YouTube Swaps Old and Good Player for New and Worse One

You must be very familiar with the old style YouTube player and by now you must have come to terms with it and perhaps even love it (not the marriage type of love, let's get things straight). It was like an old dear friend you knew you could rely on to be there and support you whenever you needed him to do something. Yeah, that's all going to change for you.

You might have noticed by now that it doesn't look the same but you couldn't quite put a finger on what was wrong with it. It's the red bar! It used to indicate the buffer status and it was the mark of brilliance in its intention. A typical combination of hitting play and then pause would have been enough for it to start unwinding and ultimately let you know when the video was fully buffered. Not any more. The people at YouTube decided that it was all too easy and said that, from now on, the buffering shall be marked in dark gray, to differentiate it from the grey of the whole interface I suppose. Grey vs Grey? It sounds like a movie about a lawsuit, not like a viable color overlapping that is supposed to help you understand things better.

I must have strayed from the red line motif a little. Well now the red line indicates the current position in the video. Hey, isn't that exactly what the little gray bevel circle does? I like redundancies, especially when they interfere with my viewing a clip experience. Then I just fall in love with them until something pops, which is usually me, since the player doesn't have that characteristic or option.

If you aren't the obsessive-compulsive type of character that would watch the status bar as it's buffering I suggest you go through your old Renaissance albums and learn to differentiate and enunciate "light gray" and "dim gray". While you're at it you might also try with "light slate gray" and "dark slate gray" because you never know what they'll be thinking of next.