My wife has a visceral distaste for almost anything new Yahoo does with their interfaces. I work at Yahoo. I hear a lot about it.

When I showed her the shiny new Yahoo Mail interface, she feined interest but gave away her true feelings with her last question. “How do I go back to the old version?”

When Maps “upgraded” to the new flashy interface she was livid. Absolutely blood boiling livid. “It used to just work. I just want a map and directions, and it used to give me a map and directions. Now it takes forever and …”.

She’s switched to mapquest, will not even consider using Yahoo Maps.

I thought her unreasonable, perhaps old fashioned.

Then I got a Mac and tried the Camino browser. Camino is not officially supported by Yahoo Mail, so I got the good old Web 1.0 interface.

You know what? I like it. I like it a lot. They’ve added a few worthwhile ajaxy touches very seamlessly into the old interface, but otherwise it’s your basic Web 1.0 app. It loads fast, shows you your email, and just works.

I remember the days of browsing without having to worry about sites that would make my CPU go nuts and the fans kick on. Now practically ever other site brings my machine to its knees. And we’re talking a nice dual core MacBook Pro here.

So here’s to Web 1.0. Here’s to hoping fast and simple come back in style.