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YouTube has a new design on desktop and everyone is mad about it
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Jyaif 3y agoI imagine that this unnecessary redesign is partly caused by YouTube having an army of designers to keep busy, because alphabet is somehow not able to reallocate them somewhere they'd be useful.
- sandspar 3y ago> YouTube tests adding large, bright, and attention-grabbing thumbnails to the bottom of the player. It seems like some people are better able to handle visual noise. The idea of having autoplay videos on news websites is unthinkable to me, for example. I truly can't comprehend how anybody can stand having a flashing image in their peripheral vision while they're trying to consider a news story. Yet by the lack of public outcry it seems like people are at least fine with them. This YouTube thing seems similar: gaining engagement at the cost of eliminating focus and calm. People complain about environmental pollution but rarely complain about mental pollution.
- timw4mail 3y agoIf there's one thing I hate above all else its those stupid scrolling auto-playing videos on news sites! I'm trying to read text, the video pops on top, I scroll, it gets in the way again...aaughgh!
- BadHumans 3y agoI have so many Ublock Origin Rules for Youtube that I didn't notice a redesign. I can't imagine using Youtube just out of the box.
- ge96 3y agoSo crazy people just accept ads
- pupppet 3y agoI feel like YouTube is one of a few subscription services that deserves my money.
- wpm 3y agoI count my lucky stars I’m grandfathered in to the old Google Play Music + YouTube Red/Premium rate. I can’t imagine watching YouTube without it.
- SexxxySiren 3y agoThe rest of us will have to settle for imagining.
- zamadatix 3y agoSame. I used to pay for many (YouTube, Hulu, HBO, Amazon, Twitch, Paramount, Disney, Crunchyroll, Netflix, probably some I'm forgetting) but now I'm just down to YouTube. The rest all managed to do a worse job of conveniently delivering content I want in a convenient and easy to use way than pirating but YouTube has a good selection of content I want in the easiest way to find it, has no trouble delivering said content across all my devices (even 8k HDR in a web browser), lets me manually select the quality, and isn't outrageous for the content hours/month I get from it. YouTube TV is a bit of a joke though.
- metadat 3y ago
- Julesman 3y agoBorder radius. People are mad about border radius. :/
- drdeca 3y agoWhat? No, it's that the comments are now on the side, and that there's a bunch of video thumbnails where the comments used to be
- tasty_freeze 3y agoDid you read the article? Have you used youtube in the past couple of days? The change that has people upset isn't border radius. Rather than having the comments below the video and suggestions on the right, the suggested other videos are now below the video you are watching, and the comments are in the narrow slot on the right side of the screen, making it more difficult to read/scan comments. My guess is by giving suggested other videos the prime real estate, it will cause the user to watch more videos and thus more ads. Reading and creating comments doesn't directly generate revenue. This could backfire because people who enjoy reading/writing comments may come back less frequently or stay less time because they enjoy the site less. It feels less like an ad hoc community and more of what it really is: an ad delivery service. As someone who pays for ad-free youtube, I resent that not only do I still need to sit through or navigate through in-video ads, but now I find the experience of reading other people's comments and sharing my own more difficult.
- izacus 3y agoThis mirrors the mobile YouTube app which is atrocious for this same reason.
- Julesman 3y agoOnly below the 1000px breakpoint for tablets. Suggested videos probably keep people on the site/app longer than comments. They should have shown 5 videos with a "show more" drawer for the rest. But we know they care more about money than our happieness.
- nullhole 3y ago
- chrisdotbiz 3y agoRemember when people liked redesigns. Now the default is anger, then acceptance, then anger when it changes again.
- pessimizer 3y agoI remember when redesigns added features and ease of use, rather than removing features and adding whitespace. When these companies weren't secure monopolies, they felt they had to compete.
- janice1999 3y agoDon't forget adding user hostile dark patterns and optimising for attention stealing.
- zamadatix 3y agoWith how often people mention increased whitespace I feel like there should be a 5 inch gap between every element by now. Looking back at e.g. Windows 98 the screenshots seem small but back then most users had sub 96 DPI standard monitor setups (e.g. 1024x768 @ 15" would be a decent setup). When you correct for that the actual space used by buttons on e.g. YouTube today vs systems back then hasn't changed nearly as much as one would think and the gaps between desktop icons are pretty big too.
- Retric 3y agoLook at the menu bars in Office 97 it had up to ~25 buttons from left to right on your 1024x768 15” screen. That’s vastly more dense than you see today even adjusted for DPI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_97#/media/File:Office_97_on_Windows_NT_4.0.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_97#/media/Fil... Compare that will office a 15” widescreen laptop today.
- zamadatix 3y agoYou can't compare it with a 15" screen because that resolution would have been something like a 20-21 inch screen at typical DPI back then. Nonetheless, number of buttons left to right is a weird metric to pick considering even leaving DPI unadjusted doesn't leave a big difference in the actual number of separate horizontal clickable zones https://i.imgur.com/dETv7wY.png https://i.imgur.com/dETv7wY.png. Usually whitespace complaints on Ribbon focus on the extra vertical spacing e.g. section names like "Font" or "Alignment" taking a line of space that used to just be the next row of buttons. That I'll say is actually a little larger in the last 27 years, even after DPI adjustments, just, again, not nearly as much as one would expect for the number of times you hear about it - considering said Ribbon design has had the same minor spacing difference for 17 of those 27 years now.
- NayamAmarshe 3y agoI like the design. The comments are easily readable on the side and I can just ignore the noise at the bottom of the page. I can read the comments while watching the video, it's way better!
- paxys 3y agoEveryone is mad about every redesign. Give it a week and they'll get used to it.
- NayamAmarshe 3y agoRemoving dislikes was a huge deal but now nobody talks about it.
- tumult 3y agoWell, yeah? What are the users going to do about it? Complain forever even though it's not going to do anything? By the way, I still see it mentioned occasionally, both in YouTube videos themselves (often when someone is talking about YouTube) and amongst my friends. Both as a general complaint about the usability of the site being worse ("I had to wait 90 seconds to realize this video was a waste of time because downvotes are gone") and as an example of a service being able to do whatever it wants without regards to whether users like it or not.
- Ferret7446 3y agoI don't think they've "removed" dislikes for most people; we just use the Restore Dislikes extension (which coincidentally broke for the new layout).
- jinushaun 3y agoJust because people don’t talk about it doesn’t mean they like it. I’m still pissed about design changes from 10 years ago. What is the alternative?
- ac130kz 3y agoIn a week they are going to change the design two times, this A/B testing on their side in the last 3 months has been crazy.
- grugagag 3y agoYou can’t mute ads while reading comments, now it’s in your face. I noticed other sites that I used to mute mute volume while their ads were playing that if you scroll out of view or change the focus on the window or the tab the video/ad autopauses. Slowly it’s turning into the old TV garbage..
- Timwi 3y agoYou can't mute ads? On what browser? In Firefox Ctrl+M mutes the current tab and there's nothing YouTube can do about it.
- drdeca 3y agoI think they mean you can't, "mute the ad, and scroll down and read the comments (no longer seeing the ad, because one is scrolled down and reading the comments)", not because one can't mute the ad, but because scrolling down now, instead of showing the comments, shows a bunch of video recommendations.
- donkeydoug 3y agoI'm among those who hate it... it's worse than change for the sake of change & not being functional, it makes things less functional. The thumbnails under the video are annoying, but now to get more info on the video you need to click a few extra times to minimize your playlist & then click a few different 'more'... then it's squished in the stupid side column. Just frustrating wonky mechanics. The search results now are less useful too in a single column. If I wanted to use an app, I'd be on a phone or a tablet... forcing the app experience on desktop never works. I've reported it via 'send feedback' every day since it rolled out, lol.
- zamadatix 3y agoThat does sound like a pain. I don't inherently hate moving comments to the side, the narrowness actually makes some sense for that and it's a cleaner way to read comments along with the video playing, but things like moving video detail dropdowns from being below the video to hidden in the side as well are a bit much.
- donkeydoug 3y agoyeah, if it were 'just' the comments... go for it. but put the details back under & give a little buffer between the row of icons. it's not like the couldn't make whatever is under the video (comments or thumbnails) independently scrollable...
- wpm 3y agoEventually, suggested other videos will just take over the entire page. No videos, just links to other videos with pre roll ads.
- brink 3y agoAlright.
- zamadatix 3y agoOne thing I miss from the earlier days of the net is you used to be able to opt in to these kinds of things, not wait for your stuff to all A/B trial rollout. For YouTube there used to be Test Tube and now https://www.youtube.com/new https://www.youtube.com/new but new simply says "No features are available right now" all the time as they roll out new features. Reddit was the same with with the first redesign where you could opt in early then they started rolling out newer Reddit and it was in a similar fashion. I remember when Google started rolling out native dark mode A/B trials (now an option after the fact) I went hunting down the cookie for it so I could apply it evenly across my devices/browsers. So, long story short, anyone know how I can try out this new style for myself? I can't get it to kick in on any of my devices, even when not signed into my account.
- ink_13 3y agoSo the uBlock Origin rule to turn it off looks like this: youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS.kevlar_watch_grid, false) I imagine if you change that `false` to `true`, that should work.
- thereisnospork 3y agoI just did an arbitrary search on youtube for 'xcom' and I can see exactly four items, four on my full height window. If this is 'good design' I want no part of it.
- fancymcpoopoo 3y agoit could have been worse
- Timwi 3y ago> given the overwhelming feedback from users on Twitter, UI designers may need to go back to the drawing board with this one. Did they unfreeze this journalist from 1999 or something? Feedback from users has been irrelevant for decades already.
- maxglute 3y agoWonder why Youtube and more sites don't just monetize with better user centric designs for paid subscribers. A streamlined no fuss, user centric design + features like sorting subscriptions into playlists. Think they can frustrate a lot of conversions.
- renegat0x0 3y agoAs user of freetube and newpipe I couldnt care less. I wonder how is that possibile that third party clients are often better than first party from multibilion dollar corporations. Btw I know that my days of using third party clients are numbered.
- nbittich 3y ago1) release a new design 2) people hate it 3) people get use to it 4) goto 1)
- nojvek 3y agoI’m super grateful the web exists as open protocols and browsers with extensions. I can make rules to block things I don’t like. The app model is so backwards the user has no control other than what the author intended. I block reels, comments, and other click-bait garbage from YouTube. Didn’t notice the redesign.
- rascul 3y agoYouTube's garbage UI is literally why I use Invidious.
- Albert931 3y agoI don't get why social media (Specially big corpos) always fix things that aren't fixed
- byyll 3y agoSame old cycle. They will get used to it and YouTube will change it again.