Purple is the New Red

The new Yahoo! front page has some good ideas that have been implemented quite poorly.
Integrating applications such as Facebook to enable a quick glance from the front page is a brilliant idea. Integrating the competitor's mail system by throwing in a Gmail application? Even better. This means if I have an account with both (which I do), I can view everything on one page.

One thing that really annoys me about Google is its inability to remember my language settings, even if I'm logged into my account. This means if I'm on a computer with a Japanese operating system, everything is displayed in Japanese, as if I've suddenly lost the ability to read English. It's at its worst when it comes to maps, because all street names are also displayed in Japanese, and it's not necessarily correct. Kind of like how my satellite navigation is unable to properly say many street names.

Anyway, back to the new Yahoo! page. I've been hitting "Return to Yahoo! Classic" for a while now because I didn't like the layout of the new page, but they've taken that option away and I'm left with no choice. To be honest, I still don't really like the new layout.

Now, I think the "My Favorites" bar at the left is fine, except it only allows for a limited number of favorites to be displayed on the front page. Ideally, I want to be able to display as many items as my heart desires, without having to click to go to the next page. Furthermore, the bottom third is wasted with "Recommendations" which do not interest me at all. There needs to be a way to get rid of these and replace them with something more useful.

On mouseover, each "My Favorites" application overlays a smaller window that displays the relavant information for that application. For example, if I hover my mouse over the "Mail" icon, it displays the contents of my inbox. However, it is far too sensitive because if I'm just moving my cursor across the window, it will open something up and then I have to go close it to see whatever it is that I wanted to see in the first place. I don't think it's necessary to have everything open on mouseover; I think on mouse click would be just fine.

I think it would also be nice if I could drag and drop the icons instead of having to go into a separate "edit" page to rearrange them. Also, new additions to the list should be added at the bottom, not at the top.

There is also one glaring problem with the Facebook plugin: it's littered with spam from applications that I would otherwise block.

I remember when Yahoo's company color was red. Apparently these days, it's purple.