Since the acquisition of YouTube back in November 2006, in true Google fashion, their engineers have continued to innovatively develop and push the product even further forward.
As a result, it’s kept the product at the forefront of all things video, which is something all Web Designers should be paying attention too.
In a similar fashion to the experimental playground that is Google Labs, YouTube showcase their own possibly upcoming new features through a platform called YouTube TestTube.
We’ve took a look at some of the best YouTube TestTube Experiments that impressed us recently as web designers and highlighted them just below.
HTML5 Video Player
We’ve spoke a lot about the importance of the upcoming HTML5 specification and YouTube have recognised this too with a HTML5 Video Player that all users can try out and provide feedback on.
CaptionTube
http://captiontube.appspot.com/
Captions not only provide great functionality in terms of Accessibility, but can also significantly contribute to Video Optimisation. CaptionTube enables bloggers to add subtitles easily and just recently, YouTube have added a phenomenal feature which will auto-align captions if you submit the transcript in a compatible format.
Video Insights
http://www.youtube.com/my_videos
One little known feature of YouTube is it’s nifty analytics feature, providing statistics and feedback on the performance of your videos. Insights can tell you the location of your viewers, daily/monthly view count, your videos backlinks and much more. Try it out by navigation to ‘My Videos’ and clicking on the ‘Insights’ button.
New BETA Layout
http://www.youtube.com/watch5?enable=1
As of writing, YouTube has been rolling out and testing a new minimalist layout that focuses on encouraging quick user-feedback, in-page search results and a more streamlined look. Check it out for yourself using the link above.
Further Reading
For more on the experimental world of Google, check out my recent blog post on Chrome Experiments or alternatively watch our latest Web Design Video Blog on Next/Back Buttons in Flash Slideshows.
