Explaining our homepage to the nerd-impaired

Posted July 27th, 2009 at 4:52 pm by Nicki Dugan, Blog Editor

 25 Comments / Filed in: Behind the Scenes, Video

A lot went into the creation of the new Yahoo! Homepage. Not only did we test it until the cows came home (they’re home now), our developers pulled off significant feats of engineering to make it all work smoothly. While the page is simple, clean, and easy to use, there’s pretty sophisticated technology at work under the covers. Ask an engineer about it and you’ll hear references to things like machine-learned models, Hadoop, separating metadata from markup, giant JSON structures, YUI 3.0, intelligent squid-caching mechanisms, YDBM, MDBM, content optimization knowledge engine, adapter layers, and so on.

If you want to know what all that means, you’ll have to watch this video — now playing on the Yahoo! Homepage, starring just a handful of the many technical talents responsible for our spiffy new homepage.

Fortunately, it’s closed-captioned for the nerd-impaired.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Tagged: facebook, Video, yahoo! homepage

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25 Comments Add your own

gag | July 28th, 2009 at 2:07 am

this homepage reminds me of my friend Rakhel who would start to code early at 6 am and stay up late in the night coding.
he went into finance but i personally would have loved to see him as an actor coz he was handsome, anyway what i am trying to say is coding is something special and some people are natural at it but what do you do with the vast majority who need to be motivated. The reason i am laying stress on this is coz, having seen both the software and hardware world, it is important everyone in the team are upto a certain standard when it comes to coding, i feel bad seeing certain products from companies doing well when others are not and thats bad after all the work that has gone into making the product. So is success in hiring the right people or is it in the training or is it in keeping employees motivated, i dunno but coming back to this news about the yahoo homepage,

its amazing how awesome stuffs come out of individual motivation and great team work. Their is sure more to do coz for user like me homepage and portal is already boring, the Internet is evolving fast and its the hardware and software engineers who are gonna create magic, point is are they ready to play the game.

Lola LB | July 28th, 2009 at 2:40 am

Nerd-impaired? Isn’t that a bit of a derogatory term?

mark | July 28th, 2009 at 6:05 am

waste of time and talent. nerd impaired or not. how about tweaking your search engines and I won’t have to keep going to google when I want better search results.

Tom | July 28th, 2009 at 7:51 am

You guys are a bunch of ******** who have no consideration for your end users. Next time ASK before changing peoples home page!!

andrew farley | July 28th, 2009 at 11:22 am

Nerd-impaired? Isn’t that a bit of a derogatory term? Nice cover-up for a site that people are leaving and yahoo thinks they are better off without them. Or should I be typing in Vietnamese, so you can understand me? Critisize all you want, make us look stoopid, you are the right ones changing the pages, I guess you have to pay the employees for doing something even if it is wrong. Some folks feel comfortable but others want it new? so we can all go to school again and learn it all over again. What a way to run a business. Well, thanx for the rant and see you guys later at some point, not going to use yahoo if I have to keep starting over and being called an idiot on top of that

Tony | July 28th, 2009 at 4:21 pm

Your new homepage is FLIPPING AWFUL and I can’t seem to find a way to get the classic back. This extremely disappointing. I used to like Yahoo, now I’m not so sure.

galen | July 29th, 2009 at 12:30 am

10-12 years of faithfully hanging with you. Your new page is the saddest piece of user friendly software I have seen….. did someone die over there?? It (your home page )meant alot to people.

Don | July 29th, 2009 at 10:05 am

The new email is horrible! I get server timeout errors all the time.

Tresa | July 29th, 2009 at 3:40 pm

I don’t understand what all the NEGATIVE comments about the new Yahoo Home Page are all about. I love it – think it is AWESOME and keep up the good work. THANKS for all you have put into making a great home page even better. I love all the added features.

patricia callaway | July 29th, 2009 at 6:02 pm

Please give me back my old rendition of mail and front page..I’m a nerd and do not like your changes. I agree with most of the posts here. Change it back..

Billy | August 3rd, 2009 at 12:30 pm

Personally, once you guys get used to the new page, it will be a lot more convenient. Did any of you actually try to figure it out? It’s a lot better than the old home page, everything is still on the side bar and it can also pull updates through Facebook and other websites. I think they did an amazing job on the homepage and it looks amazing. I wish I could get a job working for these people. It’s really no different than the old home page for getting to Answers, Mail, Auto’s or anything, it’s all still there.

-Billy

Cool Non-Nerd | August 4th, 2009 at 1:14 am

I absolutely love the new home page, and a lot of other people do as well. If you don’t like it, you have the option of using the old one again.

It’s so easy to use, I love the sidebar that lets you add websites, and YOU CAN VIEW PREVIEWS!!! That’s the amazing part!!

Yahoo is one of the very few websites that I trust. Because it’s so popular, I trust that it will provide it’s millions of users a safe email, with great virus protection on them. Yahoo is just simply the best.

I just want to say thank you for all the work you put into this. I know it’s not easy, but nothing good is. Thanks for all the services you have provided.

Filmes da TV | August 4th, 2009 at 8:37 pm

Could somebody point me the differences regarding the User Interface?
Yahoo <= best luck for you – I don’t want to depend only on google or microsoft

Don | August 6th, 2009 at 6:59 am

I can’t even log in in Firefox 3.5.2 I just get in a loop of sign in screens. Based on that, my opinion of the m.www.yahoo.com home page is that it’ useless.

Joe | August 12th, 2009 at 9:38 am

If your new homepage is so “simple, clean, and easy to use”, then why do you need this blog entry? People aren’t complaining because it’s difficult to understand, they’re complaining because frankly … it sucks. Sure some of the ideas are neat and all, but some of us don’t want mail previews, finance, and all this crap popping up while we’re just trying to mouse over to another section of the page.

You have a new toolbar that does all that.

عقار | August 19th, 2009 at 11:18 pm

I can’t even log in in Firefox 3.5.2 I just get in a loop of sign in screens. Based on that, my opinion of the m.www.yahoo.com home page is that it’ useless.

Steph | August 25th, 2009 at 2:45 am

The new website seems to be totally broken.

Every link I click takes around 2 or 3 minutes of waiting, then I just get a blank white page.. totally messed up. Been like that for more then 2 days now.

Just “Waiting for m.www.yahoo.com” for a few minutes, then nothing.

Yahoo used to be my home page, but since clicking on anything off it results in a blank page, its seems pointless to keep it that way!

Steph | August 25th, 2009 at 8:00 pm

Just to add to my last post. Most of the links can be got to work if I delete all the first bit of address (up to where the 2nd http:// appears) by hand. This works every time, and the pages load fast.

I would show you an example, but can’t get onto the Yahoo homepage at all now (timed out 5 times so far..)

Not sure if it is relevant, but I am in Hong Kong, so maybe this problem is only with your Asian mirrors? I am using the US version of Yahoo, not the local one.

I’m sure if the new Yahoo page is great, if I could actually use it. Just verified this problem on 3 other computers in the office.

Oliver Viveier | September 22nd, 2009 at 11:48 am

Never have I known a company to lose its way so fast, so quickly. The new page is not just weak or uninspired, but it’s offensively appalling. What on earth made you think that having links on the left hand side which pop up obscuring the rest of the page when you hover over them would be a good idea? So now I have to trace a path with my mouse to the link I want? Very convenient.

If you think that this page is really a step forward then why not have the courage to put a prominent “switch back to old site” link? Listen to your customers- every blog post relating to this site redesign is littered with abuse towards you guys, and it’s because you’re not responding properly to a clear message that you have designed a bad product.

Rainie | September 25th, 2009 at 11:05 pm

I’ve been a Yahoo user for YEARS. I’ve been actively searching for an appealing homepage, for which Yahoo no longer applies.

These are a few of my complaints. Yahoo has NEVER listened to its users. The ‘new and improved’ homepage, so far, looks just like all the others out there. No visually appealing textor design, just….blue. You have that silly sidebar with all the ’special’ things I can add. You have the twitter-esque ‘what are you doing’ thing that crops up like the gopher from hell. I have to check to make sure that I’m not logged into chat EVERY time, although I have made mulitple attempts to disable that bit of garbage. It doesn’t matter how many times I change the default settings.Even the local weather and news defaults to Sunnyvale and frankly I dont give a rat’s patoot what’s going on in YOUR hometown.I log out and the settings will eventually revert to the originals (refer to gopher from hell comment).

Basically, as an adult, all the ‘features’ that have been added are things that I’m perfectly capable of searching for myself. If I want them, I’ll go looking for them. I find the homepage/mail page far too busy and distracting.

Yeah, and while I’m on a rant, Yahoo disposed of the BEST blog site ever concieved (360). At one time, Yahoo stood out, now, it’s just a generic face in the crowd. I don’t know if you’ve done research on who your users have been, but I would bet it is the over 40 crowd. It seems that you keep trying to appeal to the younger set. What you don’t seem to get is that it’s the older adults who have the money to buy…whatever, ergo, would it not make sense to have a product that would draw..money?

As far as I’m concerned, this is Yahoo’s EPIC FAIL.

valves manufacturer | September 28th, 2009 at 8:32 pm

Once, I talk about the Yahoo, I always want to be a employee of it.

R Turner | October 1st, 2009 at 1:25 pm

I sent this on the feedback form for the new homepage but I’ll post it here too because I feel fairly strongly about this.

I’ve used Yahoo since 1998 and it has always been my homepage since I started using the Internet. I liked it because it simple, clean and easy to use. I’m now finding the new front page very annoying, specifically the fact that I can’t move my mouse without huge boxes popping up telling me to sign up to Yahoo / sign in to eBay, log in to Flickr / have I seen BBC news etc. I come to the Yahoo home page to read the headlines and check my mail. When I use Flickr, I go to the Flickr page. When I want to browse BBC News, I go to news.bbc.co.uk, when I want to buy on eBay, I simple browse over to eBay.co.uk.

I’ve no objection at all to links to these sites on the homepage, but I absolutely cannot put up with intrusive mouse-over pop ups when I’m simply trying to move the mouse to click on a headline or go to my emails. The new page fonts and layout looks fine (an improvement even), but in all honestly I cannot see myself using it in its new format. I’m seriously considering moving to Google or some other provider that I’ve not yet discovered. I know that people often do not like change, but I can live with something looking different. What I cannot live with is an annoying and intrusive browsing experience several times a day.

Coke Classic | October 29th, 2009 at 10:57 am

I have used Yahoo for many years as my home page. Now, with the annoying “pop up” I am forced to look for a different search engine. Can you say “Coke Classic.”

Daniel | October 29th, 2009 at 11:35 pm

At the November 11 ultimatum, when New Yahoo is enforced, I’ll be switching to Google. See? If I’m forced to switch, then I cannot in good conscious support the company that caused the offensive forced action.

Fortunately, this bad news comes early enough to switch my computers that are on the production line, over to Google in time for Christmas. For my reputation, my professional computers MUST NOT have uncomfortable situations upon the very first screen of the Internet browser.

For reference, I have been a Yahoo client since the first day that Yahoo came on-line, and I have shipped many computers with Yahoo as the home page. The amount is uncountable. I thought that this comfortable friend would last. It hasn’t. How sad.

Steve | November 6th, 2009 at 7:05 am

First, I resent you calling us “nerd-impaired”. You geeks are going to lose a lot of yahoo users when you change the homepage without giving us “NORMAL” people a choice. I can give you lots of problems with your “GEEK DESIGNED” homepage. For one example you can no longer check all and delete most unwanted e-mails. You have to check each one indivisibly. That is just one example from the short time I checked it out. You guys are going to find out that you can’t try to FORCE change on people without giving them a choice. BYE YAHOO. SUCK ALONE!!!