Public Beta Test Of New Yahoo Homepage

The Yahoo homepage is one of the most popular start pages on the Internet. To keep it that way Yahoo decided to add new features to the start page which can already be accessed by users from all over the world. The standard start page remains untouched as of now but it is possible to point the web browser to yahoo.com/trynew to experience and test the new start page. Opening the url will redirect to another Yahoo url (http://m.www.yahoo.com/) that cannot be accessed directly as it is probably checking a cookie or referrer to decide whether to display the new or old start page.

You will notice quite a few changes if you open the old and new Yahoo homepage side by side.

The header area has been redone and is now much smaller than the standard Yahoo header. That makes it possible to display more items above the fold which is the most precious area of every website.

Probably the biggest change is the possibility to add custom websites and services to the Yahoo homepage. It is for example possible to add a blog like Ghacks to the left menu on the Yahoo homepage. Hovering the mouse over the link will display a description, link, search form and latest feed entries.

Popular services like Facebook or MySpace have been added to the page with the option to add additional services such as AOL Mail, eBay, Flickr, Gmail or the New York Times to the menu as well. It is also possible to remove most of the default links that are displayed in the menu.

This gives Yahoo users a comfortable way of checking out other web services without leaving the Yahoo page.

Several changes have been made to the elements on the page. Some have been moved up (today's top searches for example are now displayed prominently in the top right corner while others have been moved down into a new footer area. All in all a pretty decent redesign of the homepage to provide users with more functionality (and them with even more pageviews).

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