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I've been working on a website for a short film company here locally. It works fine on every browser I can test it on, but I'd really like to broaden the critique.

It's javascript heavy, but written to be compatible with non-javascript browsers.

Feel free to critique anything: colors, imagry, or functionality. The site is not live, however, all I have to do is make one change in .htaccess and it is. Paypal stuff is production mode.

Thanks!


[a href=\"http://www.determinedtofall.com\" target=\"_blank\"]http://www.determinedtofall.com[/a]

EDIT: site is live now. The URL has been changed.
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Yes, I too am the anti-fan of popups, but you wouldn't know it from this site -- a shame, really. This was my first real javascript heavy site. I'm very glad to hear that two people here (who I consider experts) haven't broken it with casual browsing.

The paypal integration is okay. It'd be nice if I could change the font color (because you can't have a black page with black fonts) -- and the "paypal blue" bar is a rather obnoxious.

Since AndyB responded, I would like to say thank you for the captcha script. I was going to attempt it myself -- but your script was just perfect.
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Im not too keen on Quick Time videos playing - especially automatically. I would much prefer a FLASH video, which doesnt require quick time on the client machine.
Also on my brothers pc here, all I hear is the sound - I dont see any video - probably some codec issue or something.

You might want to test the popups with the popup blockers out there to make sure they work ok.

Rgds,
Steve
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Yeah, client request. I have it turn off when you click something -- or you can turn it off yourself (and it should stay off). Unfortunately it's using H.264 compression. I tried to recompress it but the size jumped to over 20mb. I have asked the client for a more universal compression method, but I don't think I'm going to get it.

So, your version of quicktime is not the latest flavor -- and apparently doesn't know it's not (or doesn't care to tell you). This is probably the most frustrating thing I'm going to run into. The site will detect quicktime. If quicktime is not present, it will use windows media player. The fact that this problem presented itself on your machine means this is going to be a major issue with many other users.

Updating to flash video sounds promising. Do you know of a good method of converting? I have Flash MX2004 (one version back) -- but use it mostly for menus. I haven't done any video with it at all. Also, is flash seseptable to the same codec issues that quicktime is?
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Im afraid I dont know any GOOD methods of importing a avi into flash. It can be done via simple import, however quality and size of flash file come into play.
No - once a video is embdedded into FLASH it should not require any codecs.

-steve
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[!--quoteo(post=386067:date=Jun 20 2006, 10:59 AM:name=michaellunsford)--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE(michaellunsford @ Jun 20 2006, 10:59 AM) [snapback]386067[/snapback][/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--quotec--]
I found a javascript that can detect quicktime version. Hopefully I'll be able to get the detection right enough to not do this anymore.
[/quote]

<personal opinion>
Personally I have to agree with the post above, I am not a big fan of video on the opening page. Remember, on average when you pull someone to your site, you have 5-8 seconds to grab their attention before they will click away. Video does not load that fast.
</personal opinion>
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Tried the site again. It did try to update the player - but it timed out.
I would move to a flash video rather than trying to get javascript to install and detect stuff that I dont want messd with.
Also - why doenst your video work with an old version of quicktime??

Rgds,
Steve
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[!--quoteo(post=386389:date=Jun 21 2006, 08:55 AM:name=steviewdr)--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE(steviewdr @ Jun 21 2006, 08:55 AM) [snapback]386389[/snapback][/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--quotec--]
Why doenst your video work with an old version of quicktime??
[/quote]
codec. It's using H.264 which is brand new. Highly compressed with excellent quality. If it tried to install an update on your system, it's a Microsoft ActiveX "feature" built into the browser.

The bad news is I have absolutely no control over the codec. It is what it is because the client wants it that way (and provided it that way).

That being said. I finally managed to get a quicktime detector that's version sensitive. It won't attempt to install anything on anyone's sytem, it will just default to media player if Quicktime 7 isn't installed.

Anyway, if you could give it another whirl, I'd really like to know if it's working better now.

Thanks!
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eeeeee.
OK - well it picked up on my Windows Media player.
It worked the first time in IE6 and then crashed the browser.
I managed to find out what I done.

While the video is playing - if you click in the address bar, the skin of the player changes and well, it crashed my IE.

In firefox I also clicked in the address bar and the skin changed - but the video stopped.

-steve

Apart from clicking in the address bar - it plays ok in its defauly skin.
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Ha! it's not a skin. I can't get media player to stop using javascript (although I have poured over the problem for weeks). What it is doing is a div rewrite and replaceing the <object><embed> with a plain ole image tag. I probably should use the windows skin instead of the mac skin.

If anyone knows the proper way to stop and restart media player, that would be awesome. So far, it doesn't work at all.


One thing you might look into for me. The movie stops with an onblur event. It restarts with an onfocus event. Because Firefox apparently has issues with onfocus, I have PHP not putting the onfocus script if the browser is Firefox. Internet explorer has always worked on my end so I don't have it excluding the onfocus. So, your crash could be caused by the onfocus onblur event combination trying to remove the media from the page, then reinserting it when you return. If it crashes when you click a link, that's weird. But if it crashes upon return to the page (or closing the popup) that's the rewriting of the object tag. I would be grateful to know which one is causing the issue.

Thanks!
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Well it crashes if I do anything but watch the video.
Buuuuggggggyyyyyyy.
It crashes if I move the mouse over stuff, click on a link etc. etc. The video also tries to restart.
It could be my IE, so you'll have to get testing on different pcs.

-steve
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