Pros & Cons
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- Tons of content modules.
- Drag-and-drop page arranging.
- Good integration with other Yahoo! services such as Mail, IM, Music, Finance, Calendar.
- Fast page loading.
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- Prominent ads.
- Limited mail integration.
- No public pages.
- Mail previews only in Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, and POP mail.
My Yahoo! Specs
| OS Compatibility: | Linux |
| OS Compatibility: | Mac OS |
| OS Compatibility: | Windows Vista |
| OS Compatibility: | Windows XP |
| Type: | Personal |
| Type: | Professional |
I dragged my feet for quite a while when it came to upgrading my My Yahoo! start page to the new version. Why? Because there's an annoying list of Yahoo! services right where my critical activity links have always been. You can collapse the service list by clicking the triangle at the top, but when you do, an ad fills the space. That's even worse! Another problem with the new version: Key page real estate is replaced with "We're sorry... Message Center is no longer available." Eventually, however, I decided to give it a try, and I was quickly won over. This new version of the Web's most popular Start page offers a cleaner look, good tie-ins with Yahoo!'s Web services, tons of new modules, drag-and-drop ability, and better ease of use. Get used to the ads, however, because there are plenty.
Module Mania
Adding modules works much as in Pageflakes: When you choose "Personalize this page," you aren't sent to a separate settings page as in the old My Yahoo! Instead, a black area that drops down on the same page offers three main choices: Content (where you select modules), Appearance, and Options. Though you won't see quite as many modules as you will in upstart competitors Netvibes or Pageflakes, you can find just about any type you're looking for using a search box. I'd prefer having more of the modules, such as those for video and Internet radio, appear in the standard browse categories.
Once I found a module I wanted to add, doing so took just one click, as it does in Pageflakes. You can't just drag-and-drop to place the module on your page, as with Netvibes, however, though you can drag the module around once it's on the page. Netvibes' helpful "Move to top" choice is also absent, but the page scrolls up or down, as appropriate, if you drag past the top or bottom of the browser window; both My Yahoo! and Netvibes beat Pageflakes in this respect.
A big plus is My Yahoo!'s ability to integrate other Yahoo! services, such as Yahoo! Finance, Calendar, TV, and Movies. Beyond that, there are even Gmail and Facebook preview modules that link into other popular Web services. The new "Note to Self" module and To Do list are particularly useful. Pulse keeps you up to date on "important" things other users are clicking on—you know, like news about Britney's car troubles. You may find this useful (shame on you); I didn't.—
What's New?
The "Personal Assistant" module is a good example of what won me over to the new My Yahoo!. The PA's six buttons give quick access to e-mail, weather, calendar, stocks, movies, sports, horoscope, music, or any of 16 Yahoo! services you want to assign the buttons to. Not only does pressing the button take you to the full-service page, but mousing over a button expands the rectangle down for a preview of a service's contents—a kind of fluidity not seen in the earlier-generation My Yahoo!.
Other modules include one for Y! Messenger, offering on-page instant messaging using technology from eBuddy. I could add contacts from the Yahoo! and Microsoft IM universes. One disappointment: I couldn't resize the module's large footprint on my Start page. The Movies module, another favorite, still requires you to go to an "old" Yahoo! page to fill in the local theaters you want listed. I prefer the original module, though; the new one has all titles collapsed, hence you don't instantly see what's playing.
News feed modules now benefit from Yahoo! Reader, which lets you read articles, complete with images, without visiting the site originating the news. You can still click on the title to go to the site (and you can disable Reader altogether), but Reader offers a good way to save you the trouble. The feature doesn't work with all feeds, just those that have provided full content to Yahoo! The tooltip-like text previews of news items are also clearer than the small ones of the earlier My Yahoo!.
When you collapse modules (by clicking on an arrow each one contains), My Yahoo! remembers which were collapsed the next time you log in, but, unlike Netvibes, it does not offer the choice of collapsing all modules at once. The Refresh, Edit, and Delete icons on each module work as they do in Pageflakes, with a gear-shaped Edit icon bringing up a dialog tailored to the module's options. An RSS-feed module, for example, lets you specify how many articles to display and how recent they should be.
All of this suggests that My Yahoo! has mostly caught up with and in some cases even surpassed the newcomers, as far as module choice and presentation go.—
New Layouts and Looks
A new menu along the top of the page shows an Add Page button, your online status, an avatar, and links to "Best of My Yahoo!" and Yahoo! Search. "Best of My Yahoo!" links to a page showing modules that Yahoo! thinks will appeal to most users, such as Y! Messenger and Today, as well as news and lifestyle articles (recipes and celebrity news figure prominently). I'd like to see the "Best of" page exclude modules you already have in place, though.
The old My Yahoo! offered 126 themes, so the new one has some catching up to do: It has 10 colors, 19 textures, 7 "environments," 3 "passions," 10 seasonal motifs, and 10 "old favorites," for a grand total of 59 choices. By comparison, iGoogle has just 49 themes and no organized way to browse them. Pageflakes tops the class, with 83 themes and a "Create Your Own" option, while Netvibes has some catching up to do with only 16 themes and 8 wallpapers.
My Yahoo! provides ample layout options: six choices of two to four columns in different width combinations. By contrast Netvibes has no options aside from the "three equal columns" layout. Pageflakes gives you the most choices: eight layouts ranging from one to four columns in different widths.
In general, My Yahoo! loads faster than its Web 2.0 competitors Netvibes and Pageflakes, though load times depend on how many modules your page contains and the speed of the sources for RSS and other content. A My Yahoo! page with 17 modules took about 9 seconds to refresh, while the same kind and number of modules took Netvibes and Pageflakes 17. The Windows Live personalized page took just 8, and iGoogle was also quite fast, at 7 seconds.—
Sharing Your Yahoo!
My Yahoo! doesn't offer a way to make a public page (Netvibes and Pageflakes do), but you can share your personal page via e-mail or IM. The latter option launches Yahoo! Messenger (I'm not sure why you can't do this right from the My Yahoo! page, though, as there's already an on-page IM module). You can also share individual modules from their edit menus, but you can't share a page or module from the new My Yahoo! with someone still using the old version.
The new My Yahoo! offers just about all the content and customizability you could want. In many ways, it's better than its closest competitors, Netvibes and Pageflakes. The power of Yahoo!'s content and services, such as financial data, the ability to link Yahoo! Mail and Calendar closely with My Yahoo!, and fast page loading will tilt the choice for many, but the price is a more prominent display of ads. And, of course, if you want to make a page visible to all on the Web, you have to go with Netvibes or Pageflakes. Finally, top marks in customizability and interface usability (and no advertising) help Pageflakes keep our Editors' Choice slot. Still, the new My Yahoo! is a very strong contender, and many long-time users of Yahoo!'s other services will doubtless opt for this slick new personal portal from the big yodeler. I'll be very interested to look at the final version, when it's ready.
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Final Thoughts
My Yahoo!
This new version of the Web's most popular Start page offers a cleaner look, good tie-ins with Yahoo!'s Web services, and better ease of use. Get used to the ads, however, because there are plenty.