My Yahoo! Blog

New: Your photo as page theme.

A few months ago, we added a Customize Colors feature to My Yahoo! that allows you to start with one of the built-in themes and make it your own by choosing colors for different parts of your page. We received a lot of great feedback on this feature, including many requests to be able to use your own images. I’m excited to announce that this week we’ve enhanced the feature to let you do just that!

To reflect its broader capabilities, we’ve renamed the feature Customize Theme. You can find it by clicking the Change Appearance button at the top of your My Yahoo! page.

Just click on the background area for either the top of the page (what we call the Page Header) or the background of the main part of the page (what we call the Page Background). In either case, you’ll see that you now have a choice of an image or a color for the background. We’ve set things up so you can either upload an image from your hard drive or pull in an image from your Flickr account, if you have one.

A couple of tips for the page header area:
• An image that isn’t too busy works best.
• The ideal image is about 150 pixels high, so you’ll be able to see most of it (a larger image will be cropped).

Please check out our detailed Tutorial and Online Help on Customizing Colors and Backgrounds to guide you through using this new feature. Please let us know what you think.

–james
My Yahoo! Product Lead

New: Create your own page colors.

By popular request, you can now customize the colors for the header, background, and text on your My Yahoo! page. You can find this new feature under the Change Appearance menu on the upper left hand side of the page. Once there, you will see a link to Customize Colors. You’ll see two visual sections like the ones represented below.

By clicking on different areas of the first section you can highlight four different areas of your page to customize. The four areas include the header, sub-header, page background, and content area. Depending which area you select, you can see associated customize options available for that particular section on the right hand side.

A good tip to keep in mind is to choose background and text colors that have good contrast in relation to each other, so that the content remains legible. The best way to see how it works is to give it a try. It’s pretty intuitive once you start using it. At any time, you can change the color back to the original color you started with by clicking the Reset link that is shown next to the I’m Done button.

You can create 9 custom themes of your own. As you create new custom page colors, you can find your colors added to the list of Custom Themes available when you return to the Change Appearance Menu.

This feature is in beta and we’d love to hear your feedback. Go ahead, make your My Yahoo! page as unique as you are.

John
Product Manager

Adding content just got easier!

My, oh my…

I hope you are as excited as we are about all of the improvements we’re making to My Yahoo!. We’ve now made discovering content a snap with the new My Yahoo! Content Gallery. Simply click “Add Content” in the navigation bar and the page will display interesting and useful nuggets of content that can be added to your page in one click. It’s so simple!

We’ve also improved the search results to help you find more quickly the stuff that interests you. Looking for daily recipe ideas? Try searching for “dinner recipe” and add Dinner Tonight Recipes, Yahoo! Recipe Search, and the Epicurious Healthy Dinner Tonight modules. Want to keep track of all the news for your favorite local sports teams in one place? Do a search and save only the results you want.

For example, try searching for “Cleveland sports” and add the Cavs, Browns, and Indians news and schedules. Searching for and adding content you care about will keep you in the know and ultimately save you time.

So go ahead and click “Add Content” to get the most out of My Yahoo!.

Michael
- My Yahoo! Product Manager

Changes to My Yahoo!.

Hi everyone,

You may have noticed that a few things have changed on the header of your My Yahoo! page. We have been working to make it easier for you to find, discover, and add great content to your page.

In the header, you will see three new options, “Add Content,” “Change Appearance,” and “More Options.” With this new setup, you’re only one click away from making your page truly feel like home.

We’ve also made it easier to distinguish among your multiple My Yahoo! pages. With this new “tabbed” design, your additional pages will be separated as tabs that you can easily navigate. You will still be able to select a theme and layout for each unique page. Oh, and adding a tab is as simple as clicking “New Tab” at the right of your page tabs.

We are working on some other changes to My Yahoo!, so be sure to check in for future blog posts on these updates. Also, welcome to any international My Yahoo! fans who are seeing the new My Yahoo! for the first time!

For now, enjoy the new layout and comment on this post with your feedback.

Adam
- My Yahoo! Marketing

You wanted larger fonts, voila!

Hi everyone,

I spend a lot of time in front of the computer and sometimes my eyes get tired. It’s even worse when I have to strain to read something on my screen. I’m not alone – lots of people were giving us similar feedback. In response, My Yahoo! has launched a new Font Size feature.

Increasing the font size on your screen is now an option in the personalization menu. Just click the Personalize this Page button and select ‘Large Fonts’ from the drop down menu. One click and your font goes up a size!

Before…

Now with larger fonts…

Ahhhh….My Yahoo!, my eyes thank you!

Sarah Sikowitz, Yahoo! Marketing