A Categorical Change
Over the last few days, we’ve been rolling out a new design to the category pages that should help you find the questions you care about more quickly. Starting today, these changes will be a permanent feature in your Answers experience.
Look at example of the new category page for yourself here: Travel
Here are some of the changes that we have made:
- Easier Category Navigation: We’ve moved the list of categories and subcategories to the top of the page instead of listing down the left-hand side. This should make it easier for you to move to a different category without needing to scroll down the page.
- More Space on the Page: Just like we did with the question page last year, we wanted to offer you more space in the category page by moving to a wider page design which is optimized for a higher screen resolution.
- More Prominent Leaderboard: Who doesn’t want to be famous? The right-hand side of the page now lists the top 10 answerers for the category or subcategory you are browsing. We wanted to give more prominence not only to the category leader, but to rest of the top contributing answerers as well. We also heard from you guys that when a category was being sponsored you still wanted to be able to see how you were doing in that category’s Leaderboards. The new category design allows this.
- More Prominent Question List: You visit the category page to look for questions to answer, right? We’ve made the question list wider and more visible to help youyou’re your answers in there faster.
- Sort by “Most Popular” Questions – We’ve added a “most popular” sort filter on the sidebar so you can see what the community is most interested in with just one click.
- Sticky Question Tabs – Open, resolved, and in voting tabs are now “sticky,” meaning that as you move between categories, your tab choice will persist for the session even as you vote for questions in different categories.
We’re always looking for ways to make it easier for you to use and participate in Answers, and we hope these changes continue to help you find the questions that may be most interesting to you.
As always (but especially when we change stuff on Answers) we would love to know what you think. So why don’t you check out the new category page and leave us a comment with your feedback?
– Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers Team
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- Comments (33)
(8 votes, average: 2.63 out of 5)
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Hi team – I think it looks pretty good. I’d like to see some larger increments in the page navigation controls. For example, page 1 says:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next
I think it should be:
1 2 3 5 10 20 Next Last
Yahoo!UK&Ireland Answers team
Great work I like it and I hope at the next site update will not change this.
Nice changes,just takes a day or two to get used to,,now where`s my flashing avatar and free ice cream for a year ?
It’s horrible!
The old format was easier to read; the Q&A text was central (or kind of shifted over to the right as on the main page) but now it’s been compacted down into the left-hand corner almost as if it’s an afterthought.
I’ve been trying to get used to it but the text should occupy most of the page. Reading text squeezed over to the left feels very unnatural; my eyes want to drift to the right where there’s nothing to see.
we have to scroll up the to the top npow instead.
sorry i really hate this new design. can we go back to the original one please. it feels awkward somehow.
The changes work great. I’ve noticed one problem, when I first go to a category page, fewest answers is selected however the questions are sorted out with the most answers first. I have to click the link twice for the list to change.
Why not an English blog for the UK and Ireland where correct English and correct spelling can be found.
Sorry but I preferred the way it was before!. I do not like the fact that you seem to have changed the yahoo.com home page? So now I find you can not now get on to “Answers” by one click like you could before!. Now you apparently have to click on “all yahoo sites” and only then when that page has downloaded can you eventually find somewhere to click on “answers”? So contrary to what you claim, it actually now takes a lot more time not less to find questions. And you have still not corrected the annoying fact that if one is trying to find a question you saw briefly and were interested in answering but needed to do something else first (like go to work and return home), you can not often then find it, because you do not know what category and it was in, and it is now like trying to find a needle in a haystack. If you go on search using a word you can remember in the question, you get hundreds or even thousands of questions with that word in them but nowhere does it separately display unanswered questions from answered or recently answered questions?.Surely that would have been a better change to make than what you have done?
So I give you 0 out of 5!
its nice and all but what i really want is a quick quick link to questions i can vote on (my questions never get voted on and i think this is because no one can find my question to vote on it!!)
yea, sorry have to agree with Lord_Darkclaw and michelle here, the changes are not all that good. Requesting it be changed back please and thanks
The layout is soo bad I refuse to use this site again, til its changed back.
i hate it. too clutttered. not easy to read. the old version was better. please change it back to the way it was.
also you have to use the refresh in internet explorer now where before you could refresh the page by clicking on the section on the left.
bad job.
“Who doesn’t want to be famous?” you ask. Fair point, so why have you made the others’ avatars so much smaller than the leader’s? I think that was a mistake. The Top 10s are quite an elitist concept already, and they do give rise to a certain amount of resentment.
It is a major step forward to show the whole Top 10 on the category view. But I do wish you would give the other avatars equal prominence. And links to an extended listing, say the Top 30 or 50, and all the top contributors in the category too, would be nice.
Why do you keep changing the things that work but don’t fix the things that are broken? I liked the old layout better.
IMHO I’d propose… Why don’t you show directly, somewhere in the page, the user’s most used categories? It would be easier and time saving… I mean, compared to “exploding” the main headers once or twice every single time
thanQ
It took me a while to figure it out but I still kinda liked it the old way better, I guess it just takes some getting used too is all.
The changes are seriously making me miserable. Can we revert to the old style. Please
Think I prefer the older format, sorry if this sounds negative, I don’t like the masses of questions in the current style. It seemed easier to view them as a standard list.
So you’ve moved the most important part – the questions list, to almost half a screen down the page, and given us a load of junk in its place? Niiiiiiice, not.
Gimme plain text and easy to find questions and answers, and get rid of all the flash crap. If people want to see who’s posted the most/got the most best answers/whatever, then give ‘em a link to get to the information – don’t fill the most important bit (the questions area) with unnecessary crap!
It was grand the way it was. By the way, any chance of separating Rock from Pop? Theres been a lot of trolling lately in the R&P section.
Amazing how so many people complain all the time about change.
Why not go out and buy a ZX spectrum?
You only need a few minutes in the internet archive to see that the more things change, the more the better things are used and the less effective ideas are dropped. It is called evolution, and leads to long term stability.
Lack of change, or willingness to change, leads to companies like Microsoft getting a firmer grip on the internet and destroying innovation.
what about the ASKER ? not all of us were born yesterday.
I still don’t know what SMS stands for and your “mods” suck. (Mitzi B & co.)
Niether do you use G.M.T. (20 : 30 – 19th)
wonder if we have an English Dictionary – one way to find out.
QUESTION – will this go in my profile ?
Those who only use Q&A weren’t informed of your closure, so some found a ‘blog’ page – top choice on the notice you were ‘closed’.
I was trying to find that again. Who do you sell those ideas to ? (it’s that “refrain from embracing” warning.
I had a look at other ‘things to do’ too !!
Where is the page you had on the 19th – by the way – you are back on line again. (no change so far. – started getting the warning you are due to close (better late than never – did some say)
Why can we not have a choice which design we use? Old or new? It seems its kind of 2 parts, people liking it and hating it.. and I’m one of the haters definitely!
I agree with all the people who say that this version is lousy. It is inconvenient and awkward, and there was nothing wrong with the old version.
Hi Y!AT
I do like this new page layout though it did take some getting used to, leaning to the left when looking at the questions.
And I like the fact that the categories lists are at the top now, the ‘most popular’ is a good idea as well…and I discovered the ‘Sticky Tabs’ for open. resolved and voting questions the other day when I was voting, that is definitely a welcome addition it was annoying having to always open the tab again.
But one tiny thing I will say, I don’t really like the leaderboards in a big box on the right (it kind of adds to the gaming aspect)
But overall Y!ATs you have a done a good job. Well done
You should leave wellalone. The original page design was fine. This one is lousy. Please change back.
Also why has a comma appeared at the end of all my Contacts e-mail addresses. They won’t go through with this and I have to type all e-mail addresses in now. This happened the same day as you changed the home page!!!
OK, you have really messed up this time. Why fix a design that worked?
Yeah, it had glitches but at least it was readable.
When you go to the oldest questions through to the early questions, you can sometimwe skip from a question posted five days ago to a question posted five minutes ago. What is going on?
I am not too bothered about the changes, but one thing that I think needs to be improved is this not stating on questions about “law” or “politics” what country the person asking the question is from. This seems only to be advised some considerable time later by when somebody asking about an employment discipline query in the UK (say) has been given confusing information by those answering being from the USA and thinking he is asking about employment there, where laws and standards are different from the UK. On other catagories like medical questions the issue is the same everywhere so what country the questioner is from does not matter.
I like the new look but I have to say it could still do with some tweaks. Well done not easy to change things and satisfy especially those that were used to the old style and had come to like it.
I have had Yahoo as my home page for over 10 years and now I’ve finally had enough. I am totally pissed off.
I am an American working in Europe, but I can no longer navigate to the US Yahoo home page. You keep redirecting to the local region. If that’s what I wanted – guess what, l would have put that in the URL. You guys are really loosing the plot overriding the users preference.
If I type http://www.yahoo.com I expect to see the US home page – as it always was or even us.yahoo.com is ok, and uk.yahoo.com as it was before.
If your going to screw around with it at least give me a choice to set my preferred locale.. When I go out the the France next week – will Yahoo be available in English?
Get with it you muppets
Oh – and finally – since there is NOWHERE on any yahoo site to provide feedback I have had to vent here. Sorry. Maybe you’d pass it on.
PS Yahoo is no longer my home page.
Hey PJ,
We’re sorry to hear you’re having this frustration but we’re pretty sure you can amend this.
If you go to the US Front Page and are re-directed back to the UK Front Page, you can click on a link below the purple Yahoo! logo on the top left hand side.
The link you need is this one:
US Yahoo Front Page
It should fix you homepage as the US one.
Hope this helps.
– Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers team