YouTube Desktop is an alternative user interface to YouTube. Although it’s currently in private beta, I received an invite within 12 hours of registering my interest. YouTubeDesktop boasts an interface which is full of AJAX and has a dark motif and features that the standard YouTube lacks.

The most notable feature of YouTube Desktop is that it allows you to download Flash video files (FLVs) or AVIs from within its interface. Whilst this can be done through a number of fairly easy methods on YouTube, there isn’t a button which just allows you to do so!

One flaw - possibly a legal one - is that YouTube Desktop does not credit the creator of the video from within its interface. One would have that that if a video, for example, was under a CC-BY licence you’d have to say who the owner of the © is.

The general use of Ajax in YouTube Desktop is amazing. Searching, choosing a video and recommending it to friends are all handled by Ajax. Ajax search is something that the ’standard’ YouTube lacks but my page hasn’t refreshed yet when I’ve used YTD!

There are three themes you can choose to use on the site which are ‘default black’, ‘default violet’ and ’sky’. The Sky theme reminds me of Veoh :).

You can also have more than one video open at a time in ‘windows’ as well as having playlists (great productivity wise! No more searching for the next video you want to view, just do a big search at the start!). One thing that does annoy me is that inside these Windows it doesn’t give you the link to the video on YouTube (which would be useful for comments, rating videos or embedding).

Screenshot:

YTD was reviewed by former 9rules’ member blog Mashable.

Tags: youtube, youtube desktop, web 2.0, web2, web 2, web2.0