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See part one right here. WARNING: There are tables embedded into this entry. Run away now if you're allergic to such formatting.
One thing that I didn't mention yesterday, but which is still an amazingly-thoughtless move on YouTube's part, is that the new beta HTML5 player is either non-functional now (reverting back to Flash) or is only accessible in Chrome using the Feather beta. Details are sketchy with scattered posts in the help forum (scroll down for recent entries) and the blog entry I linked to yesterday.
From page one:
"greg400 said...
The entire HTML5 project was touted as a wanted upgrade, the product of market research and bothering to ask the community what they wanted to see most of all. (image backup) One would think that compatibility with the beta HTML5 player would be a fairly high priority for PR reasons if nothing else. Of course YouTube's own "launch and iterate" (their words) policy practically ensures disasters.
From: http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2010/01/release-notes-subscription-news-product.html
"Product Ideas for YouTube: A YouTube mantra is "launch and iterate." What this means is that we push out new features, see how the marketplace (you!) responds to them, and then make adjustments as necessary. None of this would be possible without your feedback, which we gather from how you use the site as well as from what you say in places like this blog, the forums, and Twitter. In order to help streamline the feedback-gathering process a bit (if that's possible!), we just launched a "Product Ideas" page where you can share your thoughts about how to make the site better and vote on ideas others have had..."
If the Beta Channel fiasco is any indication the feedback left on blog entries and the user help forums are, for the most part, completely ignored. Even giving a pretense of listening is deeply insulting to those of us who have spent our time and energy giving concise, thoughtful feedback about the failures of the system and having it ignored.
Speaking of the beta channels (not that they're in beta anymore but the name has stuck) it's been six months since all YouTube users were converted over. Let's see how the page and it's features look right now. It will hopefully give some insight into how the system operates and maintains itself.
That's a fitting example of how new features are maintained. I could give a comprehensive list but that would take all day. I'll just continue by pointing out other flaws in the channel page; flaws which are either bugs in the page encoding itself or bad design.
Now that I've covered the old I'll tackle the new. It's quite a list so it will have to wait until Part 3.
One thing that I didn't mention yesterday, but which is still an amazingly-thoughtless move on YouTube's part, is that the new beta HTML5 player is either non-functional now (reverting back to Flash) or is only accessible in Chrome using the Feather beta. Details are sketchy with scattered posts in the help forum (scroll down for recent entries) and the blog entry I linked to yesterday.
From page one:
"greg400 said...
- HTML5 doesn't even work anymore with this new terrible layout. To top it all of the CPU usage while watching videos is even higher now making matters worse that you can't use HTML5. Fix it.
The entire HTML5 project was touted as a wanted upgrade, the product of market research and bothering to ask the community what they wanted to see most of all. (image backup) One would think that compatibility with the beta HTML5 player would be a fairly high priority for PR reasons if nothing else. Of course YouTube's own "launch and iterate" (their words) policy practically ensures disasters.
From: http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2010/01/release-notes-subscription-news-product.html
"Product Ideas for YouTube: A YouTube mantra is "launch and iterate." What this means is that we push out new features, see how the marketplace (you!) responds to them, and then make adjustments as necessary. None of this would be possible without your feedback, which we gather from how you use the site as well as from what you say in places like this blog, the forums, and Twitter. In order to help streamline the feedback-gathering process a bit (if that's possible!), we just launched a "Product Ideas" page where you can share your thoughts about how to make the site better and vote on ideas others have had..."
If the Beta Channel fiasco is any indication the feedback left on blog entries and the user help forums are, for the most part, completely ignored. Even giving a pretense of listening is deeply insulting to those of us who have spent our time and energy giving concise, thoughtful feedback about the failures of the system and having it ignored.
Speaking of the beta channels (not that they're in beta anymore but the name has stuck) it's been six months since all YouTube users were converted over. Let's see how the page and it's features look right now. It will hopefully give some insight into how the system operates and maintains itself.
-----------------------------------------
| Here is the channel page as of this day. You can click the thumbnail to see the full-sized image for better detail. It is ... functional even if the background is almost entirely obscured by the background. There are transparency settings to make the background more visible but that makes it much harder to read anything on the page. One of the most important parts of the page is the channel description. It is, of course, so far below the unmovable video module at the top of the page that scrolling is required. |  |
 | Okay, so not bad and it's fairly legible as-is. However as the channel owner I periodically need to edit the description which requires navigating this tiny little box: That's it - 3 measly little lines for typing. What a joke! This would get an F in useability if it didn't have the minimum functionality necessary to edit the contents. |
That's a fitting example of how new features are maintained. I could give a comprehensive list but that would take all day. I'll just continue by pointing out other flaws in the channel page; flaws which are either bugs in the page encoding itself or bad design.
 | One bug concerns swapping between viewing modes on the channel page. The two buttons next to 'Arrange Playlists' are 'Switch to Player View' and 'Switch to Grid View.' It is possible to define which of these two will be the default display for the channel along with which of the four categories are loaded initially. I've clicked on the Playlist tab, while still in Player View, in order to start the chain of buggy events. |
| Now I've clicked 'Switch to Grid View' and ... nothing has happened. It is supposed to remove the video pane and swap to the full grid view of my playlists but this doesn't function correctly. |  |
 | With Grid View still activated I clicked on the Favorites tab. Now it changes to the proper grid view. |
| Clicking back to Playlists I find it too in grid view. Here we have YouTube's new philosophy it seems: obscure everything under as many clicks as possible in order to make the service slow and irritating! |  |
Now that I've covered the old I'll tackle the new. It's quite a list so it will have to wait until Part 3.
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