So YouTube have a potential new interface design in beta testing, and anyone can go and give it a go right now at: http://youtube.com/cosmicpanda (http://youtube.com/cosmicpanda). You can change to and from this design instantly and at will (on the same page), so there's no harm at giving it a go at least for a few minutes.
(http://i54.tinypic.com/2e3nb7p.png)
Full Size - http://i54.tinypic.com/2e3nb7p.png (http://i54.tinypic.com/2e3nb7p.png)
(http://i53.tinypic.com/2h37tl1.jpg)
Full Size - http://i53.tinypic.com/2h37tl1.jpg (http://i53.tinypic.com/2h37tl1.jpg)
Personally, I actually quite like it which is saying something as I almost always dislike interface updates of any kind. The only reason that I have doubts about this is that it's clearly being built with Google+ interaction in mind, but I suppose that was inevitable for all google services in the near future.
In addition, the channel pages are massively different (unrecognisable, in fact) and seem to be impossible to customize beyond the slither of background you can see (which doesn't actually work at the moment), making every channel look rather standard and boring. Luckily, there's no way YouTube would do that in a release version, given the extensive branding of partner pages (and indeed the image strip above the video on YouTube Partner videos) so I suspect that will be addressed if only to appeal to them. For now though, as you can see in the second picture above, the level of control you have over the design is much smaller.
What do you think?
http://youtube.com/cosmicpanda (http://youtube.com/cosmicpanda)
Yeah, after 13 years of existence, Google is finally considering visual design and aesthetic as an important part of their products. It is really nice, and the new Gmail looks excellent as well:
(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-y96KrBvSbuQ/Tgu5oLmVZyI/AAAAAAAAAKE/EFkwE1ZIic8/s1600/threadlist-large.png)
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DcsZ2POH9Is/Tgt2YS9GnII/AAAAAAAAAJ8/FcRuyRW4Y5w/conversation-large.png)