Related Articles
Like watching dogs on skateboards on your phone? Of course you do. And now it’s even quicker to get your comedy canine fix, thanks to a new mobile YouTube website that’s been prettied up to work more like the desktop version and be easier to use on touchscreen phones.
It’s already up and running in the US, and now comes to the UK as Google realises many of us now have the phone hardware to keep up with an experience similar to what we have on a desktop.
Google’s hoping that we’ll forgo the walled garden of the YouTube app that is on many smart phones and get our video fix in the browser at m.youtube.com. To use the new site, your phone must support the HTML5 standard, as the iPhone and Android phones do.
As well as touch-friendly menus, Google says that by bypassing Flash in favour of HTML5, the site will be faster than before. It’s also said that the service will be improved for those running mobiles on slower connections, as they’ll have the option of watching lower-quality video.
There’s also the addition of features from the US site, such as search query suggestions, playlist creation options, the ability to designate favourites, and ‘like’ and ‘unlike’ videos.
“As the world continues to grow mobile,” Google said in a statement, “YouTube thinks that this new mobile Web site offers a great improvement to anyone who wants a more consistent YouTube experience across all devices, no matter where they are.”
Reuters quoted YouTube’s mobile product manager Andrey Doronichev as saying, “We tried to make it so snappy and so fast, but run in any browser across platforms.”
He added, “The most important thing about this new product is consistency. We tried really hard to make it consistent with what you’re getting on the desktop.”
Have you tried the new super improved mobile YouTube yet? And will it stop you from watching videos through the native apps of your smart phones? Let us know.
