14 DAY TRIAL // Last month, YouTube debuted the Cosmic Panda experiment, a massive redesign of the site, the biggest in its history, which borrows some elements from the common design direction at Google.
One distinctive feature of the new design is the new black player and Google is now rolling out an embedded version of it.
"Coming up on August 10, all embeds will automatically be updated to the new 'dark player'," YouTube announced last week.
The new black embedded YouTube player is identical to the one in the Cosmic Panda experiment and looks rather slick.
While it's similar to the older and still used embedded YouTube player, it does look more refined and polished.
Considering that the current player looks rather snazzy itself and that YouTube is hardly a small site which can't afford a great designer, the fact that there is a noticeable difference in the quality of the new design speaks volume.
Functionality wise, there's nothing new about the black YouTube player, it's just the looks that changed.
The buttons are the same, the player controls, the play/pause button and the volume slider are on the left, and the buttons for Watch Later, open in YouTube tab and Full Screen are on the right.
There are four color variations of the new embedded YouTube player, there is the default black player with a red progress bar, a black player with a white progress bar as well as the same to version with a white background.
You can change the default option for embeds, only the new <iframe> ones by adding something along the lines of "theme=light&color=red" to the end of the YouTube URL in the 'src' field.
"We also realize that some embedders would prefer something more mild than our use of red, so we’re happy to introduce a "desaturated" color option without any bright colors at all," YouTube explained the choices.
