Amazon Debuts New Design, Pulls it Next Day

Yesterday, Amazon changed their design. Oddly, though, it had been replaced with the original by this morning. Even more strangely, this isn’t the first time this has happened. About a month ago, an earlier version of this design was put online, only to be removed the next day. Are they testing a new design, but they’re not quite ready to make it permanent?

Luckily, I was smart enough to snag a screenshot of the new design:

Quite a bit different, isn’t it? They’ve cleaned-up the categories sidebar, which was cluttered and overblown, and the DHTML DIV of categories is gone as well. The logo is on its own again, instead of being embedded in a navigational tab (Apple.com-style), and it’s a little bigger than it was previously. The design, overall, is more streamlined, though I prefer the old header’s color scheme.

For reference, here’s a screenshot of the current design:

Edit: There’s an explanation of this odd behavior on Amazon.com. They’re still “still in our testing phase” so “you may not see the new design all the time.”