The YouTube Feather Beta to Trim the Fat from YouTube Pages
The YouTube "Feather" beta is designed to give YouTube viewers the fastest viewing experience possible, at the expense of on-page features like expanding share boxes, collapsible comments, and a long list of related videos on the side of the page. The layout isn't drastically different, but if your problem with YouTube is that your videos buffer all the time and fail to load, the Feather beta may be worth a look.
We were hoping that YouTube comments would go away along with the rest of the page bloat, but we weren't so lucky. Instead of being collapsible, the first few comments are now fixed text on the page, and you can't upvote or downvote them. Aside from that, the page layout has been simplified, and the only buttons you have under a video now are the thumbs up/thumbs down/flag buttons. The "related videos" section on the right side of the page is pared down to five videos only, and most of the other interactive elements on the page, like pop-out menus and frames that slide open when you click on them, are gone.
YouTube tends to change its general layout so often that many of us don't notice the changes, but if the current iteration is too busy for you, or it takes too long to load a video, give the Feather beta a try at the link below. You can opt out of it at any time (you'll see a box below the related videos asking if you want out), and YouTube says that the Feather view may not work for all videos and is a work in progress. Give it a whirl and let us know what you think in the discussions below.
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