The new home page is much cleaner and lighter that the previous one. The focus is put on search (note the yellow halo around the search bar), user’s personalized applications (mail, weather, stocks, movies, local events, etc.) and news.

A few changes to highlight:

1. Bye-bye red logo. The home page logo is also wearing purple.

2. Bye-bye white background. Say hello to the blue-gray gradient frame around the page’s content.

3. The “My Applications” box was moved to the left and increased. When you click on an application, a slider opens to the right to provide a large preview area.

4. A few boxes that existed on the old page are gone (Marketplace, Small Businesses, Today’s top searches). This helps reduce the noise and put focus on the key services – search, applications and news.

Here are couple of screen shots of the new page. More photos here.

and the old page with Halloween logo…