Thoughts About Youtube's New Layout

<sarcasm> Hey, lookie there! Youtube is rolling out a new layout to their site! </sarcasm>

But anyway, Youtube recently showed off the new theme of their site. Although it's not public yet, you can easily get the theme by following the instructions here (it only takes 30 seconds).

However, I advise against doing such things as these.

Open that image in a new tab and read along for my critique. Or you can just read along and trust that I know what I'm talking about.

Anyway, the critiques. One thing is we have another case of "Whitespace". Maybe their design isn't completely finished yet, but this is a recurring theme with Google. Look at this screenshot I just took from my Google+ homepage:

Google seems to love ugly whitespace on widescreen monitors (which everyone has these days). If they could just put in some code to center the video, description, and comments for the particular screen it was on, then that would be fantastic.

Another issue is that this redesign looks like the Youtube from before the 2011 redesign. The background is white and I don't like it. Well, more specifically, the greyish matte color of the other design was a lot better. It was easier on the eyes and let me focus more on the video than the white color did, not to mention it was a lot sexier. I don't know why Youtube changed this; it seemed so much better. It baffles me.

Another gripe I have is the comments. The comments used to be so much more sexy (well, that's probably due to the grey color) and compact. Before, the comments were the Youtube account holder's name, the comment, and when you'd hover over a comment, it would give you the Like/Dislike and Reply feature. Now, you get the uneccesary picture of the Youtuber (seriously, who cares about pictures when you're just reading the comments?) and the Reply and Like/Dislike buttons are static. This just makes the comments less functional and uglier in my opinion.

Because of all the white that Youtube threw on us, the player looks out of place. The black player doesn't really go with the whiteness of the whole background. If you inverted the color of the player, or better yet, made it the grey that I liked, it would blend better with its surroundings.

However, the bars on the left and top of the page are nice. The left bar is collapsable and compact and they're nice grey color. They're not amazing in terms of design, but they're nice.

Final Thoughts: Overall, I'm sorry Youtube but I don't like it. I've seen many Youtube refreshes (as well as refreshes of things from Google in general) and I've never seen one that I didn't really like until now. This seems like a step backward from where it should be going and I hope that this is just a prototype and not the final thing. It's lack of sexiness, functionality, and common sense leaves me confused and disappointed.

- Aidan