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MSN Gets Its First Makeover in a Decade

by Terrence O'Brien on November 4, 2009 at 11:02 AM

Microsoft Finally Gives MSN a Much Needed Facelift
MSN, Microsoft's news and search portal, has remained largely unchanged over the last decade. The familiar butterfly logo, blue background, and oppressive quantities of links have gotten only minor tweaks since 2001 -- a different shade of blue, more links, more photos. But now, Microsoft is prepped to unveil a drastic redesign of its flagship portal, reducing clutter and ditching the "Microsoft blue" background for a cleaner white.

The New York Times counted 45 clickable links in the top two inches of the old MSN (which you can see after the break). Those links, which represented various categories and separate subheadings for individual news sources, have been condensed and simplified. Now, a simple slide show of featured stories sits above a tabbed news list, which lets you switch between news from MSNBC, Fox Sports, and others.

In addition to extreme clutter reduction, the new portal also integrates Facebook and Twitter, allowing you to check messages and update your status on the social networks.

The new version (seen above) will be going live at some point today, but if you're too impatient and want access now, you can visit http://www.msn.com/preview.aspx. And if you want to see how MSN has evolved (or failed to evolve) over the last 10 years, check out the gallery our friends at Download Squad put together tracking MSN from 2001 to today. [From: NY Times and Download Squad]'

Microsoft Finally Gives MSN a Much Needed Facelift

Tags: design, microsoft, msn, redesign, toyota

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