Yahoo! have launched a radical overhaul of their site this week. The emphasis seems to be on usability and speed of navigation: the homepage still features a large amount of information, but it now appears in a more user-friendly, aesthetically pleasing format.
Disappointingly, the homepage does not validate, but it functions very well with no page styling. I appreciate that Yahoo! are at the mercy of advertisers, and their site needs to display a tremendous quantity of information, but one would hope they’d take a positive lead with accessibility and W3C standards.
New features of the Yahoo! site include:
- Searching can now be narrowed to a specific area by clicking on tabs for images, video, audio etc. (similar to Google’s homepage which shows images, Google Groups, Froogle and so on).
- Favourite items, information and searches can be stored in the navigation, accompanied by reasonably pleasing little icons.
- A “Yahoo! Personal Assistant” can provide you with a quick, at-a-glance view of what’s happening in your (Yahoo!-orientated) world.
