YouTube Rolling Out Its Widely Hated New Web Redesign (9to5google.com) 61
Ben Schoon reports via 9to5Google: After first appearing earlier this year, YouTube once again appears to be rolling out a new redesign for its website that everyone hates. In mid-April, Google started testing a redesign to YouTube's website, which moved the title of the video, its description, and the comments to the side of the screen. In their place, video recommendations were moved directly underneath the video being watched with much larger thumbnails and titles. The change was widely hated by almost everyone who got it, but it didn't show up for all users. In the weeks to follow, YouTube reverted the redesign. Now, the YouTube redesign is back.
As spotted by many users, YouTube has started rolling out this redesign yet again. The new look has been appearing over the past few days, though it doesn't seem like it's a wide rollout. Rather, it appears to still be a test more than anything else. What does this second attempt mean? It's still unclear if YouTube intends to make this new look the default experience, but a second round of testing certainly implies more data is being gathered.
As spotted by many users, YouTube has started rolling out this redesign yet again. The new look has been appearing over the past few days, though it doesn't seem like it's a wide rollout. Rather, it appears to still be a test more than anything else. What does this second attempt mean? It's still unclear if YouTube intends to make this new look the default experience, but a second round of testing certainly implies more data is being gathered.
I hate it. (Score:2)
I extremely hate this new design because it puts all the unimportant crap in your face. It looks like one of those over-complicated MMORPG UI's. I hate it.
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Good, that will give some much-needed spice to your otherwise utterly boring life. You can wallow in self-righteous and useless rage for days. Maybe you'll even burn a few calories more than usual.
Imagine what the persons life is that typed this.
Two words... (Score:3)
New Pipe [newpipe.net]
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And how an app will help with a *website* redesign? NewPipe is a replacement for the YouTube app.
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And how an app will help with a *website* redesign? NewPipe is a replacement for the YouTube app.
Step 1: Stop using the poorly designed web site.
Step 2: Start using the excellently designed app.
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I think he meant FreeTube. Mac, Linux, Windows. Highly recommended although it's always a bit of an arms race with YouTube trying to break it. Been using FreeTube for years. I don't think I could watch any YouTube without it.
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Every example I have seen is a screenshot of a wide, maximized window. Why would anyone do that? What happens when a sane window width is used and in theater mode? "Theater" is supposed to make the video the width of the window (it is apparently not doing that now, at least at certain sizes, which would, indeed, make me angry).
Maybe it is just me, but I almost NEVER maximize anything- I am doing many things at once. Most well-designed sites will reconfigure based on available width (like the web was alw
Re: I hate it. (Score:2)
Every example I have seen is a screenshot of a wide, maximized window. Why would anyone do that?
I use a tiling window manager, so everything looks like that by default. What do you consider a sane window width for a video?
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Hmm, that is hard to pin down. "It depends" :) Right now I am using a 29" ultrawide monitor. I find the max to be around half the screen. But typically less, maybe 40% which is 12" to 13". I am "watching" a video right now, while typing this in another 12" or so window, and I still see my IM status and parts of other windows I can quickly click on.
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Sorry, I meant to say a 34" ultrawide monitor, not 29".
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I agree, enshittifcation continues apace, I would say, "please make it stop!", but who does one say it to?
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Bit of a tangential question but what's the term for when something that's already enshittified gets made a lot worse? I'm thinking in this case of MS taking Windows 11 and then adding that malware-style record-everything-that-happens-for-later-use capability they recently announced. Someone suggested explosivediarrhoeaification but that doesn't really capture it.
Perhaps Rundetaarnification [itsflush.com]? Or Bazalgettification [bbc.co.uk].
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I know it's a fun word to say, but this is not enshittification. This is simply bad UI pushed out by people who need to justify their continued employment. See also Windows 8, Slashdot Beta, and Google Chrome.
(Though, this *is* Google, so I wouldn't be surprised if they've got some bullshit metrics that shows the redesign somehow increases UsEr EnGaGeMeNt).
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You can't have thousands of people just sitting around, they have to DO SOMETHING. So they make hundreds of pointless, unnecessary changes. Then they have to fix all the problems caused by those changes. Then they have to fix all the problems caused by the fixes. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.
Re:I hate it. (Score:4, Insightful)
I extremely hate this new design because it puts all the unimportant crap in your face. It looks like one of those over-complicated MMORPG UI's. I hate it.
It's about pushing more content at you. It's not at all about letting you enjoy whatever you came to watch. NEED MOAR CLICKS! MOAR!
And in typical tech-corp fashion, "We need feedback on this redesign." Public response: "It sucks, blows, sucks again, pukes it up, then eats it." The redesign is "mulled over" for a bit, then put back out. Public response: "Still sucks." Corp: "It's better. Trust us."
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I use Enhancer for YouTube, I highly recommend it: https://chromewebstore.google.... [google.com]
Just let people choose (Score:5, Informative)
This looks like it doesn't do much besides move the comments and title information to the right (which makes sense in a certain way, I imagine a lot of browser zoom is used on youtube which can push that info off screen) but beyond that just give people an option to swap back and forth. Some people like dark mode, some people like black on white.
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The comments are in half the width, so you can only see half as many of them, while you get to see three times as much recommendation spam. And there is no more filtering by "recently uploaded" for those of us who don't want to see recommendations full of 2-year old crap we've already watched. I do not want to see that hour-long video again, youtube.
I wonder how high up the middle manager is that is insisting on pushing this crap.
Re:Just let people choose (Score:4)
On the other hand you can actually scroll the comments while the video is still in its original size format so I personally would honestly use them both which I think they should allow, just make a little thing in the corner that swaps the positions.
The removal of filtering is typical monetization crap though. Youtube has so much shit uploaded to it that they need way more filtering options, not less, and a better way to browse through searches, anything you search has thousands of results, sometimes the good shit is way down there.
I wonder ... (Score:2)
Re:I wonder ... (Score:4, Funny)
It is notiktok=1 now.
Re:I wonder ... (Score:5, Insightful)
If this allows you to hide those "shorts", I want that feature so much!
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Firefox to the rescue, with the Youtube-shorts block extension.
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If this allows you to hide those "shorts", I want that feature so much!
Block all Shorts content on YouTube with these uBlock Origin filters:
www.youtube.com##ytd-guide-renderer a.yt-simple-endpoint[title="Shorts"]:upward(ytd-guide-entry-renderer)
www.youtube.com##ytd-mini-guide-renderer a.yt-simple-endpoint[title="Shorts"]:upward(ytd-mini-guide-entry-renderer)
www.youtube.com##ytd-browse #dismissible ytd-rich-grid-slim-media[is-short]:upward(ytd-rich-section-renderer)
www.youtube.com##ytd-browse ytd-grid-video-renderer:has(span.ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[ari
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It's brilliant! (hear me out) (Score:2)
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Can you explain where / how to find this??
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Maybe this is what they're talking about?
Bye Bye, AI: How to turn off Google's annoying AI overviews and just get search results [tomshardware.com]
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YT sucks (Score:2, Insightful)
Their UI (and really Google's Angular by extension) is a pile of burning trash.
Whenever you leave a comment for one comment, it ends up somewhere else randomly on the page.
The async notification button does not work, and you have to reload the page to get new notifications.
They are constantly removing comments based on some random snowflake criteria.
I hate YT with a passion of a billion burning suns.
So tl;dr: Fuck Google.
You can thank make work (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think the communists are right about everything, but they are right about at least one thing: we do a *lot* more useless work than anyone wants to admit. John Oliver just finished a bit on YouTube/HBO where he points out that around 80% of our corn production only exists to line the pockets of the wealthy corps that bought up all the farm land.
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somewhere out there is a person who's job it is to redesign shit. If they don't do it they lose their job (usually in a country where doing so risks homelessness and/or starvation).
Exactly this came to mind when I saw the headline. Not just UX designers, there are also managers who create these projects to build their little empires in the company.
Instead of improving the existing UI to make things better for their users, they waste gobs of money and resources to reimplement what they already have, providing no value to either the company or their users. It is time for another new comer to disrupt the market.
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happens everywhere.
here, supermarkets have their "own brand" and everything starts working well, ... just when you start getting used to it again.
products are identifiable, colour coded and then suddenly, out of the blue - they change just everything
complete repackage, add new branding, different colours, new labelling, everything
and then
they change it once more - randomly
for no rational reason apart from getting their Branding Department "busy" working again.
Re:You can thank make work (Score:5, Informative)
MS Office (the ribbon) and Windows 8 come to mind too.
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I don't get the hate for the ribbon, it's one of the few actual improvements to UIs this century. It's much easier to find stuff visually, muscle memory still works, and you get a nice preview of the action. And the menus are still there if you want them.
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If it works for you great but for me I want most of the items i use to be on the one stable section, not having to change every time and having to remember all five(?) ribbons. Seems a lot more clicks and mouse movement to me and so I think it's terrible UI design. I've heard it was only developed so that Microsoft had unique patent-able interface so that Libreoffice etc would seem alien to most people. They could have had both interfaces and let people select what they find effective...
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MS Office....
You mean "Microsoft 365?" ;-) Yep, this crap extends to "rebranding" longstanding products, too, not just horrible UI refreshes.
Can deal with rebranding (Score:2)
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A social safety net that enables someone to quit their job and survive until they can get another suitable job is essential to allow free-market economic theory to apply to the supply of labour. Not doing so distorts the free market. It's unrealistic to expect people to self-insure to allow them to do that, and it's economically counterproductive anyway - that's a lot of cash locked up in immediate access accounts rather than being spent. Far better to insure at a national level.
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somewhere out there is a person who's job it is to redesign shit. If they don't do it they lose their job (usually in a country where doing so risks homelessness and/or starvation).
I don't think the communists are right about everything, but they are right about at least one thing: we do a *lot* more useless work than anyone wants to admit. John Oliver just finished a bit on YouTube/HBO where he points out that around 80% of our corn production only exists to line the pockets of the wealthy corps that bought up all the farm land.
You can also thank the design industry that insists on sniffing it's own shit.
They constantly redesign things to conform to the latest trends when they were perfectly functional before and the trend they're following makes it far worse to use. This is how we ended up with the abysmally bollocks concept of "user experience", designers had to explain that their fashions went contrary to HMI/HCI and made up their own pseudo-science to handwave it away. Fashion is something so terrible we have to change it t
The second-best solution (Score:2)
I would have preferred it if sites like Rumble and Bitchute made improvements to their UI design in order to attract more users, but I guess YouTube becoming more user-hostile could get the job done too.
This is why UI design needs to be contracted (Score:1)
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Well, if managers were actually reasonably good at their job, this is the way it would work. And it is the way it is done in other areas. Packaging, for example, is typically not designed in-house, because the volume is not there. No idea why the IT services industry is doing things stupidly.
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A bit of an emotional rant, but stuff like this is why I think companies shouldn't have big teams of UI designers waiting for something to do. If you have to set up a contract and pay an external company to do it for you, maybe you'll take pause and only do it when it's really necessary. Constant UI tweaks to software and websites is such a mess. In general, don't mess with what works and focus your resources on things that matter. It's okay to say something is good enough.
That applies to a lot of stuff. You do NOT want a bunch of programmers sitting around wishing they had something to use the latest JS framework on ...
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A bit of an emotional rant, but stuff like this is why I think companies shouldn't have big teams of UI designers waiting for something to do...
That applies to a lot of stuff. You do NOT want a bunch of programmers sitting around wishing they had something to use the latest JS framework on ...
Off topic, but this is how I feel about Congress.
like Google Maps (Score:3)
Maybe 20 years ago, Google had a perfectly useable maps app in browsers (this was probably before maps on phones were as big as they are now). Out of the blue one day, Google re-designed the app. I don't remember all the changes, but I think scattering the controls around the page (which now every app, even Microsoft Word, does), so you had to hunt all over to find them. At least that was my interpretation. But apparently it was other people's interpretation too: there was a web page (sort of like this page on /.) which went on for like 20 or 50 pages with comments. Every single comment, with one exception, was negative. And the exception was clearly sarcasm.
It came out somewhere in this mess that Google had done testing before rolling out the new interface, and the testers were also quite against the changes.
Did Google revert the maps app? Of course not! It was New, Refreshed, Better, and all the other UX word salad you can imagine. Finally someone from Google showed up on this page and said they would take into account the comments. After a few weeks (and lots more negative comments), Google made a few minor changes to the new interface, which was the extent of their taking these comments into account. The re-designed app was as awful as it had been.
Bottom line: Google doesn't listen to users; it listens to customers, and the customers are the businesses that place ads.
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(Replying to myself)
Not sure if this was the change I'm thinking of--if so, it was more recent than I remembered. But here is a page at /. that talks about the change:
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
AI is coming (Score:3)
I'm waiting for the next YouTube update when Google will use AI to create completely new videos to match your prior browsing history. It'll do this using generative AI that has scraped through all the uploaded content. It won't show you the videos others have uploaded (because it would then have to share the ad revenue) but instead it will create its own videos so that it can pocket all the money. I mean, that's what they're doing with Google search now... right?
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Make your window narrower! (Score:4, Informative)
I've noticed this change for the last couple of days, and I hate it too. It squeezes the comments into not-quite-enough cramped space.
However When I tried (in Firefox, BTW) making my window even narrower, at a certain point the comments disappear from the right side and leap to the bottom of the window, below all the recommendations. Although that's not what I'd call ideal, it does make the comments a lot easier for me to read and respond to.
Let me guess (Score:2)
artists (Score:2)
The artists at google need something to do.
TamperMonkey Plugin to the rescue (Score:3)
If your browser supports the TamperMonkey plugin you should be able to just add "userscripts" that will modify the UI to remove all the crap you don't want. Once Youtube forces this update there will likely be a bunch of shared scripts showing up in the repository that will negate the worst features of the site. Its easy to remove items from the UI and to even create your own buttons to add custom features to display content differently. If you use the YouTube App you are just screwed.
You are the product. Not the customer. (Score:2)
The sooner you realize that you are the product and not the customer you will understand why the enshittification continues.
Anytime something is free, you should be immediately aware you are being sold. This redesign is to help sell more of your clicks, not to make the site better for you.