YouTube Finally Embraces Google's Material Design, Puts Focus On Content (googleblog.com) 118
Google's Material Design specs are finally coming to the YouTube desktop site, the company said on Tuesday. The feature isn't rolling out to all just yet, but you can test drive it here. My initial impressions after playing with the new design: lots and lots of white space, but the optional dark theme looks pretty. Here's how the company describes the changes: The key principles of this new design are:
1. Simplicity: The only thing you should be concerned about is watching the content you love. The new design is clean and fresh, thanks to the removal of visuals that can distract from your browsing or watching experience. We're focused on making the content shine!
2. Consistency: The new design is aligned across Google platforms, including the YouTube mobile app, while still providing the features you know and love.
3. Beauty: We strive to combine beauty and purpose to create an effortless experience.
1. Simplicity: The only thing you should be concerned about is watching the content you love. The new design is clean and fresh, thanks to the removal of visuals that can distract from your browsing or watching experience. We're focused on making the content shine!
2. Consistency: The new design is aligned across Google platforms, including the YouTube mobile app, while still providing the features you know and love.
3. Beauty: We strive to combine beauty and purpose to create an effortless experience.
Make a system any fool can use... (Score:1, Insightful)
and only a fool will want to use it.
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Its good that you agree that sacrificing usability for design is a bad thing. Design should follow function not "look cool".
Re: Make a system any fool can use... (Score:2)
And what usability did they sacrifice? Simpler designs can increase usability if they use better psychological cues that make the exact steps needed to take your desired actions more obvious, and/or if they remove steps required to take the same action.
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I see just the video, and the YouTube search bar at top. Nothing else. I suspect this is a bug, but talk about minimalist controls and whitespace! Doesn't get simpler than this.
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I don't know what you're seeing, but to me it looks mostly the same as it always has, save for some different layouts for the controls and whatnot.
Re: Make a system any fool can use... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah. The new layout somewhat obfuscates functionality.
And the comment system is currently broken in this layout. It doesn't respect carriage returns.
So you wind up with "walloftext"
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Material design is not a flat UI in that it uses plenty of hints of depth, including overlapping objects, shadows, and gradients. It's also not necessarily minimalist, though it can be. An example of minimalism would be www.google.com. Youtube doesn't seem to embrace that concept that much, on the other hand, as any one screen seems to be filled with graphics and other objects.
Flat UI, on the other hand, is the crap that Microsoft does, and in order to distinguish UI objects in a flat UI, you have to use de
Two out of three (Score:3)
Well, simplicity I'll grant, and maybe consistency.
But a clean miss on beauty. Flat is ugly. Always has been. Always will be. No matter what's "trendy."
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Wow.
It's interesting that the children that have taken over Slashdot immediately make silly assumptions about the demographics and/or politics of other posters -- in all directions -- and none of it corresponds to reality. And they use these assumptions to pick fights.
I guess the adults have all left. Guess there's nothing left here. Thanks for the heads up.
Dark. Dark! DARK! (Score:2)
It appears to me that few people within Google have ever had to use their phones within a crowded theater. The material UI is too bright, and attracts too much attention.
A mobile UI must consider unobtrusiveness and subtlety. Material design is not so hot.
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"had to"?
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Just turn it off, asshole.
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Still no tool to block crappy uploaders so you now longer see them in search results or anywhere is. Google still annoying arseholes getting you to watch a commercial for a few seconds of crap content, until you realise you got sucked in by a bullshit title and cover photo, yeah, fuck you google.
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It's not a flat UI. The first giveaway that it isn't is at the very top of the page. The shadow in the search box and the gradient on the search icon both give hints of depth, which is unacceptable in flat UI.
https://news.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]
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What would be the point in "dissing on" something that's finished? By then it's too late to change it.
What's the deal with the scrollbar at the right? (Score:2)
Dark Theme (Score:2)
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How to Opt Out? (Score:4, Informative)
Google's Material Design specs are finally coming to the YouTube desktop site, the company said on Tuesday. The feature isn't rolling out to all just yet, but you can test drive it here.
"Test drive" implies it's temporary. How do I get decent Youtube back? The "test drive" link is http://youtube.com/new?optin=t... [youtube.com] but https://www.youtube.com/new?op... [youtube.com] doesn't reverse it.
Re:How to Opt Out? (Score:5, Informative)
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And also the added advantage of speaking your voice to BeauHD and other editors here. If you provide the link without optin=true, you get the actual OPTION to OPT IN.
I miss CmdrTaco.
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I miss CmdrTaco.
I don't, he sold us down river to these guys, that's how we got here!
Re:Usability (Score:4)
Usability? That's so 1990s.. Now it's all about aesthetics... ugly ass aesthetics.
Re:Usability (Score:5, Insightful)
Used to be websites had good desktop/laptop usability and poor phone/tablet usability. Now they have good phone/tablet usability and poor desktop/laptop usability.
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Am I the only one who thinks Usability should be a key design principle?
No, you aren't. They've ignored it here, and they screwed it up even worse in the similar Google Voice redesign. Addition of unnecessary whitespace inevitably means the user has to do more work to get the same (useful) information. Google Voice redesign decreased usability -- for no apparent reason -- in other ways as well, but that's probably off-topic here.
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or you know, your preferences are law and fact I guess that could be it too.
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Or, they didn't ignore it and what they came up with through user testing just happens to not be something you personally like.... or you know, your preferences are law and fact I guess that could be it too.
Oh, it is certainly possible that they found users who felt the new design was more aesthetically pleasing, and felt that that was more important than usability.
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but no, keep doubling down on the whole "Well I don't like it, therefore no one likes it!"
Source: I've done a lot of user testing, and in fact, the whole point of User Testing is that just because a developer/designer/product owner feels X is the best way of doing things, that may not be how the audience in general feels.
Glory of Consumption (vomit) (Score:2)
The only thing you should be concerned about is watching the content you love.
We have entered the era of the glorification of the consumer. All you should do is consume, and feel happy about it.
Not because they care about you. Because the consumer can be monetized.
Infinite scroll... Meh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Infinite scroll... Meh... (Score:4, Informative)
Yup. It prevents me from using CTRL-F to quickly find the text I'm looking for. It also prevents rapid scrolling with the scroll bar (or a fast mouse wheel).
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I use Home and End for scrolling all the time.
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I thought it didn't switch to the new version on my platform at first, and then I started to scroll. I knew I had the new one because it was suddenly super-laggy.
If this is the future, I'll be using a download addon more often. Download what I need, and run, no staying around to browse kittens anymore.
Didn't try the beta (Score:1)
So... do we get to see a video's rating in the search/related results like it used to be? Because removing that feature was one of the dumbest moves I've ever seen.
Example: If you tend to wander around in the *science* areas of youtube, having ratings visible is the easiest way to avoid entering the loony 'free-energy' areas.
Slow response, looks like ass (Score:3)
Got this for about 2 hours yesterday while I was editing some video and two things immediately struck me:
(This is all running Firefox with no-plugins on a Core i7 with 16 GB of memory)
1. Almost all the UI elements lagged, my suspicion is that content is loaded as needed. The comments section has been loading on demand for a while but now it seems to extend to other functions too now
2. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I beheld none; smaller lighter fonts, less contrast, burying things under modal dialogs (seriously why is a popup necessary for sharing the URL?)
Speaking of modal dialogs some of the notifications now appear under the video layer (making it impossible to interact with)
Google has a habit of testing crap like this on a subset of us and waiting for annoyed responses to fill up the Google Product Forums, I haven't checked to see what's there today but my guess is other users experienced similar behavior (unless I just got lucky in which case "go me")
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I hate it for a different reason: -
The inability to independently have major site elements independently scroll. I want to read comments while still having sight of playing video. The same applies to related videos on the right.
To me, grade this as a C+
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Now that's an enhancement
Keep the primary content front and centre while allowing you to interact with the rest of the site.
An interface for dumb people (Score:3)
More white space
= less words
= less content
= less thinking
= more scrolling until you actually find what you want.
I suppose Youtube's most profitable customers are unable to deal with a screen packed full of information, but I'd prefer not to waste my time scrolling until I find what I need.
FAD (Score:1)
The packaging changes a little and the older front end devs get force retired.
How is this an improvement for anyone? It's just seems like a hamster wheel.
Call me conservative but (Score:1)
I hate what they did with Android 7.
Icons with rounded corners (mkay, I can kinda disable it), but why, dear google, isn't it EASIER to quickly recognize icons when they have different shape?
The quick access bar has become barely readable with tiny icons drawn with thin line.
Oh, and I don't like the circle icons of "material" thing at all either.
Oh, and I seem to like the touchwiz by the known company.
Samsung should be paying me, I guess.
Way better (Score:2)
Way less bullshit, 100% better. I already forget what the old one looked like.
Innovate into obscurity (Score:4, Insightful)
Damn good times ahead folks!
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If I could browse it in lynx and have the content play through vlc, I would love it.
Suggested Video Pop-Ins? (Score:2)
It's crap (Score:3)
All I see is a page with a vertically scrolling frame on the left and window that's too wide on the right so the content is cropped on both sides. Are asshole designers just assuming everyone has a widescreen monitor?
FUCK. YOU.
It only needs to do one thing (Score:2)
The entire UI can be playing a video, done. The comments are going to be total trash anyways.
One thing missing from the description (Score:1)
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There used to be a checkbox to turn ads on and off on slashdot, but I think it was broken because I still never saw any.
People talk about ads all the time, but I haven't seen an ad since last time I watched PBS and there was 2 minutes of sponsor listings at the top of the hour.
NEW THING BAD!! (Score:3)
Therefore no one likes it!
Therefore they should have spent time doing something completely unrelated that those same people would have no idea how to implement!
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The issue I have is bit the UI, it's the recommendation system.
- It always suggests stuff from my subscriptions, stuff I skipped over. I skipped it for a reason.
- When I refresh it shows the same stuff, that I didn't watch because I'm not interested.
- No way to block channels.
- It gets very myopic and lacks variety.
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Otherwise how is is supposed to the know the different between a video you don't want to watch and a video you aren't going to watch right now?
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I use that a lot, but it doesn't really take the hint very well. I even give a reason every time.
All I see is a message about downloading Chrome (Score:2)
Using Palemoon here and all I see when I go to the new url is a page advertising Google Chrome and saying my browser isn't supported. Apparently I'm not allowed to even see the new youtube site, which suits me fine. Google Voice's material design makeover turned it into a steaming pile that's ridiculously slow and javascript heavy. Sigh. Good thing I never actually use the youtube web site. I do all my youtube viewing through mpv or youtube-dl. Such a better experience!
So this is that "dark mode" from two weeks ago (Score:2)
https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
I did that two weeks ago for the dark mode UI. I went to the opt-in link just now, and got "you're already seeing the new experience".
Changed UI again (Score:2)
They seem to be changing the UI every 2 weeks it seems like. Every time I go to YouTube, the location of the "add to Watch Later" button has changed. In less than one year it went from the top right corner to the bottom left corner, then to the bottom right corner, for about a week it was moved to a separate dropdown, then back to the bottom right corner but now you had to hover over it, now it's moved to the top right corner. Pretty much every button I use has to be hunted down again on every visit.
Come up
MD is the opposite of beauty (Score:2)
Only one thing I don't like. (Score:1)
The look and function is great. Nice and clean. Google gets full marks for this.
However, I really don't like the infinite page length. It just keeps scrolling and scrolling, and scrolling, and...