Yahoo pages to get touch-up

Yahoo plans to let visitors test-drive its new home page and My Yahoo personalization site as early as Tuesday in preparation for a full relaunch this fall.

The new Yahoo.com reveals a few minor changes in appearance and functionality. For example, users can alter the graphical buttons flanking the top logo to link to their preferred Yahoo sites. Below the search bar, links to other properties have been reorganized in alphabetical order rather than by category.

The human-edited directory, once the centerpiece of Yahoo.com, has been reduced to a banner-size area at the bottom of the page and a tab on the search bar. Content boxes to entertainment news and "buzz index" search rankings now share the real estate that the directory once owned.

As previously reported, Yahoo has been testing new versions of its home page since spring.

Changes in My Yahoo include a live launch of its Web syndication service based on RSS (short for real simple syndication) technology. People can search for content based on topics and then create feeds from news sites and Web logs onto the page. Yahoo has been testing this service since January.

="" id="934089>dramatic face lift. At the time, the redesign added a second area for graphical and animated advertisements.

A Yahoo spokeswoman said the changes will go live in the " coming="" weeks."<="" p="">