Saturday, January 24, 2009

Skipping Comments in YouTube

Before that YouTube went all JavaScript-crazy, you used to be able to skip to a comments page by changing the address, such as comments_all?page=5 could be changed to comments_all?page=15. (This is just an example, I don't remember how it was exactly.)

With the change that YouTube underwent, pagination is now handled through JavaScript, which means no more page reloading and therefore no page skipping. Users with a lot of comments weren't too pleased with the update, since looking back at older comments has become a hassle. This is only what it seems, it's still possible to do it!

1) Go to the YouTube page of which you want to skip around the comments. Example: http://youtube.com/lkjkorn19 and click on the number after "Channel Comments", which will lead you to the comments shown in a full page. (E.g.: http://youtube.com/profile?user=lkjkorn19&view=comments )

2) Add the following in the address bar:
&start=0 (e.g.: http://youtube.com/profile?user=lkjkorn19&view=comments&start=0 )

Just replace 0 with the page number of your choice, multiplied by ten. For example, if you want to go to page 15, you would need the following URL:
http://youtube.com/profile?user=lkjkorn19&view=comments&start=150

Note bene: This seems to be quite a new feature. Before, one could only skip the pages with some lines of JavaScript, which only worked in a few browsers. Turning off JavaScript will lead you to page URLs as the one posted above (with &start=150 etc.). If you "copy the link" of a pagination link (1 2 3 .. Next), you'll get the same as explained above.

The start parameter can also be added in the videos, favorites, friends, subscribers and subscriptions pages.

Edit: Actually, if you want to go to page 15, you would have to add &start=140. So if you want to go to a page, you need to add (n-1)*10 as start parameter (where n is the page number).