[mmmmmmmike]

One thing I distinctly remember they _weren't_ doing better was letting you just watch your video in piece. The controls were obtrusive and always visible, the background was bright white, and the suggested videos took up a huge chunk of the screen. I don't know how much that may have played to their advantage (by encouraging you to surf new videos) but I remember avoiding YouTube links in favor of basically anything else for a good long while.

[stan_rogers]

I'd consider all of those "bugs" to be features, myself. As they say in French, everyone has gout. The autohiding controls and loss of the always-visible time bar really ticked me off when they happened, and backgrounds other than white annoy the hell out of me.