Redesigned YouTube Buttons

YouTube's experimental layout with simpler buttons is rolling out to everyone. The like and dislike buttons have merged with the number of likes and dislikes, YouTube no longer uses tabs, "add to" opens a drop-down menu and there's a "more" menu for features like "report", "transcript" and "statistics".

Google Docs Tooltip Shows Page Number

When you scroll a document in Google Docs, Google now shows a tooltip that includes the number of the page you're currently reading or editing and the total number of pages. It looks like this: "2 of 3". The tooltip is also displayed when you mouse over the scrollbar.

You can also check the number of pages using print preview or the word count feature. Another option is to insert page number and page count using the features from the Insert menu.



{ Thanks, Daniel Fletcher. }

YouTube Autoplay Experiment

YouTube tests a feature that automatically plays related videos after the video that's currently playing. You can disable this feature by clicking the "autoplay" toggle placed in the right sidebar, next to the list of related videos. "When autoplay is enabled, a suggested video will automatically play next," informs YouTube.

While the autoplay feature may sometimes be useful, I think it's a bad idea to enable it by default. YouTube's suggestions aren't always great and constantly disabling "autoplay" gets annoying. In YouTube's experiment, the autoplay feature is enabled by default every time you open a new video, even if you have previously disabled it.



Here's how you can enable the experimental feature. If you use Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari or Internet Explorer 8+:



1. open youtube.com in a new tab



2. load your browser's developer console:



* Chrome or Opera 15+ - press Ctrl+Shift+J for Windows/Linux/ChromeOS or Command-Option-J for Mac



* Firefox - press Ctrl+Shift+K for Windows/Linux or Command-Option-K for Mac



* Internet Explorer 8+ - press F12 and select the "Console" tab



* Safari 6+ - if you haven't enabled the Develop menu, open Preferences from the Safari menu, go to the Advanced tab and check "Show Develop menu in menu bar". Close Preferences and then press Command-Option-C to show the console.



* Opera 12 - press Ctrl+Shift+I for Windows/Linux or Command-Option-I for Mac, then click "Console".



3. paste the following code which changes a YouTube cookie:



document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=j1l-QY6DlXg; path=/; domain=.youtube.com";window.location.reload();



4. press Enter and close the console.



Open a random video to see the autoplay feature. To disable the experiment, use the same instructions, but replace the code from step 3 with this one:



document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=; path=/; domain=.youtube.com";window.location.reload();



{ via Rubén }

Google Tests New Site Search Box

For navigational searches like [amazon], [white house] or [stanford], Google displays a search box that lets you search the top search result. Google now tests a completely new site search box. The updated search box is bigger, it's placed below the top search result and Google shows a list of suggestions when you type the query.

For Amazon, Google makes an exception and uses Amazon's internal search, instead of Google Search. Let's say you start typing "smart" and click "smart power strip". Google sends you to Amazon's search results page for "smart power strip". If you don't pick a suggestion and press Enter or click the search button, Google still sends you to Amazon's search results page. The only way to get Google's results is to click "results for" in the list of suggestions.

Amazon seems to be an exception. For searches like [microsoft], [youtube], [imdb], Google shows its own results.

{ Thanks, Rubén. }

Special Characters Search Engine in Google Drive

Google's Drive desktop apps have an updated dialog for inserting special characters. If you open a document, spreadsheet or presentation, go to the Insert menu and click "Special characters", you have many ways to find a special character: use categories, search by keyword (example: arrow), enter the Unicode code point (example: 2195) or draw the character.

"We have launched a new version of the special character picker in Google Docs, Slides, and Drawings, making it easier for people to find characters and symbols — like arrows, shapes, or non-Latin characters — to insert into their content. The new picker now supports keyword search as well as free form input, so editors can draw the symbol that they have in mind and the picker will return available characters that resemble the drawing," informs Google.



Here's another example from Google Drive's Google+ page:

Hangouts Contacts Tab in Gmail

If you use Google Hangouts inside Gmail, you may have noticed a new icon at the bottom of the page. It lets you switch to the new contacts tab that shows your chat buddies starting with the ones who are online, just like in the old Gmail Chat/Google Talk. The small green circle next to the profile picture shows that your chat buddy is online.

You can also mouse over a contact, click the small arrow icon and pick one of the options: pin to top, start video call, send email or hide. Pin to top moves the contact in a new section at the top of the list.

"Starting today it's easier to see which of your chat buddies are currently online, thanks to a new tab in Hangouts in Gmail. In this new tab, friends who are online are shown first, followed by those who aren't. Of course, you can still send your offline friends a message and they'll get it the next time they check Hangouts on their computer, phone or table," informs Google.

Google Teapot Easter Egg

Google has a funny error page at google.com/teapot. It says: "418. I'm a teapot. The requested entity body is short and stout. Tip me over and pour me out." If you click the teapot, you'll see a nice animation.

So what's this 418 error? You may have noticed HTTP status codes like 404 (page not found) or 403 (forbidden). There are many other 4xx error codes, but 418 was only used for an Easter Egg. "This code was defined in 1998 as one of the traditional IETF April Fools' jokes, in RFC 2324, Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol, and is not expected to be implemented by actual HTTP servers." Here's the text from the document: "Any attempt to brew coffee with a teapot should result in the error code '418 I'm a teapot'. The resulting entity body MAY be short and stout."

{ via Search Engine Land }

64-Bit Chrome for Windows in the Stable Channel

Chrome 37 has been promoted to the stable channel. This means that the 64-bit Chrome for Windows is ready for primetime. You won't be upgraded to the 64-bit version even if you use 64-bit Windows 7 or Windows 8, so you have to manually install the 64-bit Chrome 37 from this page. You can also click the "Windows 64-bit" from Chrome's download page.

"64-bit Chrome offers many benefits for speed, stability and security. Our measurements have shown that the native 64-bit version of Chrome has improved speed on many of our graphics and media benchmarks. For example, the VP9 codec that’s used in High Definition YouTube videos shows a 15% improvement in decoding performance. Stability measurements from people opted into our Canary, Dev and Beta 64-bit channels confirm that 64-bit rendering engines are almost twice as stable as 32-bit engines when handling typical web content," informs Google.



So why is 64-bit Chrome opt-in? It doesn't support 32-bit NPAPI plugins. This may be an important downside for some users, but Chrome will remove NPAPI support in the coming months anyway. Until then, the 32-bit Chrome will still be the default.



Chrome's "known issues" page informs that the 64-bit plugins for Java and Silverlight work properly, while the plugins for Google Earth and Google Voice don't work because they're 32-bit plugins. You can switch between the 32-bit and 64-bit Chrome versions from Chrome's download page.



{ Thanks, Dilraj. }

Upload Google+ Videos to YouTube

YouTube now lets import your videos from Google+. Just go to the upload page and click the "import" button from the right sidebar.

You can select one or more Google+ videos and upload them simultaneously. This is a great way to upload your videos from desktop computers, Android and iOS devices if you've enabled the Auto Backup feature.

Google+ is better suited for uploading and managing photos. Even if Google+ uses YouTube's infrastructure for videos, Google doesn't provide embedding options for Google+ videos.



{ spotted by Nedas Petravičius. }

Edit Office Files in Docs, Sheets and Slides for iOS

Google released the Slides app for iOS and added native Office file editing to Docs, Sheets and Slides for iOS.



"You can truly get stuff done from any device — your iPhone, iPad, Android phone, Android tablet, laptop or desktop computer. Any change you make on any of these devices is saved automatically, so you can pick up right where you left off any time, anywhere that you can sign in. The Docs, Sheets and Slides apps come with offline editing built right in. Just make the files you want to edit available offline. Any changes you make offline get automatically synced when you reconnect, just like when you make offline edits from your computer. And while converting Office files to Docs, Sheets and Slides is a cinch, the new iPhone/iPad apps also let you edit Office files directly - just like on the Android apps and the web," informs Google.

Native Office editing is a great feature and now Google's productivity apps for iOS are more powerful and can better compete with Microsoft Office.

On YouTube Music Key

Google works on a subscription service for YouTube that will allow users to watch music videos without ads, play music videos in the background when using mobile devices and temporarily download music videos. YouTube Music Key will cost $9.99 a month and it will include Google Play Music All Access, which will be renamed Google Play Music Key.



While this is a great deal for Play Music subscribers, I'm not sure if YouTube Music Key's offering is strong enough on its own. There are many free apps for Android and iOS that let you play almost any YouTube video in the background, not just music videos. They also let you download almost any video and don't show YouTube ads. There are various ways to block YouTube ads and download YouTube videos.

I think that YouTube Music Key is a way to improve Google Play Music Key and supplement it with YouTube's music videos. It's also a way to promote Google Play Music's subscription service using YouTube.



Features like playing videos in the background or offline playback should be available for free for any video. Limiting them to music videos and requiring a monthly fee seems shortsighted, considering that there are free apps that offer these features.

Add YouTube Search Results to a Playlist

If you want to quickly add videos to a YouTube playlist, you can click YouTube's search box, enter a query, mouse over search results, click the 3-dot menu icon and pick an existing playlist or create a new one. You can add videos without having to open them, then you can edit the playlist from this page.

External Addresses No Longer Use Gmail SMTP Servers

Gmail has a feature that lets you send mail from a different email address. For non-Gmail addresses, you could send email addresses using Gmail's SMTP servers or through the email provider's SMTP servers. Now you can no longer use Gmail's SMTP servers for new accounts:

We rolled out a change for new accounts where if you would like to send mail as from a non-Gmail or non-Google Apps account, you can no longer use the option of Gmail's servers to send your mail. Google is a strong supporter of email authentication standards including DKIM, SPF and DMARC. This is one in a series of changes to strengthen email authentication, and end any practices by Google products which break authentication.



Any accounts which previously were using Send Mail As via Gmail servers will not be affected, you can keep the previous set up. If you are a Google Apps user sending from a domain alias or email alias you can also check out the steps listed in this help center article under "I'm a Google Apps for Business user sending from a domain alias or email alias".

The help center article has more information: "Your other email provider has to provide authenticated SMTP support for you to use this option. We'll use TLS by default, or SSL if you enable it. Many email services that provide POP or IMAP support also offer authenticated SMTP support, and you can likely find your SMTP server configuration instructions alongside information about POP or IMAP."



Until 2009, all the addresses you added to your Gmail account used Gmail's SMTP servers. In 2009, Gmail added the option to use the email provider's SMTP servers. One of the benefits was that email clients like Outlook no longer displayed "From username@gmail.com On Behalf Of customaddress@mydomain.com". At that time, Google mentioned that "we recognize that your other address might not have a server that you can use to send outbound messages — for example, if you use a forwarding alias rather than an actual mailbox, or if your other email provider doesn't support authenticated SMTP, or restricts access to specific IP ranges. For this reason, we've kept the original method as well." Now, the original method is no longer available.



{ Thanks, Jan Willem Hengeveld. }

Why Switch to HTTPS?

Google tries to move the entire web to HTTPS, but you may wondering if it's really necessary. If you only have a blog or any other site that only displays static content, why would you use SSL? John Mueller and Pierre Far, both from Google, have the following answer:

Some webmasters say they have "just a content site", like a blog, and that doesn't need to be secured. That misses out two immediate benefits you get as a site owner:



1. Data integrity: only by serving securely can you guarantee that someone is not altering how your content is received by your users. How many times have you accessed a site on an open network or from a hotel and got unexpected ads? This is a very visible manifestation of the issue, but it can be much more subtle.



2. Authentication: How can users trust that the site is really the one it says it is? Imagine you're a content site that gives financial or medical advice. If I operated such a site, I'd really want to tell my readers that the advice they're reading is genuinely mine and not someone else pretending to be me.

More Directions in Google Search for Mobile

When searching for [directions from A to B] or [distance from A to B] from your mobile device, Google now shows an updated card with multiple tabs for driving directions, public transit, biking directions and walking directions. Until now, Google only displayed driving directions.



This isn't Google Maps for Android or the mobile Google Maps site, it's just a Google Search card.

Google Knowledge Graph Winners

If you search for [oscar winners], Google shows a long list of winners in the Knowledge Graph sidebar. You can scroll down to see all of them, switch to a different year or click a category and see all the nominees. Search for [oscar 1995] to find the winners from 1995, for example.

You can also try [Grammy], [Emmy], [Cesar winners], [Goya Awards], [Tony awards], [Golden Globes], [Brit Awards], [Pulitzer], [Nobel awards] and many other queries. It works for more specific queries like [nobel peace prize] or [nobel prize physics].

Google Query Tricks

This isn't some new Google Search feature, but I thought it's worth sharing. Google has some smart algorithms that process your queries and can determine what you intended to type even if it's not properly formatted.



1. You can separate all the characters of your query by space. For example: [h o t e l c a l i f o r n i a l y r i c s].

2. You can separate all the characters of your query using dots. For example: [ h o t e l c a l i f o r n i a l y r i c s].



3. You can type your query without using space to separate words. For example: [hotelcalifornialyrics].

4. You can separate the words from your query using various characters like "+", "*", "&", "^" and more. Here's an example: [hotel^california^lyrics].