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New Youtube interface

Ben Allen [PersonRank 10]

Thursday, April 10, 2008
16 years ago4,491 views

Visit: www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0

Much more organized.

[Unlinked URL to prevent embedding – Tony]

Jérôme Flipo [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

I hate it.

Huge buttons everywhere, weird and big police (especially for "users watching now"), ugly fat hyperlinks. Burk!

But it could have been a perfect "Youtube accessible". After the last yt homepage flop release, I'm worrying for future design of the site.

Zim [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

But I don't know if I like those big buttons/tabs...
I don't know.

Jérôme Flipo [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

The Youtube team should take a look at vimeo.com. Really.

dpneal [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

I think it looks ok. I think they could make it cleaner still though.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

I don't see it yet. What's supposed to be different? Or is this just about rickrolling?

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

I'm seeing this. Philipp, TechCrunch has screenshots:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/09/youtube-updates-layout-now-with-tabs-and-statistics/

Haochi [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Lol, "Commentary", I would prefer them just use "comments".
I think putting the video responses and text comments together creates confusion. They probably should remove the thumbs up/down "feature" – no one really cares about it.

Haochi [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Also New: YouTube Insight Discovery (how people found your video)
http://www.youtube.com/blog?entry=P1y1CU54Fhg

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

There's a huge issue with the new layout: clicking on "Favorite" adds the video to your list of favorite videos, while all the other tabs show some options. It's a very bad idea to use tabs for immediate actions. I don't see why YouTube needs the "favorite" option when you can rate videos.

Another stupid thing: when you log in using your Google Account while watching a video, YouTube displays an inline form and then it sends to YouTube's homepage. You need to go back to the video you were watching and then reload the page to be able to rate the video or post a comment.

Haochi [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

>> I don't see why YouTube needs the "favorite" option when you can rate videos. <<
With Favorite, you can find the video later on in http://youtube.com/my_favorites , but with rating, you can't.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Oh, this forum's auto-embedding throw me off-track as I thought it was a change in the player. Thanks Tony!

Jérôme Flipo [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

[put at-character here]Haochi
<<They probably should remove the thumbs up/down "feature" – no one really cares about it.>>
You're absolutely right! Comments are now LOL-WTF-OMG reactions and have no value. Rating them is absolutely useless.
But the point is that Google have showed a preview last year of a new youtube layer with chat beside video (I don't remember at which occasion, but it was a videocast conference of Google top-management where they also revealed Gmail UI2). Such a layer would be much more appropriate than current comments (and this would be perfect with transcripts of past chats). But they should also provide "review" feature (for serious and longer comments, perhaps à la Google Local Business reviews from 3rd party services). I guess this feature is reserved for the live streaming options we've heard of recently from yt founders. But why to release a new design if they plan to change the design soon?

[put at-character here]Ionut
<<It's a very bad idea to use tabs for immediate actions>>
Yeah, that is so stupid, all the more than all Google applications use now the "yellow notification-undo option" which works very well (in Gmail, Gdocs, Picasas Web, etc.). The big tabs of the new layer are ugly and not practical: I really hope the yt team will meet Gmail designers soon, and get back to work.

<<Another stupid thing: when you log in using your Google Account while watching a video, YouTube displays an inline form and then it sends to YouTube's homepage.>>
Absolutely! And even basic video websites avoid such bad navigation. dailymotion.com understands that and log users without pausing the video...

Finally, I don't know if Youtube wants its viewers to use third-party video players (see the latest released API) and then can afford to make their website ugly and buggy, but I expect many disappointments from youtubers in the next days.

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

[put at-character here](myself):

<<There's a huge issue with the new layout: clicking on "Favorite" adds the video to your list of favorite videos, while all the other tabs show some options. It's a very bad idea to use tabs for immediate actions. I don't see why YouTube needs the "favorite" option when you can rate videos.>>

YouTube changed this behavior and now you have to click on a button to favorite a video.

Mambo [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

[put at-character here] Ionut:

I'm glad they've promptly changed this. It was annoying me slightly.

As for the layout, I'm already used to it, and I think it works quite well.

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