Yahoo Redesigns With CSS
September 28, 2004 | 
18 Comments
[via Digital Web] I think it’s pretty big news when a site like Yahoo! goes through a redesign. Especially when they’re moving towards Web standards. Both the homepage and My Yahoo! got the makeover. There aren’t huge changes for the homepage, it does look at bit crisper to my eyes though.
My Yahoo! looks like they’re really trying to work the RSS angle and really become news and link focused. All in all it’s nice to see.
Some more information about the redesign.
Filed under: News
Comments
1. Kyle said:
Am I missing something here? I viewed source, cleared cache and did it again. Homepage is still table-ridden with font tags galore.
Posted on September 28, 2004 11:11 PM | #
2. Geoffrey said:
Is the redesign forthcoming? The current site still has some pretty nasty code. Font tags, triple-break tags, rows of non-breaking spaces, etc, etc.
Posted on September 28, 2004 11:18 PM | #
3. Blair Millen said:
At this stage, it looks to be a beta version only which uses the new CSS code: http://www.yahoo.com/beta
Posted on September 28, 2004 11:20 PM | #
4. Geoffrey said:
Update: The beta version isn’t available for Safari yet, that’s why I was seeing that old, assy code. Firefox did the trick.
Posted on September 28, 2004 11:25 PM | #
5. Roger Johansson said:
Umm. That doesn’t look too promising. If they’re moving towards web standards, they need to stop developing for specific browsers.
Posted on September 28, 2004 11:37 PM | #
6. GoClick said:
They can make the page as standards focused as they want, but the engine will still bite. Not to mention it’s still just as cluttered with stuff I don’t care at all about. Who even uses Yahoo anymore?
No one who’s heard of Google, that’s who!
Posted on September 29, 2004 12:00 AM | #
7. Clay said:
I agree, GoClick. The sad thing is, I really want to use Yahoo! I don’t know…maybe I feel like I owe them something for popularizing the all-in-one internet portal. I was using Webcrawler back in the day when I discovered Yahoo! I think Yahoo!’s biggest fault is its emphasis on entertainment. I love television. I watch it all the time, movies too. But I don’t need the latest update on The Apprentice. I certainly don’t care to watch Tupac flashback videos. The basic page no national or world news. I did notice that they haven’t updated My Yahoo! either. It’s still a purple dinosaur of a Slashdot clone, absolutely shouting “1999.”
Posted on September 29, 2004 12:39 AM | #
8. huphtur said:
and they still havent set the body background to white.
Posted on September 29, 2004 05:10 AM | #
9. Dale Cruse said:
Just because the site has been redesigned with CSS and web standards doesn’t mean the code validates. Take a trip over to the friendly neighborhood W3C validator and examine errors galore. Missing alt tags, unquoted attributes, etc., etc.
I’m certain many of us could fix that code. In fact, that could be a great project during some downtime when there’s a free hour or so (yeah, right, like freetime exists!).
Posted on September 29, 2004 05:17 AM | #
10. EricR said:
As Roger said (#5)…
I don’t know if - or at least hope they’re not - developing for specific browsers, but lets face it: Most of us (I think) develop a CSS layout for Mozilla-based browsers first (e.g., FireFox) and then tweak and hack the CSS to accomodate the quirks of IE. With this in mind, I’m hoping this message just means that they’ve made a design they like, but haven’t finished an IE/Safari-friendly version yet.
Posted on September 29, 2004 05:31 AM | #
11. Jeff Croft said:
I think you all need to stand back, lighten up, and look at the bigger picture here. Yahoo is one of the most heavily-trafficed sites on the Internet. It’s one of the strongest Internet brands in existence. Its historical significane for the Internet is not rivaled by many. Yahoo’s obvious move towards standards and CSS can only be a good thing, even if the code doesn’t validate, it’s not quite ready for Safari, and other minor nitpicks.
The point is that they’re going there. No one said Yahoo is doing things that have never been done before, or that they’re doing everything perfectly. The important thing is that they’re heading in the right direction, and that can only lead to more huge sites doing the same.
I say back up off them a bit. Like Wired, Sprint, ESPN, and others before it, this stands to be a major milestone for standards-based development.
Posted on September 29, 2004 06:40 AM | #
12. Roger Johansson said:
Jeff: Agreed. I just find it strange that they do browser sniffing when what they have displays the same (as far as I can tell at a quick look) in Safari as in Firefox. I just saved the beta start page to my desktop and opened it in Safari from there to check it. No obvious problems.
Maybe it’s just an old habit they haven’t been able to rid themselves of yet ;-)
Posted on September 29, 2004 06:55 AM | #
13. Scrivs said:
I agree with Jeff, but I use a hell of a lot more words in my analysis. And yes browser sniffing is a bit odd. I would think they would only be searching out those browsers with weak CSS support.
Posted on September 29, 2004 07:18 AM | #
14. Jennifer Grucza said:
Wow, look at all those cryptic class and id names. They must not have been paying attention in class when they were taught to use meaningful variable names instead of uninformative one or two letter names. I’m glad I’m not the one responsible for maintaining that code!
Posted on September 29, 2004 07:58 AM | #
15. Nick Finck said:
Blair: I’d take it for a spin in a different browser. It really depends on what browser you are using.
Scrivs: Nice subtile self-plug there.
Jeff: Exactly my point in the post I made. I do think they are doing a good job and moving in the right direction. I guess I felt I was somewhat obligated to mention it’s not a perfect implementation yet otherwise, as Keith well-knows, I would have seen 100 comments about how it doesn’t validate.. and that wasn’t the point of the post.
Posted on September 29, 2004 08:19 AM | #
16. Dave P said:
1998 called… they want all that javascript back.
Seriously, the page is as static as they come but the there’s javascript everywhere…including the entire “search by category” feature, which vanishes if you turn off JS.
It’s a step in the right direction I guess, but I really don’t have time these days for sloppy, mismanaged code. The web is full of it, and it seems that recognized coding standards that are applied in regular development go out the window when it comes to websites.
Posted on September 29, 2004 09:10 AM | #
17. Keith said:
Hey all, very interesting comments up there. You know, I think many of the points made are valid, but as Jeff pointed out, the reason I think this is worth noticing is because it’s a step in the right direction and from a big player.
Forward progress should be noted and praised in my book, not knocked because “it wasn’t enough.” We have no clue the kinds of internal issues they might be facing…
Anyway, thanks for all the comments! It’ll be interesting to watch…
Posted on September 29, 2004 11:17 AM | #
18. Kim Siever said:
huphtur, I totally agree. This is something that has bothered me sine I came online in 1996. I have complained often to Yahoo! about it, but they never change. One of the most popular websites, and they leave out something so simple as a background colour. This has to be one of my biggest pet peeves.
Posted on September 29, 2004 02:29 PM | #
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