Yahoo! News Beta: Layout & Feature Update
Yahoo! has released the URL for the new beta Yahoo! News at http://beta.news.yahoo.com/. A sleeker design and more. More information by Gary Price at the SEW Blog:
+ A new layout for Yahoo News home page. Tabbed links to news category pages (Top Stories, U.S., Business, etc.) are now linked tabs at the top of the page. They used to be listed in a column on the left site of the page.
+ Boxes containing headlines of top stories in various categories are now visible on the home page. The entire page can be customized (categories added/removed and reordered). The Top Stories category cannot be removed.
+ It’s now possible to view headlines from various sources without having to click off the home page. For example, clickable tabs allow you to quickly see Top News headlines from AP, Reuters, AFP, and other sources that Yahoo has relationships with.
+ A tab labeled “My Sources” allows you the option to add RSS feeds from various sources (both mainstream news and blogs) selected by Yahoo’s news editors. Interesting to note that Yahoo doesn’t use the word RSS at all here.
I showed the beta version to a few SEMs and here are their initial impressions:
– There’s something very sissy-looking about the tabs on that page.
– Those tabs suck.
– They should be purple and yellow.
– That’s a drastic change for yahoo…too drastic…
