Like YouTube love to do they've once again sort of majorly changed the layout of, well, everything except channels. They've been slowly rolling it out for the last six months but it appears in the last few days everybody has been switched over. Here are my observations
As I said channels have remained pretty much the same, as well as the video manager which has just been changed to their single colour type styling (rather than having gradients and shadows on buttons).
On a video page everything looks a lot more slick with the flat colors, and the layout appears more organised + the HTML5 is finally working almost perfectly (ie on a tablet it was almost impossible to like a comment because of whatever code was in the thumbs up symbol, now it happens with ease. Comments also appear more organised. The player itself has also been toned down to just a few flats colors. YouTube partners can no longer have an image next to the subscribe button so there is little ability to tell if someone is partnered or not without going to their channel. (People can have ads now without being full partners). Also the title and everything has been moved to below the player.
Now the things that I don't really like that much.
The homepage is terrible. Where having minimal colors used on the player and video player works, it makes it hard to look anywhere on the home page because the only color is in the small video thumbnails. The default tab (as seen on the side) is basically a recommended tab (called "what to watch") which annoys me because then I have to click to my subscripts second. There may be a way to change this but I have not found it. Basically YouTube is white and red now, with the occasional dark grey from the previous channel change at a similar time last year.
Not everything is centered now and this probably annoys me the most. Your account link bit which you clicked to get inbox, video manager, settings etc is justified to the right and so if you're working on a wide screen it sits far over tongue side. The search and video page player are no longer centered either but are formatted to the left which means you must turn your head slightly to the left (again probably only if you have a wide display) unless you play a video in full screen. Channel pages are the only areas still centered, but it looks bad because the search bar isn't centered above it so channels look messy. Although a change at the start of this year or end of last year meant that users no longer spent as much time on some bodies channel as clicking a video on a channel automatically opens the video page.
In conclusion I like the new player and video page but hate the homepage and think that the channel layout now looks out of place.
What are other people's thoughts?
As I said channels have remained pretty much the same, as well as the video manager which has just been changed to their single colour type styling (rather than having gradients and shadows on buttons).
On a video page everything looks a lot more slick with the flat colors, and the layout appears more organised + the HTML5 is finally working almost perfectly (ie on a tablet it was almost impossible to like a comment because of whatever code was in the thumbs up symbol, now it happens with ease. Comments also appear more organised. The player itself has also been toned down to just a few flats colors. YouTube partners can no longer have an image next to the subscribe button so there is little ability to tell if someone is partnered or not without going to their channel. (People can have ads now without being full partners). Also the title and everything has been moved to below the player.
Now the things that I don't really like that much.
The homepage is terrible. Where having minimal colors used on the player and video player works, it makes it hard to look anywhere on the home page because the only color is in the small video thumbnails. The default tab (as seen on the side) is basically a recommended tab (called "what to watch") which annoys me because then I have to click to my subscripts second. There may be a way to change this but I have not found it. Basically YouTube is white and red now, with the occasional dark grey from the previous channel change at a similar time last year.
Not everything is centered now and this probably annoys me the most. Your account link bit which you clicked to get inbox, video manager, settings etc is justified to the right and so if you're working on a wide screen it sits far over tongue side. The search and video page player are no longer centered either but are formatted to the left which means you must turn your head slightly to the left (again probably only if you have a wide display) unless you play a video in full screen. Channel pages are the only areas still centered, but it looks bad because the search bar isn't centered above it so channels look messy. Although a change at the start of this year or end of last year meant that users no longer spent as much time on some bodies channel as clicking a video on a channel automatically opens the video page.
In conclusion I like the new player and video page but hate the homepage and think that the channel layout now looks out of place.
What are other people's thoughts?
