The Next YouTube Update – New Video Page

Posted by: Sean | Posted on: March 12th, 2010 | 2 Comments

In a short while YouTube will be updating the video section of their website. At first when I saw it I was a bit taken back, it is very simple and a lot less cluttered than it is currently. YouTube is now full of ajax!

The image above has the old version on the left and the new version on the right. The main differences are that the video is much more prominent, the video also now has a grey background behind it which makes you focus more on the video.

A big notable difference with this new update is that the old 5 star rating system is now gone, instead it has been replaced with two thumbs, thumbs up for "I like this", thumbs down for "I dislike this". Originally when you thumbed up a video it would automatically add it to your favourites, I and most other people did not like this, because usually when you watch a video online you would rate it but not favourite it, with the auto favourite method your favourites box would be too overcrowded with videos you do not "love"! Now they have rectified this and you have to separately rate and favourite a video :D.

Another nice feature on the new video page is a auto-play feature, there used to be a version of the auto-play feature in playlists in the old version of the video page but it was a little less obvious. Now however it is located on the bottom right of the video box. If you are watching a playlist, the next video will start immediately after the current one playing ends. The auto-play also works for all your favourites and your subscriptions. I like how it works with subscriptions because when you have multiple new videos you save time by not having to click back all the time!

And finally they have added a great feature. If you are currently watching a video and you want to browse for more, you can now keep watching the video while searching at the same time! Just type something into the search box, hit enter, and the video you are watching just slides to the left and becomes smaller and you can watch the video while you search! From the results that are displayed you can add as many videos as you want to a queue and then go back to the video page and the queued videos will play after the current one! You can also save the queue (as a playlist) to watch back later.

So my impression on it is that it is a great change for YouTube, it shows that they still have interest, and this new improvement will improve page load speed and most likely save YouTube some extra bandwidth! Once YouTube release their new HTML 5 video player which they are working on, YouTube will be extremely fast, videos load instantly in the new HTML 5 Player!

If you want to try out the new YouTube video page, Click Here.