Leonardo da Vinci once said that "simplicity is the height of sophistication," and YouTube seems to be taking this message to heart. The redesigned YouTube is clean, simple and functional. In addition to looking nice and fresh, it also has vastly improved the playlist function and other key features.
In many ways, the new YouTube is a nod to the growing mobile web design ethos of simplicity and balance. It embraces the cards concept behind Google Now and centers the layout, so that the website looks good on any screen. In a company blog post written to announce the redesign, the new layout is described as "feeling similar to the mobile apps you're spending almost half your YouTube time with." Continuity between apps and websites is a growing trend and there is a reason for that: Mobile app layouts often look better that web page layouts.
Nobody likes a cluttered screen, especially when the device in their hands is only 5-inches diagonally or less.
When you open the new YouTube website, it offers you viewing recommendation near the center of the screen and shows you a series of tabs on the left-hand side. Those tabs include "My Subscriptions," "My Channels" and all the other categories that were there before, but now if you click on the little drop down menu box next to the YouTube logo, the tabs disappear. YouTube's viewing suggestions slide gracefully to the middle of the screen and your view is completely unencumbered.
When you click on a video to watch, the video takes center stage, there is nothing on the left-hand side of your screen and the right-hand side just has the typical video recommendations listed in a very clean fashion. Below are the video description and comments, which now show up with the commentator's Google+ profile picture. It's all very simple and neat.
In addition to beautifying YouTube, the company took care to improve the website's functionality for users. A better playlist function is perhaps the most important and interesting one. YouTube now features playlists that you have made in the side bar, makes it easier to access playlists compiled by others and facilitates the creation of playlists for video posting users.
"The way you watch YouTube keeps changing, so we're making a few tweaks to YouTube to keep up with you," YouTube Web Developer Yining Zhao wrote in a company blog post on Thursday. The recent changes should "make it easier to find what you want to watch on YouTube and collect playlists to watch again and again."
The new YouTube is already visible to many viewers, but the roll out has only just begun. It's the dawning of a new era for YouTube and so far, it's a very bright one.
