Pushing the boxes around

Hi everybody!

It's Nick again, the engineer. I meant to get this out yesterday in time for Brian's post, but it wasn't quite ready. You can now rearrange the boxes on your channel with little arrows. Up, down, left, right. You choose where to put stuff! There are some restrictions. You can't move the profile box or the big videos box up top. But the rest are mobile. Remember you can add and remove these boxes from the "Modules" tab up top.

Minor detail: you won't be able to see the arrows on a black background. I'll fix that soon, I promise!

Another detail: this is one of the few things that "auto-saves". As in, if you move boxes, no need to hit a save button, it'll save as it moves them.

Party on,
-Nick

A few of our favorite things

What's up, channel beta testers? It's been a while since our last update - we've been hard at work behind the scenes adding new functionality, fixing bugs, and more. Here are just a few updates we released today or in the past week:

• Backgrounds should now be fixed - yes, these broke for a short while - if your background isn't on your channel right now, try uploading it again
• Can now message a user again
• Can now delete recent activity items
• Squashed the bug that prevented you from featuring a playlist
• Subscribe button appears when you're looking at your own channel
  
• UI improvements
• Lots of bug fixes

Still have more to go - all your early feedback has been especially helpful here. (And yes, choosing which video to feature is coming!)

Also, have you noticed the "our new favorite channel designs" box on the right hand side? We're using that to keep track of some of some of the best channel designs we've spotted. Here are a few:

• IceflowStudios' Channel - A great light blue theme (with some nice color contrasts) to go with an "icy" name
  
• vlogbrothers' Channel - Love the lighter color scheme and the alternate font. If only you moved your modules around to fill in the large gap in the lower right. (Oh, right...you can't yet. We should probably build that piece soon!)
• mnathanielc's Channel - A darker theme with a great matching background that works very well - and a good use of switching the right hand side of the screen to show "Uploads" by default

We'll post on this blog every now and then to highlight some beta channels with great designs. Any out there that you've noticed?

-Brian

In ur tubes, fixin ur bugs

Hi everybody!

I'm Nick, your friendly engineer. I heard there were some bugs with the new channels. Michael and I pulled out some bug spray this morning and got the ones that were right in front of us. Sadly, we haven't quite killed them all yet.

Well, for now, we slipped the commas (or language-relevant separators) into the view counts on the videos. Sorry we forgot that the first time round! Also, IE users should be a touch happier now. We tried to clean up some visual issues there.

As I said, there are still a bunch of bugs to squash, so be patient with us. This whole public beta thing is a bit new for us, and so far I'm happy with how it's turning out. We're going to take your opinions into account as we tinker with this, and it'll turn out better with your help. A few of y'all might have noticed the super seekrit opt-in URL wasn't working for a couple minutes. Well, it's working now! If only you know the seekrit. :-P

Anyway, they're letting us engineers out of our cages to post here on the blog, so expect more from me and Michael (the other engineer) in the future.

Rock on,
-Nick

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Update: the whole "can't revert" thing was unintentional, I promise. SuperLuigi and Muddytrails, I reverted your channels by hand. It looks like a logic error in the code on my part; people who somehow hit the migrate function twice (maybe browser error?) lose the ability to unmigrate. I'll fix the logic for the future, and attempt to find all the other broken accounts.

Some known issues

Just a few of the beta issues that we're tracking (updated @ 10:27AM 4/16):

• Layout is wacky in Internet Explorer - if you're using IE, some things may look broken
• Sometimes the list of videos on the right hand side doesn't load
  
• Can't delete items from your Recent Activity right now
• "Send message" link not available yet
• Can't move modules around (left, right, up, down)
• No sort controls yet (e.g. Most Viewed)
• Subscribe button currently doesn't display when you're logged out (and note that we don't show you a subscribe button when you're looking at your own channel)
  
• Yes, EcoGeek, the view counts need some commas :)
• Honors aren't shown right now - no, these aren't going away (thanks nerimon)
• Can't choose your featured video yet
  
• + a lot of little things

Update: Lots of great bugs in the comments below so far - keep 'em coming, guys. Some of these should be fixed later on Thursday (we'll give you a heads up). And lots of thoughtful, detailed feedback & suggestions too. We'll respond to some of the feedback soon...

Welcome to the YouTube channels beta!

If you're reading this, you've probably either switched your channel over to the secret new YouTube channels beta, or you've stumbled across a channel that has. Either way, welcome! We'd like to show you an early version of what we're working on.

Of course, keep in mind that our beta is very early. Things may change, or break, and we haven't finished building all the bells and whistles yet. For example, many of the editing functions aren't available yet, so you can't currently customize the order and selection of videos that show up on your channel (or choose which video is featured). And we'll probably tweak some of the UI as we go.

So why are we showing this before it's finished? Because we want you to be a part of it! If you're here, you probably care about what we build and what your channel looks like, and we want you to be involved along the way.

We'll use this blog to regularly communicate our latest channel beta launches, fixes, and releases - in other words, our release notes. And we'd like to hear your feedback in the comments section.

Why are we releasing new versions of channels in the first place? Well, here are a few reasons:

• A better channel experience for your visitors - folks can browse through and watch your uploads, favorites, and playlists without needing to leave your channel
  
• Help you enrich your channel - we'll help you customize and design your channel (and the videos on it) without ever leaving the page - and we'll give you some default themes to start with
  
• A design refresh - yes, our corners are now rounded in many browsers, saving valuable pixels
  

So...how do things look so far? What do you like the most, and what do you wish was different? Let us know in the comments.

Enjoy the beta!

From the YouTube channels team,
-Nick, Michael, Gunthar, David, Holly, James, and Brian

Hello, world!

This is our obligatory "hello world" first post.