I was sent an email yesterday by a reader of MML letting me know that Microsoft has tweaked the Metro design of its homepage and I have to say that it is a nice improvement over the cluttered design that went before it. However, its still not perfect, there is still too much happening on the page but it simpler now.

I don’t know when this new design went live and I might be late to notice it but I thought I would share this anyway.

This design is available in the US and UK and possibly more markets too. As I have said before it’s worthy to note the bar at the top of the page, it’s something I have seen turning up on other Microsoft sites over the past few months and I think it points to a universal header for all Microsoft sites at some point in the future. If there was a universal header for all Microsoft sites it would be very helper for users visiting the sites and also it would help to unify the Microsoft family of products.

I have previously shown some alternative designs I have seen for the Microsoft homepage. What do you think about this simpler design?