Question

Website review

Asked by: kladtek

Please, can somebody help me go thru the website www.jubileechurchmanchester.org and provide areas in which i need to improve on, especially the video player, how can i get a better looking player to display video.

better still whats the best way to provide clips of video events online

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Asked On
2008-04-21 at 00:51:40ID23338793
Topic

Miscellaneous Web Development

Participating Experts
3
Points
500
Comments
12

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Answers

 

by: _Stilgar_Posted on 2008-04-21 at 02:16:53ID: 21399727

Depands on your platform. I'd say a good flash player is much better than standard Windows Media Player add-on (better streaming, plus it is compatible with Macs and Linux), so you've made a good choice so far (just make sure this player indeed works well.).

You might want to check Silverlight and IIS7 if you're hosting on Windows - they say it has much better streaming and auto detection of the bandwidth broadness, so it auto-computes and compresses the video/audio being sent.

Stilgar.

 

by: rowejdPosted on 2008-04-21 at 05:33:23ID: 21400922

kladtek,

The way you have your video setup is great: Flash is the way to go.  You might want to have it as a Flash 7 or Flash 8 if you can, but in any case it's pretty unanimous that Flash has the best cross-browser, cross-platform capacity on the market.

I disagree with the Silverlight approach.  It's a Microsoft attempt at Flash; it is also a cross-browser, cross-platform player.  HOWEVER, in terms of how many people actually have installed the Silverlight plugin, or can view Silverlight videos -- you're looking at cutting your viewing audience by like 90% if you switched from Flash to Silverlight; I would highly advise against it. (see http://www.onflex.org/ted/2007/04/m-silverlight-vs-adobe-flash-player.php -- yes he's bias towards adobe, but brings up valid objections to Silverlight).

Now, in terms of getting a better "looking" player like you mentioned in your post; are you a flash user?  Is this a video player you downloaded or is this one you got from a Flash library?  Because if you have Flash, there's a library full of different video players that may fit the look & feel of your site better.  See http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/flv_tutorial_pt2.html -- Another option would be to try to find a website that sells skins (i.e. http://www.flashskins.co.uk/flash_video_player.html and I there are even some on http://www.istockphoto.com  --just search for "video player" or "player" and check Flash only for your search criteria).

 

by: _Stilgar_Posted on 2008-04-21 at 06:08:53ID: 21401243

The main plus of Silverlight is the very tweaked streaming capabilities when the server is IIS7. I lean toward Flash as well (as long as the player has good GUI, and has good built-in preloading script), but I thought this is a good-to-know.

Stilgar.

 

by: kladtekPosted on 2008-04-22 at 13:59:32ID: 21415561

thanks rowejd,


i used flash like u said, however in used dreamweaver to import the .swf but its not showing/playin!!!!

 

by: _Stilgar_Posted on 2008-04-22 at 15:30:23ID: 21416185

It does on my end...

Stilgar.

 

by: rowejdPosted on 2008-04-22 at 16:57:33ID: 21416672

It plays great on my end as well.  You might need to install the flash player plugin to your browser:

http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash

 

by: UnexplainedWaysPosted on 2008-04-22 at 18:27:43ID: 21417066

I noticed the background has a fixed with.  How about a background that can be hidden without scrollbars for people with a lower res?

Here's what i'm talking about, just play with the width of the window and you'll see what i'm talking about: http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=207/207.css

 

by: kladtekPosted on 2008-04-23 at 03:38:45ID: 21419109

thanks again rowejd:,

what i meant was when i import using dreamweaver, it does not play in dreamweaver, nt the browser

 

by: kladtekPosted on 2008-04-23 at 03:41:25ID: 21419123

UnexplainedWays:

how do i accomplish this

 

by: UnexplainedWaysPosted on 2008-04-23 at 04:39:41ID: 21419444

A good way to learn from other webapges  is to download Firefox (you should already have it to check browser compatibility ) and then add the extention "Firebug".

This lets you look at a pages html/css and see what they did.  You can experiment by changing the css on the page and learn that way.

 

by: rowejdPosted on 2008-04-23 at 05:19:33ID: 21419771

kladtek,

Ah, understood.  You can't play it from dreamweaver - you have to hit "test in browser" (F12 on a PC I believe).  That would be nice if they added that capability.  But I personally always have my site open in a browser and just hit refresh instead of using design view much in DW.

What UnexplainedWays is saying is accomplished by doing something like what's below.  Save this to a test html page and preview it in your browser.  Stretch your browser window back & forth to see how the centered content "floats" down to as small as 800px wide.  The same concept applies when using a patterned background rather than a solid color.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
<title>Untitled Document</title>
<style type="text/css">
<!--
 
body {
	margin:0;
	padding:0;
	background-color:#003366;
}
 
#maincontent {
	width:760px;
	margin:20px auto;
	background-color:#FFFFFF;
	padding:20px;
}
 
-->
</style>
</head>
 
<body>
<div id="maincontent">
  <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Duis ligula lorem, consequat eget, tristique nec, auctor quis, purus. Vivamus ut sem. Fusce aliquam nunc vitae purus. Aenean viverra malesuada libero. Fusce ac quam. Donec neque. Nunc venenatis enim nec quam. Cras faucibus, justo vel accumsan aliquam, tellus dui fringilla quam, in condimentum augue lorem non tellus. Pellentesque id arcu non sem placerat iaculis. Curabitur posuere, pede vitae lacinia accumsan, enim nibh elementum orci, ut volutpat eros sapien nec sapien. Suspendisse neque arcu, ultrices commodo, pellentesque sit amet, ultricies ut, ipsum. Mauris et eros eget erat dapibus mollis. Mauris laoreet posuere odio. Nam ipsum ligula, ullamcorper eu, fringilla at, lacinia ut, augue. Nullam nunc.</p>
</div>
</body>
</html>

                                              
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by: rowejdPosted on 2008-04-23 at 05:28:11ID: 21419843

The only problem with trying to do this is that now, from what your site looks like, it's pretty well finished.  Going back and re-designing the CSS from the ground up might be time consuming.  It looks like you're using layers and absolute CSS positioning quite a bit.

I would say, let some others see your site within the congregation (maybe deacons or elders or something) and then see if they have any complaints about resolution or other problems or suggestions.  If everyone likes it and it works for them fine - perhaps rebuilding the css isn't something you need to do.

But if there are problems, you might want to revisit the issue.  One thing I noticed is that it seems the site doesn't use an external style sheet, but instead uses document-level styles.  What I mean by this (if you don't already know) is in Dreamweaver, it gives you the option, when you add a style, to "Define In:" and gives the option of "this document only" or "new style sheet file".  Instead of doing "this document only" you should probably do an external style sheet for ALL your pages.  Then, when you create a new page, and add a new style, choose "Define in:" and select your external style sheet document from the drop-down.

What does this do?  It allows your pages to share one centralized style sheet so that changing something in one, changes all the others.  If you wanted to change the color of your paragraphs, you could go to that one sheet, and if ALL your pages are linked rather than having doc-level styles -- it all changes at once rather than going to every page.  Make sense?

With ALL of this said, though.  I think the site has a very nice design.  It's visually appealing and inviting.  The graphics are well done, and even if there are quirks in the code, it still displays nicely in the browser.  So these tips you're accumulating, you might just log away for next time if the site meets that church's needs.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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