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April 29, 2006
Firefox Flicks
Firefox Flicks: I picked this news up in the aggregators, then spent some time studying the site. The recent "make a viral video for Firefox" contest has chosen winners. The web video gallery is snappy, fun to use, but lacks global top-level navigation. The delivery format is QuickTime, which seems rare on new sites these days -- although Flash is most popular, I sort of expected to see some type of .MPG extension on this contest, and let each visitor open it in whatever viewer they have. The video markup is the standard OBJECT/EMBED, no external .JS write, and the OBJECT is in MS-style with the "classid" renderer request. Searching around a little more, I see a series of debates at Firefox principal Asa Dotzler's blog... the "anything but flash" voice collides with the "de facto standard" viewpoint. With a wider search there are newer arguments, like "for these outreach videos make people download my new favorite opensource codec & player". Another link went to openquicktime.org, which seems to be oriented towards reading existing QT files in otherwise-unsupported operating systems, but there's a mix of licenses of the library and then for the codecs, and I'm not sure of their situation yet. Final observation on the FirefoxFlicks.com site... the theme graphic at lower-right focuses on "Want a better Web experience?"... they see their key as providing a better UE... focus is on the person using the interface, not just the person creating the interface... I like this approach too.
Posted by John Dowdell at April 29, 2006 08:25 AM
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Comments
Yeah, well, I 'd find Flash better for that site despite all this disputes (which I find sensless anyway) if only because it is lighter on my modem. Even with my fast connection I waited for the videos to downlod while reading another page, what a booooooore! Geeez! It just ain´t fair, man.
;D
Posted by: Lalo Greiner at April 29, 2006 03:28 PM