog

» Responding to Jared Spool on AJAX - iQ Blog — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:17:18 +0000

[...] Spool, usability expert, asked me what my concerns with AJAX were on his blog. I’ll discuss some of them [...]

By: » Yahoo’s new homepage - iQ Blog

» Yahoo’s new homepage - iQ Blog — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:16:57 +0000

[...] have redesigned their homepage (not the entire site) - see it at yahoo.com/preview. Jared Spool mentions it over on Brain Sparks but doesn’t draw any conclusions apart from saying the new “home page uses a lot of [...]

By: UIE Brain Sparks » Blog Archive » Borrowing from Yahoo!’s New Home Page Tour To Annotate Design

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 14:16:57 +0000

[...] Yahoo! just launched their new home page and with it created a tour. [...]

By: Lar Veale

Lar Veale — Fri, 19 May 2006 10:54:33 +0000

Hi Jared,

Thanks for taking the time to respond. I’ve a number of concerns with AJAX on the Yahoo homepage, which I’ll touch on briefly. Let’s take the “Personal Assistant” area over at the top right of the screen (mail, messenger, weather etc.) Hovering over a tab only to be met with “Loading….” is, in my opinion, no improvement of the user experience.
Why? After the initial action, i.e. the mouse over or hover, you have to keep the cursor on target while. If you stray too far, the preview closes back up.

In terms of dexterity, it’s actually tougher to do than the conventional aim and click, particularly if there’s a wait while it loads up. So perhaps my concerns are really about accessibility at the end of the day, the visitor who uses a keyboard or the visitor who is not as precise with their mouse is not given the “same” experience (I do accept the argument that offering the same experience to visitors of differing abilities can be idealistic).

Bruce Lawson sums accessibility and AJAX issues on his blog - worth a read.

The aim of Yahoo’s redesign is, according to Scott, to get “a lot more content to be easily accessible”, but for whom? They’re trying to get a lot more content into the limited screen estate because over the last couple of years (as your excellent screenshots show) their homepage has become increasingly crowded. I would speculate, as with most homepages, that it is political. It may appease internal owners of different parts of the site that their content is now above the fold, albeit behind a tab. So politically, content is up “high” on the homepage (in terms of visual priority), so the “politicians” are happy.

And, of course, another issue is that the back button is “broken”, a much touted problem with AJAX.

By: Jared Spool

Jared Spool — Thu, 18 May 2006 13:03:59 +0000

Lar, I’d be curious as to why you think AJAX is a bad idea for a highly trafficked page?

By: Lar Veale

Lar Veale — Thu, 18 May 2006 11:18:08 +0000

Not sure if the “internet’s most trafficked page” is the place for AJAX.

By: Moe Rubenzahl

Moe Rubenzahl — Thu, 18 May 2006 00:25:23 +0000

Anyone else disturbed by the number of areas one can click? For instance, when the article suggested I try their Ajax goodies “by moving your mouse over the “Weather” box,” I tried — What Weather box? Took a while to troll the half-dozen control areas. Horizontal, vertical, tabs, button groups — wow!

I don’t have trouble with lots of links and buttons but think they need to be well organized and groupings need to reasoned out.

My two cents…

By: Daniel Szuc

Daniel Szuc — Wed, 17 May 2006 10:48:53 +0000

Interesting read:

http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=16883&ch=infotech

“On the Internet, 20 months is an eternity” - Doe user behaviour change much in that time?

By: Los textos de qweos.net» Blog Archive » Yahoo! Home Page

Los textos de qweos.net» Blog Archive » Yahoo! Home Page — Wed, 17 May 2006 10:04:28 +0000

[...] Actualización de 17 de mayo de 2006: Jared Spool también lo comenta y, además, ofrece algunas capturas con la evolución de la interfaz desde 1996. [...]