YouTube's Roboto Experiment

YouTube experiments with switching from Arial to Roboto, a typeface that's already used by many other Google products. Roboto "was designed entirely in-house at Google by Christian Robertson, an interface designer for Google" and it "was released for the first time in 2011 with Android 4.0".



Here's the Roboto font experiment:

... and YouTube's regular interface which uses Arial:

This is a screenshot from Google Docs, which shows a sample text that uses Roboto and Arial:

Here's how you can enable the experimental interface. 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=vuYbQD3x-HQ; path=/; domain=.youtube.com";window.location.reload();



4. press Enter and close the console.



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();



{ Thanks, Rubén Gómez. }