The last month has seen me completely immersed in User Experience theory and Information Architecture for my new role, and it’s been a very hectic time. While that hasn’t stopped me from keeping an eye on developments on the web, it’s given me less time to write about them.

Here’s a quick round-up of a few links that have grabbed my interest over the past weeks; I’d like to write more about them, but time forbids.

Yahoo’s New Application Platform Is Heavy On Social Features

The work that Yahoo (sorry, I refuse to use the exclamation mark) has been doing on open web standards and platforms recently has been fantastic, and the recently-announced Yahoo Open Strategy looks like a logical next step. I don’t agree with this article’s conclusion that this is Yahoo playing catch-up with Facebook, but otherwise it’s a good introduction.

Windows Toolkit Gives Oomph to Microformats

For a company that so often gives the impression (perhaps not always fairly) that it has no time for open standards, Microsoft’s support for Microformats has been impressive. As well as the hAtom-powered Slices feature in IE8, the recently released Oomph toolkit provides in-browser Microformats detection (similar to Firefox’s Operator) and a set of standard CSS styles. Nice work.

Firefox Themes: The Contention Between Visual Hierarchy and Toolbar Customization

A really interesting look at the theory behind the design of the Firefox 3 toolbar and icon set, as well as a general overview of visual hierarchy and interactive design.