The heck is this title?
YouTube says goodbye to decade-old video player UI, but users hate the new design
Meanwhile, the article itself just cites a few tiny aesthetic changes and like four random Reddit comments. Doesn’t seem like they even tried it themself… That’s justifications for 460 upvotes?
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.
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.
neuroatypical
I propose we start calling normies “neuroadivergent.”
haha. My bad, sorry. I think people used to say this but the language changed. I’ll fix it.
I hate to be that guy, but it’s neurodivergent. :) neurodiverse is another thing. Everyone is diverse but not everyone is divergent.
Ah! Thank you again! Honestly in my mind I was thinking that “neurodiverse” didn’t make any sense. Okay now I’m interested to see what the next ‘that guy’ is going to say :)
I speak with authority, but I learnt about it this very day. :)
You’re right, I never knew there was a difference. Fixed!
deleted by creator
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?
Same. Money says that people bitching are on phones. Fair enough I guess, but I’m not fucking around watching video on a palm screen. I’ll wait till I get home and have a 40" TV to view.
Things like this roll out to more people over time. It’s clearly desktop, both from the screenshots and the fact people are complaining they can’t use the scroll wheel to change the volume while hovering over the volume button. That’s a desktop thing.
Yes, I don’t get how watching videos on tiny screens is so popular. Seems like self-imposed misery.
It’s all relative. If i sit a few meters away from a 50 inch screen, then it’s roughly the same size as a phone screen held 30cm from my face. It’s just a matter of perspective.
The level of detail i can see is the same. My fancy earbuds make the sound quality essentially the same if not better.
The only real difference is i have to hold the phone to watch it.
Well, most people… not me, I have a folding phone with a stand, so for me, i can comfortably put the phone on a table on the stand that’s built into the case and watch from there. Works just fine.
I’d have to hold me phone so close to my face I can’t comfortably focus on it to match the relative size of my computer monitor, and it’s not a big monitor. Why would I settle for the jumbotron from the cheap seats when I can sit front row?
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.
exactly one comes to mind: blender
People hate two things the most: things changing and things staying the same.
Hence the reason why you make small gradual improvements over a long time. YT has been around a long time, and Google should know better.
Well the old Google development company would know better, the new Google advertising agency doesn’t give a shit
How is that in their defense?? You reveal them for the gross imcompetents that, and almost all developpers are.
If foreign strangers impose changes on my motor cortex then my prescription is to give them flamethrower enemas.
Stop it, just stop it! Or else!
LOL, nailed it.
I’m still bitter about browsers removing backspace for previous page. How was that hard to maintain?!
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1336330
Is there a way to restore backspace button function in the newest version of Firefox, so when pressing it the previous page opened?
This function was very helpful for me!
To prevent user data loss when filling out forms, we’ve disabled the Backspace key as a navigation shortcut for the back navigation button. To re-enable the Backspace keyboard shortcut, you can change the about:config preference browser.backspace_action to 0. You can also use the recommended Alt + Left arrow (Command + Left arrow on Mac) shortcut instead.
NICE! Now I’ve lost my muscle memory for that key, but I’m back (heh) baby!
The better UX could have been making this a regular option, and (by default) showing a warning dialogue if using backspace to navigate would clear out a form.
Haven’t done much web UI, but I’m guessing that are too many way to skin the “form” cat to account for.
In any case, first time I’ve read any reasoning on removing it. Chrome killed it long ago and I was using an extension to re-enable it. Probably could have done as I just did in Firefox, fiddle with the config.
Form and input elements are a very standard thing, and while you can certainly do crazy stuff with it, even a simple check if you typed into an input/textarea, or changed a select without submitting the form element, should be sufficient.
I guess the problem might be detecting the submission (because oftentimes there’s custom logic for that) but maybe better just display the warning than lose data. Worst case you’ll just ignore it, best case the devs fix it so that it doesn’t show up when it shouldn’t.
I understand the reasoning, but I really wish Firefox had configurable keyboard shortcuts.
heck, everything should have configurable shortcuts. It’s an accessibility feature with an obvious curb cut effect.
Please add your voice to these discussions
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/hotkeys-yes-please/m-p/86441/
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/customizable-hotkeys/idc-p/85695/
How very luddite of you
luddites were not anti progress, they were pro workers rights. today’s usage of the word is insulting to their work.
Thank you, yes!
It’s like the same but with a background color that has rounded corners.
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.
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.
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
My ad blocker stops all the ads except for the sponsorships that are in the video… Y’all watching YouTube without blockers?
Try adding SponsorBlock.
Sponsorblock usually helps with that.
It’s more difficult to block ads if you’re casting to a television so downloading is better for my use case
Use smart tube for TV
No it’s not; install an APK of SmartTube beta
Chrome user? No ad blocker?
That’s always the case.
That's *always* the case.Maybe there’s a reason for that. The word “enshitification” doesn’t exist in a void.
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.
Not really. At least if you plan to have it customizable in the first place.
Then it becomes harder to change when you want to add in new features still. There needs to be a fine balance between giving options and having a clean single-option code, and offering 2 different video players is not it (it sounds like some shortcuts got broken so it’s not just a CSS that got applied)
You are right. I forgot we were talking about a web front end, and I was think of an application. I take it back.
I am just so used to watching you tube with applications on desktop and mobile I forgot we were talking about you tubes new web front end.
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.
I’m sure someone will release an addon or some custom CSS to fix it.
Which shouldn’t be needed
It’s already needed for the current UI. ImproveYoutube is a godsend.
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
At least it’s not covered by a dark shade now. 👍 I’m initially for this change. Good to see an iteration. Let’s see how it goes.
At least it’s not covered by a dark shade now.
Why does that matter? It looked fine.
It was literally my favorite design of online video player, and I remember enabling it back in the day when it was still an experimental feature.
I don’t like that parts of the video are covered unnecessarily by shit.
For example, those damn end-video cards that cover the video before it’s even finished, and your can’t disable them and you can’t dismiss them, so whatever was at the end of the video is just unavailable except for the sound.
Yeah. It also looks like the buttons might light up on hover, but they already basically do that so that’s only a very small plus. I too remember being annoyed about not seeing content behind the shade properly.
People literally always hate changes to ui. It’s to the point that this article could have been written and just archived somewhere to pull out whenever something changes.
When a developpers changes an UI without written consent of every single user, he should be treated like a witch at Salem
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
I don’t know why anyone would willingly default to the algorithm, I set my bookmark direct to the subscription page.
Is it changed for get the transcript?
as always with corporate shit
