[simonsarris]

Eek.

I think, and I stress that this is wrought of my own unprofessional feelings, but I think that in the early days of rich consumer UI (pre-2004 lets say), that rounded corners, gradients and shadows did some great things to design, because they created affordances so that people knew, for instance, that a button was a button. It stood out against the other website clutter and cruft.

But we've sort of moved on. I'm reminded of a Doisneau quote (famous photographer, 1912-1994):

> "Nowadays people's visual imagination is so much more sophisticated, so much more developed, particularly in young people, that now you can make an image which just slightly suggests something, they can make of it what they will."

Nowaday's peoples visual expectations of what they might find on a website or app are much better, and you don't need to "point out" as much stuff. In other words I think users "got better". At the same time, we seem to see a real slimming of other visual distractions, so buttons don't need to be pointed-out as much.

This is the essence of Flat-UI in my opinion, that if you remove enough cruft, then afterwards you can remove even more cruft since your buttons and menus will no longer need to stand out from other stuff with gradients/shadows/rounded corners, and users are more attending to looking for them and expecting them anyway.

And I think, in light of all that, Yahoo sort of dropped the ball here. They didn't remove the cruft! Distractions distractions distractions.

[nikatwork]

I appreciate the minimalism of flat UI, but I do feel the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction.

Microsoft is the worst culprit here - presenting a text block containing some hyperlinks, but the text is all styled identically so you have to hover the mouse over a word to notice the link. WTF?

Sure, let's keep things clean and minimal, but there needs to be some kind of basic visual language that indicates "this bit is interactive, and this other bit is static content".

Somewhere, Jakob Nielsen is having an aneurysm.

[hobs]

That shit drives me insane. I should not have to hover over or consume 100% of your content to determine what is and what is not a link.

[dredmorbius]

the text is all styled identically so you have to hover the mouse over a word to notice the link. WTF?

Affordance of hyperlinks is key to the Web.

I apply the following CSS to most/many sites to identify links:

        a {
            color: #427fed;
            text-decoration: none;
        };

        a:active {
            background-color: #427fed;
            color: #fffff6;
        };

        a:hover {
            text-decoration: underline;
        }

Hrm. I should add a :visited selector as well.

[dredmorbius]

I'm liking this color:

    a:visited { color: #6f32ad; }

[state]

I think your comment is apt, and I really appreciate the Doisneau quote. What he describes seems to hold true for design always: the "new" is digested in to the collective consciousness and thereby becomes normal, requiring a new "new".

As a brand Yahoo! has always been far from the edge of visual innovation. I once worked on a pitch for Yahoo! long ago, and it seems to me that the angle is still the same: predictable and dated. I'd say there's no reason to ask for more. If anything, they're probably giving their users what they want.

[fourstar]

> And I think, in light of all that, Yahoo sort of dropped the ball here. They didn't remove the cruft! Distractions distractions distractions.

Like? You didn't even mention one example.

[hcarvalhoalves]

> But we've sort of moved on.

Talk for yourself buddy. I hate most UIs being pushed nowadays, including ones from Google (G+ is a usability trainwreck) and Apple (iOS7... enough said).

[dboyd]

I agree. For example, I always thought Yahoo had the best sports site out there. Information, easy to find, without distractions.

It looks like I'm not alone...

https://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/207810

[ritchiea]

I agree. For years I've turned to yahoo first for sports because they had a simple UI, easily accessible box scores, and good bloggers (at least for basketball). And everything came without forcing too many ads down my throat.