Buzzworthy Flash Video

Since Flash Video is getting lots of buzz right now, here are a couple of sites that use video in a great way:

JC The Store – lovely use of short video loops that expand to play mini-movies.

Psyop – Simple site with superb video content – check out the Psyop anthem!

I never understood why flash video isn’t a lot more common. It’s true that you can get (slightly) better quality at the same bit-rate using QuickTime or Windows Media Player, but the Flash 7 player and improved sparq codecs have closed that gap. The great advantage of Flash video is seamless integration into a the UI.

Most video on the web could do with the “Grandma” test. Try and get your Granny to play a video on the web. First she gets a pop-up window asking her to select from multiple video playback technologies and bandwidths. On selecting, the video opens up in a separate application that she may or may not have installed.

Compare this to Flash video where the video plays right in the same window, regardless of the users platform. (To make the experience really slick, it’s nice to do a bandwidth test on the client, and serve the appropriate stream accordingly.)

HotRod has Landed!

  • Posted On: August 7th, 2004
  • Posted In: Games

My HotRod joystick finally arrived! It’s the perfect joystick for playing your favourite MAME games, as it uses the same technology used in actual arcade cabinets. I was a bit shocked by it’s enormous size when it arrived – the case seems to have been built from 2 inch thick planks of wood. After playing a couple of 2-player Street Fighter matches, I realized the bulky case is there to add stability, and avoid the joystick flying across the room in the heat of battle.

Flash Site/Search Engine Ranking Test

  • Posted On: August 6th, 2004
  • Posted In: Flash

Charlie at disc7 has setup a Flash/Search Engine test, to determine what kind of flash content will show up in Search Engines. Please support this test by linking to the test page: http://www.disc7.com/flash-movie-test/

This test came about from a discussion over at JesterXL, which was a response to
Derek Franklin’s post about the problems of getting Flash sites to show in Google.

This is one of the few remaining big problems for Flash (It’s also one of the reasons I switched from a pure flash site, to a HTML/Flash hybrid). Macromedia and Google are working on a solution, but there is still a long way to go.

One possible solution would be to use an external XML file for SWF text. A standardized naming convention would be used for the external XML URL, so Google could easily pull it from the SWF.

Tiny Button Menus Are Useless!

I just came across this example of a longstanding usability beef of mine: menus consisting of tiny unlabeled buttons.

Why is it annoying? Try browsing through the images in the illustration section. As the buttons have no labels (or rollover descriptions), there is no reason to click one button over another. This leaves 2 choices: click on the buttons in sequence or at random. Clicking in sequence is difficult because each time you want to go to the next image, you have to move your mouse precisely 5 pixels horizontally with no vertical movement. This causes you to focus on your cursor, when you should be focusing on the images. Clicking randomly has an extra problem, in that you cannot tell what images you have already viewed, so you are likely to view the same image multiple times.

This example is noticeable because otherwise the site is great: fantastic illustration and nice audio.

There are various solutions to this problem. The simplest would be to allow the user to skip to the next image by clicking on the current image (or add a next button).

Independent Web Game Links

  • Posted On: June 12th, 2004
  • Posted In: Games

I just came across these 2 very original, independent, downloadable games: Gish – control a sentient ball of tar(!) moving through a maze. Oasis – a strange, fast-paced Civilization type game.

Also check out this great 2004 Web & Downloadable Games White Paper (pdf – 2MB). A must-read for anyone interested in creating web based games.

SimpleViewerAdmin is Live

Check out Christian Machmeier‘s fantastic SimpleViewerAdmin. It’s a free, fully featured adminstrative backend for SimpleViewer, featuring a very usable web interface that allows you to create multiple galleries, configure gallery appearance, upload images, automatically generate thumbnails and more.

Many thanks to Christian for his work in creating this.