November 12, 2010
I don’t like the new Youtube search bar
I’m not sure when this occurred, but it seems like Youtube recently changed their search bar so that once you click on the input box, it shows a light purple highlight inside the box.
Personally, I really don’t like this new design, even if it is very subtle because first, it goes against my expectation of how search bars are designed. This is my first time seeing a search bar that highlights the “inside” of the box and while this seems quite original, I’m unable to see any new usability benefits to justify this design.
The inner highlight makes the search box seem more small and limited. Further on the nice whitespace around the text is reduced and as a result, it makes the keywords appear more constrained. I’m not sure why they didn’t go for a design like this instead if they wanted to make the search bar more identifiable:
Whitespace is maintained, user’s expectation of how most search bars should behave is not violated, and the search bar is more identifiable with the light purple highlight running on the outside of the entire bar.
I may be the only one who has a problem with the new design but I believe even little change like this could cause a big impact in the long term regardless of whether it being positive or negative. Of course, if there is indeed any usability benefit created by this new design, I would love to hear about it :)