14 DAY TRIAL // You may have noticed that YouTube is a little bit grayer all of a sudden, a lot grayer actually. In that case, you're one of the lucky (maybe) users with whom YouTube is running a new experiment, though there are a lot of people seeing the changes, so it may be an early roll out.
YouTube is updating the look of the site, but it is doing so rather superficially. The layout and the elements are almost the same, it's just that everything is now draped in shades of gray and that some links have become buttons.
A few elements have been moved slightly, but you probably won't notice the difference. All the buttons are bigger too and there's a new YouTube logo.
The new design does look a bit better, more modern, but the all the gray can be a bit overwhelming.
The site is softer on the eyes, clearly, but it does need a way to better separate the content from the background, something that wasn't necessary when everything was white.
While some of the links have been replaced by buttons, a good move, some have been replaced by black text, there's no way of knowing it's a link until you hover over it.
There are also some small bugs, here and there, indicating that this is indeed an early test.
It's unclear where YouTube is going with this, last summer it introduced a much more ambitious redesign, dubbed Cosmic Panda, which has been opt-in ever since.
While some of the colors and buttons match, the redesign that YouTube is now rolling out, at least to some people, is a lot more tame.
While Cosmic Panda is not perfect, it's a big step forward for YouTube and, with a few tweaks, should make for a much better update, in both the usability and looks departments.
This new redesign may be just a small stepping stone, while YouTube continues to work on Cosmic Panda.
