↓ Yahoo keeps it simple

[tweetmeme] After nearly a year speculating how their new homepage would be, Yahoo just made it live today, and we like both: the small aesthetic and profound usability changes they’ve implemented.

Keep it simple

Yahoo has probably the best structured portal out there, a two-column system with a clear header & footer that makes it so simple yet so easy to use.

Although the header has been reduced over a 30%, the search bar gains in visibility and size which makes us believe two things:

-      They want to emphasize their search engine (funny if we take into account all the rumours about Microsoft-Yahoo deal for the search/advertising products putting Bing behind Yahoo’s search solution). Plus, the popular search box has been placed on the top right corner below the header making it a much more logical and pleasant search-experience.

-      Their brand seems to leave progressively the “old” red for adopting the Yahoo purple for its logo and upcoming products (meme).

Appart from that, the rest of the page is pretty similar to the previous one with other small changes… a much nicer and intuitive herozone and finally a real footer for quick access to Yahoo’s business-related services.

Funny to see this new shiny portal keeping the logic “if you can’t see it in the fold it doesn’t exist” compared to the revamp of Microsoft’s French portal a few weeks ago.

But the big change comes with that delicious customizable menu where users can now choose the page with widgets/apps from third parties. Although the number of links to services and channels remains basically the same (around 20), the new navigation bar has gained in space (visually much more attractive) and includes fly-out layers to quickly scan & sneak the content of these.

Want to see your horoscope or which of your facebook friends are connected? No need to click. Again the idea of condensing information in one single page… keep it simple!

We praise Yahoo for their continuous work and would be deeply sorry if all their creativity goes to foreign hands (cause let’s admit it, Microsoft do care about their ad network but they do care more about buying Yahoo’s creativity which they lack). Apparently many more things are prepared to be launched … customizable search, customizable content (not my yahoo)….

We’ll wait for them anxiously!

See you @ Rennes