A YouTube Experiment Resizes the Player Dynamically

There's a new YouTube experiment that changes the video player's size, depending on the browser window's size. When resizing Chrome's window, YouTube switches from 360p to 480p and to 720p, while the player gets bigger.

Here's the same video in a larger player (480p) and an almost fullscreen player (720p) on a 1080p display:

Here's the regular YouTube interface. The screenshot shows a maximized Chrome window on a 1080p display, just like the previous screenshot:

YouTube's "stats for nerds" show the size of the player ("dimensions") and the video resolution:

The nice thing is that the player resizes automatically and you don't have to click a button. It's the power of responsive design. The YouTube player still has a "large player" button, but it only moves the right sidebar and centers the player.

How to try the new interface? If you use Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari or Internet Explorer 8+:

1. open youtube.com in a new tab

2. load your browser's developer console:

* Chrome or Opera 15+ - press Ctrl+Shift+J for Windows/Linux/ChromeOS or Command-Option-J for Mac

* Firefox - press Ctrl+Shift+K for Windows/Linux or Command-Option-K for Mac

* Internet Explorer 8+ - press F12 and select the "Console" tab

* Safari 6+ - if you haven't enabled the Develop menu, open Preferences from the Safari menu, go to the Advanced tab and check "Show Develop menu in menu bar". Close Preferences and then press Command-Option-C to show the console.

* Opera 12 - press Ctrl+Shift+I for Windows/Linux or Command-Option-I for Mac, then click "Console".

3. paste the following code which changes a YouTube cookie:

document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=E_OLzg3yeLw; path=/; domain=.youtube.com";window.location.reload();

4. press Enter and close the console.

To go back to the regular interface, use the same instructions, but replace the code from step 3 with this one:

document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=; path=/; domain=.youtube.com";window.location.reload();

{ Thanks, Maurice Wahba. }

Personalize Google's App Launcher

Last week, I mentioned that you can customize Google's app launcher, but the feature didn't work well: changes weren't saved. Now it works well and you can reorder the apps using drag and drop, but only if you're signed in to your Google Account. You can also add new shortcuts: go to Google Keep, Google Sites, Play Music, Webmaster Central, Google Voice, Google Patents, Google Groups, click the app launcher icon and then click "Add a shortcut".

There's no way to remove shortcuts, but you can always drag them to the second page, so they're out of the way.

Here are the default apps in the US:

I also found a strange issue: some of the shortcuts are greyed out and nothing happens when you click them. It may have something to do with using the US interface outside the US.

Rearrange Apps in Google's Navigation Menu

Google's navigation menu now lets you rearrange apps using drag and drop. You can now personalize the app launcher, just like you can drag and drop apps in Chrome's app launcher. You can also add other Google services.

You can drag apps from the second page of the launcher to the first one, drag apps from the first page of the launcher to the second one, increase or decrease the number of apps from the first page.

Here's an example:

And another one:

You can even drag all the apps to the second page:

Google now lets you add other Google services: just visit Google Keep, Google Sites, Google Groups, Google Play Music, Webmaster Tools, Patent Search, Google Voice, click the launcher icon and add shortcuts for those services.

For some reason, the changes aren't preserved. It's probably a bug.

Rounded Google+ Notification Badge

After making profile pictures from the navigation bar round, Google+ tweaked the badge number displayed next to the bell icon. The counter is now in a red circle like in iOS, instead of a red square.

Here's a similar screenshot from July 2013:

As you can see there are many subtle changes: there's a "+" next to the name, the bell icon has a different color, the "share" button is smaller, the profile picture is circular, borders and the arrow icon are missing.

{ via Moritz }

Google's Truncated Titles

The Google Search experiment that increased titles and removed underlines from links was quickly added to the regular search interface last week. Now it's no longer an experiment.

While I don't miss underlines, making titles bigger removes a few words from long titles and that's not a good thing. Here are some search results for [google maps api]:

* "Google Street View hack turns your city into a post-apocalypt..." (full title: "Google Street View hack turns your city into a post-apocalyptic jungle")

* "Google puts a limit on free Google Maps API: over 25,000 da..." (full title: "Google puts a limit on free Google Maps API: over 25,000 daily and you pay")

As you can see from these examples, only a few words are removed, but the truncated titles are difficult to understand.

Here's a side-by-side comparison between the new layout and the old one:

From what I know, Google has never displayed a few characters from a word in search results titles. Now it has to do this.

Scanning a list of search results has turned into a game: "guess the title". "Department of Computer S..."? It must be "science". "Combinatorial optimization problems in wireless switch de..."? Hard to say.

A Google Experiment Makes Page Titles Bigger

Google tests a new search interface for desktop that removes underlines from links and increases text size for page titles.

Here's a screenshot that shows both the experimental UI for search results and the standard interface:

{ Thanks, Matt Cleinman. }