Not content to leave things alone, Yahoo is changing things yet again. Time will tell whether the changes will be good or bad. but, after their badly botched attempts to improve their TV listings, I get nervous every time they announce any kind of change.
First, an upgrade to their Yahoo Widgets will probably turn out OK. They have just released version 4 of their Widget program designed to give the look and feel of Vista. Like Klipfolio and DeskTopSidebar (which we have written about here in the recent past), the program now puts all the Widgets (in an abbreviated form) in a single bar that can be attached to the right side of the screen, or anywhere, for that matter. Then, you can click on anyone of the places on the bar that represents the one Widget you wish to open, and it pops open to full size.
I know my description of it does not do it justice, so it's best if you head over to the Yahoo Widget Web site and try it out for yourself. They also now have a 2 minute video which explains it even better. I have only tried out the new Widget upgrade for a short time, and my first impression is that I like DeskTopSideBar better for functionality. But, since there are thousands of Widgets available, it does make it quite intriguing.
The other Yahoo "improvement" that really has me worried is the new beta version of "My Yahoo." Long-time readers know that I have been using "My Yahoo" for almost as long as I have been surfing the Web, about 10 years now. My Yahoo used to be called a portal, a Web page that you could customize and add information about the subjects that interest you most.
Over the years I have populated my own page with available subject materials about the current events, weather, art, photography, computers, TV listings, healthy recipes, travel information, personalized stock quotes, financial news, airline fares, and much more. With the advent of blogs, I can even add my favorite blogs to the page.
Every time I open My Yahoo, all the information is reloaded to give me the most recent additions to my favorites. My Yahoo is definitely the most-often used page on the Web for me. I have tweaked it any number of times to make it even better.
Now, however, Yahoo has announced that they are going into beta testing on a new My Yahoo that will use the Web programming tool Ajax as its basis. This makes me nervous because their TV listings that they so royally messed up also used Ajax. Now, I have seen Ajax used successfully on other pages so I know it can work.
But, as soon as they announced the beta of My Yahoo (which is only available for testing for a select few), my own Yahoo started screwing up. First, around 2/3 of the modules I have running would not work. This went on for several days until I posted my problem on the Yahoo user reporting page. Within 48 hours, everything started working fine...well, almost anyway. My listings suddenly got put out of order. I changed the order back to normal. But the next time I accessed the page, everything was out of order again. This continues to this day.
So, you can see why I am nervous about this one. I have tried other web portal pages, but none offer me the extensive amount of information that Yahoo does. I sure hope My Yahoo doesn't go down the toilet like their TV listings did. Keep your fingers crossed.
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