
Yahoo redesigns 7 of its sites - rob_mccann
http://yahoo.tumblr.com/post/59486431470/introducing-7-redesigned-more-personal-yahoo
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simonsarris
Eek.

I think, and I stress that this is wrought of my own unprofessional feelings,
but I think that in the early days of rich consumer UI (pre-2004 lets say),
that rounded corners, gradients and shadows did some great things to design,
because they created affordances so that people knew, for instance, that a
button was a button. It stood out against the other website clutter and cruft.

But we've sort of moved on. I'm reminded of a Doisneau quote (famous
photographer, 1912-1994):

> "Nowadays people's visual imagination is so much more sophisticated, so much
> more developed, particularly in young people, that now you can make an image
> which just slightly suggests something, they can make of it what they will."

Nowaday's peoples visual expectations of what they might find on a website or
app are much better, and you don't need to "point out" as much stuff. In other
words I think users "got better". At the same time, we seem to see a real
slimming of other visual distractions, so buttons don't _need_ to be pointed-
out as much.

This is the essence of Flat-UI in my opinion, that if you remove enough cruft,
then afterwards you can remove _even more cruft_ since your buttons and menus
will no longer need to stand out from other stuff with
gradients/shadows/rounded corners, and users are more attending to looking for
them and expecting them anyway.

And I think, in light of all that, Yahoo sort of dropped the ball here. They
didn't remove the cruft! Distractions distractions distractions.

~~~
nikatwork
I appreciate the minimalism of flat UI, but I do feel the pendulum has swung
too far in the opposite direction.

Microsoft is the worst culprit here - presenting a text block containing some
hyperlinks, but the text is all styled identically so you have to hover the
mouse over a word to notice the link. WTF?

Sure, let's keep things clean and minimal, but there needs to be some kind of
basic visual language that indicates "this bit is interactive, and this other
bit is static content".

Somewhere, Jakob Nielsen is having an aneurysm.

~~~
dredmorbius
_the text is all styled identically so you have to hover the mouse over a word
to notice the link. WTF?_

Affordance of hyperlinks is key to the Web.

I apply the following CSS to most/many sites to identify links:

    
    
            a {
                color: #427fed;
                text-decoration: none;
            };
    
            a:active {
                background-color: #427fed;
                color: #fffff6;
            };
    
            a:hover {
                text-decoration: underline;
            }
    
    

Hrm. I should add a :visited selector as well.

~~~
dredmorbius
I'm liking this color:

    
    
        a:visited { color: #6f32ad; }

------
tsurantino
I think it's an interesting choice to go dark. Regardless of what prior
debates were had on this thread with respect to the "flat design" choice /
minimalism there are two things that stand out.

1) It's original. At least, it seems original relative to its competitors.
They are borrowing the well-accepted design language of their Weather app
(which was critically acclaimed in relevant circles, I believe - like won some
kind of award), and assimilated it across their web properties.

Contrary to what other's have said, I don't find the text hard to read.
Instead, due to the novelty and aesthetic of the design, I am drawn to stay.
It's a nice refresh.

2) It's cohesive. This design language has been consistently ported across its
properties without making it constricting. Yahoo Sports is functionally
distinct from Yahoo Movies, but blended together by the same aesthetic.

This began with Yahoo silently porting its top bar across its properties (with
the search feature ubiquitous across all constituent sites). This final piece
was missing and is just another step closer to bringing Yahoo together.

So no, I don't think the designs are cluttered, or that they hide/confuse
information, or that Yahoo is copying the fad. I think they are paving their
path, boldly, and it should yield some interesting results.

------
papercruncher
I hate to be the guy that just critizes, but I can't find anything that I like
about the redesigns. Take Yahoo Sports for example: the dark background makes
it hard to read anything, it's crazy cluttered and even after filtering for
NFL I get this stream of useless news. I'm guessing that they did some
research and discovered that their core audience likes cluttered designs and
the whole image-first, clean design paradigm is not a good idea for content
sites.

Also, why doesn't the blog announcement link to the actual sites???

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pcurve
I give them credit for trying darker background, but the new designs are quite
unsightly. I also find the fixed background image that doesn't scroll with the
page incredibly distracting.

It's actually causing me great physical discomfort to use these new sites.

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programminggeek
What Yahoo is doing is maintaining and working hard at a consistent design
language, while maintaining individuality amongst their sites. It's a smart
move, even if it's not pretty enough for designers or developers to praise it
heavily.

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joe_the_user
Just noticed the new logo a few hours ago.

I have hated almost every yahoo redesign.

This one I liked. It's kind of cute.

~~~
mccolin
They are showcasing a different potential logo each day this month and will
reveal the "winner" in a few days.

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patrickmclaren
Unrelated, but to the tune of the new interest in Yahoo that Marissa Mayer
sparked: As a working adult, say, with no time for _more_ entertainment, why
would I visit a Yahoo site?

~~~
jmduke
Yahoo's entire strategy revolves around the idea that peoples' tastes and
habits change over time, but that content is perennial and not even _close_ to
the point of saturation.

I'm not saying there aren't people for whom this strategy doesn't apply --
some call them the "Oh, I don't own a television" crowd -- but it's certainly
not just a generational thing.

~~~
patrickmclaren
I'm imagining a crowd somewhat like reddit, yet older, more mature.

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yalogin
Interesting. They made it more full of links and images. I was expecting it to
feel light (sparse). The dark background makes the whole page look muddled and
uninviting.

~~~
rokhayakebe
Perhaps the "best pizza ad format" works with web, we may have to leave out
our assumptions because only tech savvy individuals speak of white space,
spacing, kerning, and all that other stuff. Frankly many people do not even
know the difference between IE and the Internet and a browser?

Edit: If you built a browser aimed at the masses you should just title it "The
Newest Internet" or "Get a Faster and More Secured Internet," rather than
"Faster and More Secured Browser."

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tgcordell
I hope to god Yahoo consciously decided to eschew the current trends of flat,
minimal, content first design that is perpetuating through the industry.
Windows Phone, iOS 7, and plenty of other leading UI designs are shedding the
bloat and focusing on content first. If they didn't do it on purpose, it means
they are still the old Yahoo. If they did, maybe they know something about
their target demographic that I don't...

~~~
pcurve
You don't think the new Yahoo designs are following the flat trend?

~~~
tgcordell
They almost make it, but fail on spectacularly on color and backgrounds. The
sports.yahoo.com would do much better with a clean background, I find the
striped outfield to completely negate the rest of the improvements.

------
twodayslate
Don't forget they are also creating daily logos

[http://www.yahoo.com/dailylogo](http://www.yahoo.com/dailylogo)

~~~
recuter
Quite a contrast between Google promoting History and Science to hundreds of
millions of people via charming artistic doodles and this cornucopia of
horrible purple typography glitter devoid of all meaning and character.

~~~
twodayslate
They are two entirely different things in my opinion. Yahoo! is attempting to
undergo a re-brand and Google is not.

------
scdoshi
Yahoo's tumblr blog also makes the basic mistake of not linking back to the
main website.

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colmvp
I actually don't mind the Weather page. Looks pretty, though I'd never use it
since I almost never need to go weather sites.

The bigger issue to me is none of these sites are particularly responsive.
They all have a huge background but small areas for content and huge waste of
space on larger monitors. To be honest, I think should've had a bolder re-
design with a greater emphasis on editorialization instead of a standardized
layout across sections.

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mynameishere
I'm just clicking around on them, and somehow I've got the sports site in a
state where the scroll wheel scrolls the background images but not the
content. Then, after the page finally loads, the left, middle, and right
panels all sort-of scroll together, but stop scrolling at different times.
That's really messed up. The alignment between them shouldn't change.

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dredmorbius
Y'know, it's not the site design that turns me off of Yahoo.com.

It's the placement of entertainment and sports as the top items on the page.

I don't particularly care what your site presentation is (OK, I lied, I do: it
should be simple, out of my face, and distraction-free), but if you show
contempt and insult me with your content, I'm gone and never coming back.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Entertainment and sports insult you?

~~~
dredmorbius
Are they relevant to my interests? No.

Do they have any impact on my life? Other than local events impacting my
commute: no.

Do they improve me? With the selections Yahoo chooses? Not at all.

Is this information/content I can't get a a bazillion other viral sites? No.

Differentiate. Lead with your strength.

Even going to Yahoo News rather than Yahoo changes the story only very
slightly.

Perhaps this will enlighten you:
[http://onion.com/14yzeCq](http://onion.com/14yzeCq)

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janeglendale
I'm really not liking the new feel. The dark background images make reading
the content way too hard -- and I can only assume their goal is to replace the
background with large ads for site takeovers once in a while.

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minor_nitwit
The transparency and non-scrolling BG image reminds me of myspace pages.

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frozenport
Looks like AOL.

Yahoo's logo was iconic, this is gimmicky.

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cremnob
Ugh everything but Yahoo Finance.

~~~
dredmorbius
It's less insulting than the other pages, but I'm getting massively
misalligned elements. Yes, I force font sizes to something legible, so your
hipster fucking 22 y.o. pixel-perfect layouts aren't going to work.

