Yovav (Jay) Meydad's Personal Blog

I logged into the Disqus console today to change some settings and noticed a new feature. The settings pages do not have a visible “Save” and “Cancel” buttons.  Instead, only if you change a value/option on the page the buttons float and appear from the bottom of the visible area. This is a big usability improvement as it eliminates the need to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and hit save. I think this is very innovative and very cool. I have not seen this feature on other website but I am sure it will happen soon.

Back in Oct 2008 Yahoo was testing a new homepage. This version of the homepage has not become live yet and probably won’t given the fact that Yahoo has now a new CEO, Carol Bratz, that has a very clear vision for the company. A vision that is also reflected in the new version of the homepage I just got (probably as part of a small percentage test Yahoo is running) – big focus on search, display advertising and a better portal to generate more page views on the Yahoo network.

Couple of observations:

• The header height was shaved by a few pixels, the Yahoo logo was moved right next to the search box instead of above it, and almost all of the essential information is viewable above the fold! pretty impressive that Yahoo was able to achieve that without getting eliminating links and content that is on the current homepage

• The expandable tabs that are used in the left side bar (called Favorites) make the home page extremely extensible with all sorts of information and applications, from Yahoo properties (Finance, Messenger, Flickr, movies) and partners (eBay, NPR, BBC, and more). It is also great for advertising since there is a medium rectangle ad (most desirable ad size on the market) on every tab. This should increase the number of home page ad impressions sagnificantly. Anyone wanys to model what it will do to the stock price?

• Yahoo clearly wants you to do more searches and that’s why they moved the “popular searches” box to the top and made it so prominent

• Yahoo also wants to regain their position as a portal to the Yahoo network. That’s why they:

(a) placed the link “View Yahoo! Sites” which expands to a directory of all the Yahoo sites at the top of the Favorites left bar

(b) moved the articles section to the top and increased its size from 5 to 10 links

• One very interesting application that was pre-installed for me on the favorites bar was MySpace. I wonder if that is a first sign for a deal that might happen between MySpace/FIM and Yahoo (the Google deal is supposed to end in mid 2010) or is that just a traffic aquisition campaign mySpace is running on Yahoo

Overall, I like the new design. It is lighter, cleaner and the information is organized in a more logical and accessible way compared to the existing homepage. Who knows, if this version will eventually become the live one, I might switch my homepage back to Yahoo like in the good old days.

Update: According to Sillicon Alley Insider, this new homepage is not a test but a phased rollout.

Here are some photos of the new design

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

I was checking the new LinkedIn search feature earlier today and noticed that the results displayed once you start typing inside the people search box were covered by the 300×250 flash ad.

This issue exists on many web sites where Flash objects appear in the front, and cover dynamic HTML content. One example are pages that have embedded YouTube videos as well as Snap Shots that appear as a layer under the video player instead in front of it .

To solve this issue, you don’t need to be a Flash development guru. All you should do is make sure the Flash object (ad, embedded video player, etc.) has a transparent background. Depending on whether you are using the OBJECT or EMBED tag:

• Add the following parameter to the OBJECT tag: <param name="wmode" value="transparent">
• Add the following parameter to the EMBED tag: wmode="transparent"

Once you change your code, you should not see an issue similar to the one below.

A few weeks ago I criticized the language inconsistency and other bugs that existed on the Apple Israel web site. It’s time to follow up and see whether things have improved:

• If you just look at the home page, then yes, the site feels more localized to Hebrew speakers. The top navigation bar uses more Hebrew labels than in the past. However, the experience across the site is still inconsistent. The home page (and many other pages on the site) serves as a simple launch pad since many of the links take the user to apple.com.

• The support section has improved and contains plenty of content in Hebrew including quick starts, PDF guides, FAQ and more.

• There are still annoying bugs that I don’t expect to find on an official Apple site, such as linked “Store coming soon” image  that leads nowhere, or problems with Safari for Windows (as I wrote in the previous post).

Last note – In the past few weeks, some of the top search keywords that led traffic to this blog were “apple Israel” and “apple.co.il”. I expect this to increase when iDigital starts selling the iPhone, MacBook Air and other products. I wonder when will Rami Prashove, the owner of apple.co.il, get an offer he won’t be able to refuse.