Filed under: Video, Google, Beta
YouTube beta testing stripped down "Feather" design

Google has introduced an opt-in beta for Feather, a new layout which strips away a lot of the excess from the standard page layout. According to the sign-up page, the goal is "to serve YouTube video watch pages with the lowest latency possible."
To make that possible, Feather does away with certain things like search suggestions and the ability to customize embeds (neither of which are huge losses). You'll also give up some socializing features - you can't rate or post comments, and you only get to read the top ten. Of course, by #11 YouTube comments have usually degraded into mindless prattle anyway, so you're not missing much there, either.
Right now, Feather only works on featured videos - but it could go site-wide at some point in the future.
This sure would be a good way for Google to save bandwidth at all those free wifi locations, wouldn't it? Google OS's Alex Chitu reports that Feather pages are about 1/8th (51KB vs. 391KB) the size of the current default.
The Illusionist's Dream is a simple platformer; you play as a magician who needs to get through each level by transforming into any number of animals that you encounter along the way.
Each animal can do different things; the butterfly can obviously fly, but if it encounters a frog, the frog eats it, and you have to start over again. There's also a fox that runs fast and leaps far, but it eats any rabbits that cross its path. That means that, if you may need to be a rabbit later on, you need to take that into account ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Nick said 11:08AM on 12-03-2009
Needs more HTML5.
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