That's always the case.
I mean, they could stop messing with things that aren't broken for once...
Eh, it’s a fine line tbh. Not that I enjoy defending Google.
You get both “this UI hasn’t changed in a decade” and “this UI is perfect never change it” in relatively equal amounts. The rest honestly don’t care either way.
Imagine if they actually brought back "options" and let you choose between changes rather than force them on you.
That would turn into spaghetti code and unmaintainable tech debt really fast. Now every time you make a change you have to make sure it doesn't break previous stylesheets, or you need to run different versions of the same codebase for each stylesheet that will need updating for security vulnerabilities and stakeholder whims.
Because the seek bar overlaps the video as it is playing, and because the drag button is huge whenever you mouseover it, it is much harder to locate chapter marker visually.
Change for the sake of change is not good.
The removal of the black gradient at the bottom is a plus.
Putting the controls in their own grey capsules so they still standout is a plus.
The moving of the volume button to the right is a negative.
I dont like change just for changes sake, but in fairness some of this is a good idea and a welcome design shift. I just hopebthey move the volume button back as having on the left with the main controls is pretty widespread and common design.
A rare, levelheaded take.
The changes are fine. Nothing earth shattering, nothing wildly or fundamentally broken, just a visual update to better fit with Google’s new material design language.
The articles mentions that scroll and the arrow keys no longer adjust volume. Nothing could be earth shattering because it's video streaming software, but it does seem to come with some functionality loss at this stage.
On top od that it takes more vertical space so more % of the video is covered by controls that are not that transparent so the whole control block is covering it in full comparing to previous where only the actual icons and text did cover the video with the gradient to help make it visible if video is the same color.
But one way or another I avoid yt so it doesnt really affect me.
I only think they should have moved the controls outside of the video, at least on desktop
It's been a few years sine youtube stopped making changes designed for desktop. These days they work with a "Made for tablet, compatible for desktop" mindset.
I'm not defending google here, but I'm sure a decent chunk of the complaints are just bitching because "change bad!"
I haven't seen the change yet and I'm sure there are legitimate complaints as well, but us online folk tend to detest even the smallest changes and go a bit overboard in our complaining sometimes.
"you can no longer hover on the volume slider and scroll or even use the up/down keys to adjust the audio"
That, for sure, is one of the most garbage changes imaginable.
Someone conciously had to go out of their way to remove functionality there.
Maybe there's a reason for it, but I still think it's a shit change.
Speaking as a software dev, that’s probably not the case. They probably started completely from scratch and so the inclusion of features depends on reimplementing them on the new platform. It could be as simple as not being ready yet or maybe stats show them that so few people use the feature that they don’t find it worth reimplementing it.
The article has pics if you want a preview
Is it really a decade old? Feels like they redesign it every three years.
Redesigning familiar UIs is a great way to give elderly, neurodivergent, and/or computer illiterate people a hard time.
The adverts on youtube have become so unbearable so no amount of UI change will convince me to use it as intended. If there's a long video I want to watch, I download the video first and watch it using VLC
The change is so they can now implement the 38 hour ad before every 30 second video. And then another 21 hour ad every 7 seconds while watching the video. The ad can’t be stopped, skipped or muted and automatically plays full screen on all your devices and monitors at the same time.
The huge Thumb nails on the home page are ridiculous. Makes it harder to find content I want to watch. If you zoom out it will only show 4 horizontal thumbnails, Max.
Agreed. It feels like a UI designed for little children or senior citizens.
I prefer the old one, but it's really not much of a difference. New one looks a bit cheaper, like something you'd see on piracy sites or something.
Also just realised Jellyfin basically has the old YouTube design. Don't know if YT was first with it, but if so it was pretty influential, think it's quite common in many players.
It looks exactly the same just a little different skin
Oh man, I remember when this was the new one
Looks the same to me on a PC. Up/down arrows still adjust the volume. Scroll wheel on my mouse scrolls the entire screen as always. Do the changes only affect touchscreen devices?
ugh, this is so much worse. takes up more space, is more distracting.
I want to be able to skip around in videos and not have the screen covered by ugly pill buttons
YouTube can do whatever they want, you think that give a damn about the people? Noooopppppeeeee
And you think people will do anything more than just bitch about it? Noooopppppeeeee
What a great day to be a grayjay user lol
In their defense, I'm not sure I have ever seen a major UI redesign of some piece of software that the users of that software actually liked, at least at first. Inertia and muscle memory are powerful things.
yay browser plugins
It looks like the status bars window manager users tend to customize
I'm indifferent to it. The jarring years were 2006 up to about 2015. It would shift between better and worse until it reached the point where the front page was all clickbait/ragebait/advertisements and you had to rely on your own subscriptions page. Every social media site should default to subscribed/followed stuff for logged in users but got to selll paid to promote content
Youtube: ......
Everyone else: .......
Youtube: LETS FUCK SHIT UP!!!
The old and the new UI still auto hides controls and the seekbar and timestamp. I hate that it hides those! Besides remember when the seekbar showed where the Ads were in marking those sections in yellow? Good times.
This ain't a problem with PipePipe
Apart from the key bind loss, which would be asinine to remove permanently, this looks like a straight upgrade. Better readability and more in line with the rest of the UI design.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
