Gotta agree with the Youtube layout, I don't like it either. About this sidebar... I don't know, it can definitely be of use for a lot of people but they should have just kept it the way it was before with the ">>" button you could click to bring up the sidebar.

All in all I'm not fussed about it but I can understand it's causing a lot of grief.

everytime a popular website (facebook, youtube, google,...) make a change, people start moaning...after month or two, everyone forgets how it looked like before and they're happy...
life is change

If it doesn't affect my search results, I don't really care. I didn't really notice it until I saw this thread.