YouTube Unveils Slick Experimental Redesign, Codenamed Cosmic Panda | Hacker News Reader

YouTube Unveils Slick Experimental Redesign, Codenamed Cosmic Panda

techcrunch.com

82 pointstilt29 comments

Aha! I'd been wondering---I've seen this a few times over the last couple weeks and wondered if I'd stumbled into a different section of YouTube or something, but it was always ephemeral. Apparently I was just falling into the A/B testing. :)

I enabled the new UI and was disappointed to right-click on a video and still find Flash player. Isn't it about time for them to move on?

That said, it's a decent looking visual improvement.

Separate experiment. http://youtube.com/html5

I like it when you right click-> Click on Save as video.. and get RickRolled

I like it when you right click-> Click on Save as video.. and unfortunately, this video is not available in Germany because it may contain music for which GEMA has not granted the respective music rights. Sorry about that.

You might appreciate this link to start your weekend..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niJWmdnxEFc

I like it when you are using firefox, and have disabled the option that allows javascript to disable or change context menus. Then you get the real "Save Video As" option. Although, it does try to save it as "videoplayback.htm", but it is the full video.

I like it when I copy the link, go to the command line, and just write `youtube-dl link` and I'm done :)

(apt-get install youtube-dl

brew install youtube-dl)

YouTube will not move away from Flash until they figure out how to get adwords to display with videos outside the Flash player. I also think this contributed to them dropping h.264 and that they might be working on a WebM player that supports ads and text overlays.

They already offer an embed script that is a iframe, with that they can easily display ads however they want and use html5 video. It's probably only a matter of time untill the iframe embed becomes the default one.

The Google "Panda" update killed sites like Mahalo.com. Since then Mahalo has turned to SEO'ing YouTube. I bet this redesign's name gave them heart attack.

I like the new look. I've always liked a darker screen while watching a video especially for long periods of time. I also like the wide variety of sizes you can change the video screen too. I do however wish there was a fit to screen option as I often like to watch a video while working on another part of my screen. Perhaps a screen dimmer that darkens all but the video.

Apparently in Chrome there is a fit to screen button, whereas in Firefox there isn't. (I haven't looked at it in other browsers.) They must be doing a browser detection to turn that feature on. I wonder why.

Looks kind of like Hulu.

That was my first thought as well. However, I like Hulu's viewing page, so I'm glad YouTube is taking after it (or seems to be, anyway). It's a much less distracting screen than the current YT page is, since all of the suggested videos and commends and whatnot are below the video, possibly even off-screen, instead off directly to the right of whatever you're trying to watch.

I like it. The dark background doesn't blind you when you're watching a dark video now.

What about a revamped comment section? I didn't see anything pertaining to comments and those are just as important to the site as the videos are.

Really? YouTube could remove the comments and not only would I likely not notice, but I'd consider it an improvement. Their current comments harbor some of the most idiotic fury I've seen on the internet.

YouTube comments have actually improved a lot over the past couple of years. They have advanced from what was once a morass of non-sequitur racial slurs in vaguely parseable sentences to a predictable pattern of self-amused meme repetition.

Depends on which videos you are watching. YouTube comments are wonderful for the various communities. It's when videos attract the attention of hundreds of thousands of viewers they degrade.

As someone who was making videos, and involved with a YouTube community, they were wonderful. I equate it to Reddit's front page. If you only look at the front page, you aren't actually getting much value from it.

I think that's exactly what the op meant. In other words, changing the appearance of the website won't improve its content and, I agree with him, it definitely should improve.

Seriously? YouTube comments are some of the worst on the net. If I were YouTube management, I would leave the comment box, but only show non-submitter comments if someone actually left a comment or otherwise clicked on something to show comments.

As for the redesign: Pretty nice, but I miss the full-screen button.

That's like saying Reddit is a horrible cess pool with no redeeming quality based on the results of the front page alone. If you're only bothering with the videos without 100k+ views, of course it's going to be awful. It's the nature of the internet. However, there are many small communities on YouTube that do very well, and the comments there are just wonderful.

Do not judge a book merely by it's cover.

As usual, XKCD had a great idea for improving Youtube comments.

http://xkcd.com/481/

Try Comment Snob: http://www.chrisfinke.com/2011/03/18/youtube-comment-snob-is...

Also allows filtering of HN.

I actually wrote a custom stylesheet to hide the comments section. I wonder if this update means I have to change it :)

I really like it, but I'm surprised to not see my google+ notifications on top.

Me to, youtube must have the most active user time of any of the google sites, this must be a missed opportunity?

Not necessarily. YouTube is a separate social network, and while they might phase it out in favor of Google+ videos eventually, there's no rush. They can experiment more with an independent YouTube, in ways they never could with Google Video. They seem to have a good team working on it, who shouldn't be wasting their time dealing with the G+ people yet.

Same deal with Android. Some day it'll merge with Chrome, but right now, it's better to keep them apart and follow each vision through, to see where it leads.

The hospitality company I work for does this with properties. We have an inland 5-star inn & health spa with world-class fine dining, contemporary oceanfront hotel & fitness spa with seafood restaurant, riverside motor lodge & yacht marina, beachfront bed & breakfast, Italian restaurant, event center, skiing/hiking resort with gardens & fine dining, seasonal hotel that we only manage, and upstart chain of luxury hotels. This diversity allows us to experiment, and eventually scale up more broadly and efficiently.

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