With a revamped search that doesn't break playback

Feb 26, 2010 10:19 GMT  ·  By

YouTube's big overhaul is beginning to shape up and some new components and features are now being tested, along with the major design changes already implemented in the open trial. Only a handful of new features are now being introduced, since the bulk of the updated design was already live, but, especially with the new playlist, YouTube's vision is now a lot clearer.

"The video page overhaul that's underway now is one of the biggest redesigns in YouTube history. It's been a month since we offered a sneak peek of the new look and functionality, and in that time we've been gathering your feedback, looking at data, and tweaking elements to ensure that the page is as clean and useful as it can be," Shiva Rajaraman, product manager at YouTube, wrote.

The biggest new feature is the revamped playlist interface. The playlist is now, more or less, a part of the video itself. As with all of elements in the new design, it can be expanded to the size of the video to see the next videos in line, but, by default, it just shows the first next one. The playlist also features an Autoplay switch and, when expanded, a next video button.

There's been some work under the hood as well and, if YouTube finds a good collection of videos to play next, the Autoplay feature will be enabled by default. This may not seem like much of a big deal, but it may mean that people end up spending more time on the site, which translates into more advertising money for YouTube.

Another new feature, the brand-new search results page, seems to be somewhat understated by YouTube, but is definitely one of the biggest and best changes that the new redesign will bring. Doing a search when viewing a video will not break playback. Instead, the video gets shoved to the left, while it's still playing, while the search results take the center stage. From here, you can pick the videos you'd want to see next and add them to the queue directly, without having to visit each video. When you're done, you can seamlessly go back to the video you were watching

Finally, the comments section is getting another tweak and video responses will now be integrated with the regular comments. None of the features or changes are final and YouTube is working on rounding out the rough edges and finding out what works and what doesn't from the user's perspective. One thing's for sure, by the time the redesign is done, we'll be looking at a completely new YouTube and, likely, a better one.

If you want to check out the revamped YouTube for yourself, you can find out how here.

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YouTube's upcoming playlist redesign
YouTube's revamped search
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