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0 pointshamburglar12y ago0 comments

> There's exactly one piece of somewhat moving interface in the entire site. [(YouTube)]

You are making the exact same mistake he is. You are picturing what you remember of YouTube and in your recollection, it is simple. This is because they have done a reasonable job of using a simple design, not because they have avoided "moving" things. Go look and you will find plenty of menus, tabs, comments, and other ui elements that are built of the exact stuff he says is worthless. Holding any of these sites up as an example of being essentially just text and a few images just indicates that you don't have much of an eye for detail.

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waps12y ago· 1 in thread

I'm not claiming the youtube interface is not functional, I'm claiming it's ugly. It's not about whether interface elements are animated or not (I am criticizing however how hard it is to make them move). And I understand us techies like a really simple design. The difference is that I don't see the world as sharing my opinion. Simple websites are good for various technical reasons, and I understand that. Scraping them (not that ggl makes it easy), interacting, using the website as an API, all things that matter to techies.

But let's be honest : they're ugly. Youtube, for example looks like an ancient file manager, at best.

Let's compare, a native application with a -somewhat- similar purpose versus youtube.

XBMC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34h_sQ7-G1s

TiVo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNvgoLVzijE (I realize it's an irritating commercial. But look at the interface)

Netflix on ios: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-4_ADXYT3E (sorry about the reviewer, and already much worse than XBMC or TiVo)

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com

This is a very nice animated interface (imho): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCw0eWa-LkA (not related to videos though)

The sad part is, that you're right about Youtube as compared to some of it's online alternatives. Compared to those, it's not bad. But the whole point was to criticize online development tools like HTML and Javascript, as compared to offline ones. Flash versus HTML and the quality of interfaces they enable.

I would even go so far as saying that, when it comes to native apps XBMC and TiVo count as "good". They don't quite match my standards for "great" at all. Youtube ... euhm ... is at the level where I'd have trouble accepting it from a first-year programming student. Certainly wouldn't merit an A.

hamburglarOP12y ago

> But let's be honest : they're ugly. Youtube, for example looks like an ancient file manager, at best.

I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say, but it seems fairly obvious you don't agree with the OP's crazy pronouncement that websites should just be text and a few images. We may be in one of those "violent agreement" situations, so I'm just going to call this argument done. :)

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