An early look at the new Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us, the hugely popular social bookmarking service, has finally unveiled its new look. It's the biggest visual change the site's had since its launch in 2003, and the result of nearly a year's worth of work. Besides a face-lift, the service has undergone several enhancements, both in how you browse new links and search through them. Of course, this new site isn't open to everyone. In classic Web 2.0 form, access is limited to a select few in the form of a beta preview the Del.icio.us team is using for feedback before rolling out the changes to everyone.

The site first announced its intentions of a massive re-design in early February, and just a few months back noted some fun statistics about their usability testing lab, which had apparently used more than 2,000 Post-it Notes to organize observations about the re-design. This may not sound too impressive, which is why I'd recommend taking a look at this picture, which gives me headache just to look at.

The first thing you'll notice about the new Del.icio.us is that the name has forgone its dots to simply be known as "Delicious." Besides making it easier for newbies to pronounce, it's also a departure from its roots of a small, independent Web site who was one of the first to pioneer the gloriously cheesy domain name hack, a practice that's even led to a startup that figures them out for you. The other thing you'll notice is that there's more emphasis on tags, and tagging in general, as they've been given a much more prevalent look and presence throughout the site.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The real change, however, is in search and navigation, which have both been streamlined and made faster. The old Delicious search was a tad on the sluggish side, whereas the new search is noticeably faster. The results have also been improved to show you who was the first to save it as a bookmark, along with pushing the tags out to the side in case you feel like drilling down by genre. The navigation now features drop-down menus to let you quickly drill down to various parts of the site, skipping an extra page view or two.

When it comes to actually creating new bookmarks on the Delicious site, the process is like Miss South Carolina: pretty but slow. Despite the advances in page design, you still have to navigate through two separate pages to add a new link via URL. I prefer the newer trend of opening up a lightbox pop-up to let me enter in information, and then getting shot back to the page I was viewing before. There's a handy bookmarklet to add whatever page you're visiting, which is actually the fastest way to add new content to the site short of clicking a site-integrated "add to Delicious" button, but the current system is still prohibitive for batch link uploading.

Let me conclude by saying that I'm not a big Delicious user. I get great enjoyment out of finding new content from its hot list, but I use my browser's bookmarks folder almost exclusively when it comes to saving links just for myself. Getting into Delicious as a bookmarking tool takes habit, and the willingness to integrate their tools into your browsing routine. These new changes are a step forward in making the site easier to explore, and help manage collections once they've become large, although at its core, the service is still very much the same. If you're willing to put in the time to dedicate yourself to social bookmarking, Delicious (old and new) is worth checking out.

I've posted some screenshots below. To sign up for the preview, Delicious has put up a page here. You might also be one of the lucky few who's already got access, which you can check here.

You can now choose one of three different sizes for your bookmarks. Just the title; title and tags; or title, tags, and a description.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Tag exploration on Delicious' front door is now a little easier on the eyes. You can also do a quick sort of items visually using the gray tag clusters on the left.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Finding new tags to subscribe to has been given a bit of an overhaul, as well. You can see which items match your subscribed tags by day in much clearer fashion than before.

(Credit: CNET Networks)