YouTube Re-design in Beta
Today I spotted a link on YouTube to "Try out the NEW (beta) version of this page!". Clicking through, I saw a fresh design for their video pages - not a huge re-design, but there were some subtle improvements. The main navigation and theme is largely the same, but links have been re-ordered, usability had been improved, and there is a splash of Ajax in the beta.
The first noticeable change is in the right sidebar, which has been cleaned up and segmented better. Here is the old version:
And here is the new beta sidebar:
The new version has specific sections for 'Related Videos' and 'Promoted Videos' (a.k.a. popular ones). The 'Director' videos have been cut, perhaps reflecting that popular videos aren't necessarily professionally made by a director. At first glance it seems odd to cut the 'More from this user' section, but I think this has been integrated into 'Related Videos' (as with 'Playlists'). So YouTube has reduced the number of clickable options, by consolidating them into one section. Also the embed code has been moved to below the video (see below).
Note the added use of Ajax, in the 'more info/less info' toggle:
The other design changes are seen directly below the video. Here is the old version:
And here is the new version:
Once again, the links appear to have been consolidated and made bolder (with less words). The main change though is that the embed options have been added directly below the video - in the old version the embed options are in the sidebar.
Conclusion
So this isn't a major re-design, mostly small improvements to the usability and a touch of Ajax. YouTube could do a lot more - e.g. the comments could be threaded and other social networking features added. But still it is good to see YouTube try out new design improvements.
Note that I tried to check the YouTube blog for more details, but as of writing it is experiencing a 500 Internal Server Error. But not to worry, "a team of highly trained monkeys has been dispatched to deal with this situation" according to the error message :-)
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I think this a nice improvement from the You Tube team. It certainly makes the various options that one has more immediately obvious, which is always a good thing :)
With the volume of traffic these fella's get- small changes like this will be noticeable immediately from an analytical perspective....
Posted by: Half-Geek | July 23, 2007 5:02 PM
Strange, I already use those features for a long time, maybe two months. In fact, in some cases, YouTube just presents me the new layout (without any recurring options). I though everyone was getting the same.
Posted by: Googlaxy | July 23, 2007 5:15 PM
I've also seen the link to the new layout for a few weeks; since before the main page redesign I believe.
Posted by: Dan Grossman | July 23, 2007 5:55 PM
Same here.
I've seen that view for the last two months...
Posted by: Eric Willis | July 23, 2007 6:50 PM
The worst aspect of the redesign in my opinion is the limited space for video titles in the related and promoted videos sections. This sucks. It means that you often get what appears to be the same title over and over again because it's contracted. You don't even get the expanded title as a tooltip when you rollover it - ouch!
Posted by: Grant R | July 23, 2007 6:54 PM
You must be a really busy man Richard, that link has been there for quite some time now.
Posted by: John Ngo | July 23, 2007 7:40 PM
Yeah, this is relatively really, really old news.
Posted by: huh? | July 23, 2007 7:59 PM
Hmmmm, I guess I never noticed it before :-) Oh well, I enjoyed looking into it.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | July 23, 2007 9:18 PM
Are you sure you're not confusing Ajax with an expanding layer? Seems really inefficient if they really are using Ajax just to go pick up 3 lines of text and a couple of URLs. I'd expect the content to be on the page during initial load and then just hidden away with CSS.
Posted by: Rahul | July 24, 2007 12:35 AM
I don't think I've seen that link (or the new page) until today either. Not that I am a daily YouTube user (I probably watch a YouTube video every day, but not necessarily on the site itself), but perhaps YouTube was doing a controlled rollout so not everyone got the new page at once.
Posted by: Josh Catone | July 24, 2007 1:40 AM