[Pro] HTML Flash or Flash

Freeway
1

Hope no one minds, but this is a bit long,
but it’s about Flash vs Quicktime/HTML and
I think the responses could be of value to a number
of Freewayer’s.

Now here’s the story:
I’ve hired a web tech person to get my Freeway website
which has a lot of quicktime movies, to play correctly
with all browsers on the PC, which it doesn’t right now.

He’s presented two options and I have to choose one
and if there’s anyone out there that understands this
and could provide some insight it would be most helpful
to me and I assume quite a number of others.

ME:
“What is the difference between html5 and flash?”

TECH PERSON:
Flashplayer is a browser plugin. can be installed on any OS/browser and most android devices, most people have it pre installed. Apple doesnot support it on ipad or iphone.
HTML5 is still in beta, Latest browsers support it so does iphone and ipad. However you need 3 versions of the same file to ensure video plays on most devices.
to put it simply.
Use flash: Plays on ALL PC and MAC, we can have a youtube like playlist after the movie is finished. will be easy to update too. but no ipad/iphone support.
Use html5: Will also play on ipad etc, but no in movie choices like ‘click the flag’. and will need 3 version of the same video. Also html5 is buggy, It’s not even fully released yet.

ME:
Are you saying someone with an iPhone or ipad can’t watch youtube videos?

TECH PERSON:
No they can, by using the official youtube installed app, or in browser with html5. going to copy the line from above:
HTML5 is still in beta, Latest browsers support it so does iphone and ipad. However you need 3 versions of the same file to ensure video plays on most devices.
if you go check inside the ‘demo’ folder i made you will find three version of the movie being played.

So to summarize, you have two choices.
Flash: ensure video play on ALL PC and MAC PCS. sacrifice ipad/iphone.
Html5: Video plays on ALL LATEST Browsers (not old, latest) plus ipad. but Expect problems, html5 is not released yet. And no Clicks inside the movie, like ‘click on the flag’ etc. Plus
3 version of the same movie file.
My two centS. Go with Flash.

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2

The first question I would ask is - Who is my target audience?

Next - what do my site stats say about who is visiting my site and what devices, browsers and operating systems are they using.

Once you have that info then you will be better informed to make the choice.

But remember that if you do choose Flash then there is the iPhone/iPad redirect action that you can use to take visitors to a non-Flash page.

David

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3

Hi David,
I’m a graphic artist, and I’ve created golf theme designs that I’ve placed onto coffee tables, which I’m selling at high end prices. My market is golf enthusiasts. That’s my target audience, but I don’t know how that translates into flash or
quicktime.
I am in the process of getting the site up this week, and so I have no stats to go by. And I’m not promotting the site yet because it only plays correctly on mac which is where I made it on.

I need to make this decscion about what type of video player to use before I get the stats, because I need
The Tech Person I hired to do his coding magic, and he told me I have to make a choice.

Here is another text of information he sent me to ponder in helping me make a video choice. Would you mind taking a look at it and I’d appreciate what you might have to say about this, because I don’t know to much about this area, which is as they say could fill the top of a pin;)

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4

Hmm,

well - I decided to do my stuff using a “third party services”. This is probably the only caveat cause you never know if services will and can survive.

However, I always struggled with the purely quicktime movies myself. I then rushed into vimeo but I was unhappy with it, too. To much youtube what I neither need nor recommend.

Then I gave sublime video a chance - and think, that this is pretty cool.

A very important note first:

The most important thing is a proper mime type setting of your host. Unfortunately I can’t control this by myself (no allowance of using .htaccess), but if, the idea behind is great.

Assumed, you just have a .mov file, all browser that support it will play it native (webkit), other browsers (firefox, opera, IE) will have a flash fallback. The next step would be to convert the .mov into a .ogv (theora), so firefox will play it. You can go so on and so on …

As I said in the entry - the devil is in detail and in my specific case, I sometimes have problems - but in most of the cases it is explained with mime type misconfig.

The handling in Freeway is without any further trouble. A line of code in the before head and the video in a HTML Mark-Up and you’re done.

Sublime is in a free and a paid version. The paid enables you to have a detailed analytic tool - the free shares this feature only in a 24h count.

I recommended sublime on another place here, but it hadn’t been that suitable one in that case - probably here?

If you have once time, check the appearance of my videos to have a look if it matches your desires or not (I mean technical - I know the content is “marginal” :-):

http://www.kimmich-dm.de/screencasts.php

Cheers

Thomas

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5

And note that there is now a Sublime Video action available at actionsforge.com so you could do this yourself and say goodbye to the ‘web tech person’

http://freewaytalk.net/thread/view/106894

D

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