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So, as part of my development of iwatchthis.com, I've been researching the various video sites out there. Youtube, Google Video, and most of the minor sites out there does this is a fairly similar way. Almost everybody uses a flash player (With DivX as a honorable exception, requiring a download, but providing high-res content), so I guess you could attribute the video boom to Macromedia/Adobe, who made this trivial in recent versions.
Apart from that, some sites do blunders in navigation, sometimes going overboard with AJAX :) Others have sucky title-tags, Most of them tries to lead you into their site by showing you related videos, Lots of them use tags to caterize content, alot of them provide a comment system. All in all, the content is the largest differentiator for these sites, with some getting bonus points for good design solutions.
Last week, I worked on adding support for http://vids.myspace.com on http://iwatchthis.com/. Despite their trademark hideous design, they also mostly fall into the above group. The 'Myspace.com' title that appears on every video page isn't really search-engine or bookmark friendly, but that's a fairly common mistake in this segment. This week however, I'm looking at a site that's really decided to reinvent the whole concept of video sites.
Fair enough, http://video.msn.com/ does sport a Beta tag, but in recent years, we've come accustomed to seeing those on several web apps out there, and it's a bleak excuse for major design flaws. Screwing bookmarkability and navigation is just the start of it.
Welcome to AJAX hell. Leave your 'back' button at the door. Of course, MS provides a patch for this problem.. However rather than using the common 'bookmark this' link to give a bookmarkable URL, they do a neat bit of Javascript fuckery to open your browser's bookmark toolbar. Never mind that some of us like to use online bookmark managers like magnolia,delicious or stumbleupon. Scratch that. never mind that the javascript pile of crap actually bookmarks whatever page you landed on in the video site, be it the frontpage or some video link a friend sent you, not the video you are currently watching. Admittedly, I am a Firefox user on a Mac, and this app might be shooting sparks out of it's ass in MSIE 7, but I didn't get very impressed.
On my test of the site, they also seemed to have some serious infrastructure issues. When I tried to watch some of the music videos listed on the sidebar menu, I got a screen says 'The Video you requested is not available'. They did manage to show me the ad first tho. While we're on the subject of ads, Microsoft's use of AJAX has facilitated another "innovation". You can't switch videos during ad play. It just ignores the click. This means that if you change your mind about which video you want to see just after clicking the link, you have to wait while the 10-15 video sequence plays, then watch another 10-15 sequence before you hopefully get to the content you wanted to see.
After the 'not available' video, MSN Video goes on to display another neat "feature". Rather than giving me the option to pick some related content to continue with, MSN picks for me, determining that the appropriate followup to not seeing a Pink video was a report from the Anna Nichole Smith verdict, the current non-issue raging in the US press. Gee, thank you Microsoft!
As a final insult, MSN has decided that the 'embed' feature that every other site out there provides to allow videos embedded in blogs and other web sites was a blind path. That means I don't get to refuse to support them on iwatchthis, they've refused to support me. Oh well. I wish MS good luck on their continued voyage as a iceberg floating through cyberspace, isolated from all the others. Wonder why they fear Google, huh?
Apart from that, some sites do blunders in navigation, sometimes going overboard with AJAX :) Others have sucky title-tags, Most of them tries to lead you into their site by showing you related videos, Lots of them use tags to caterize content, alot of them provide a comment system. All in all, the content is the largest differentiator for these sites, with some getting bonus points for good design solutions.
Last week, I worked on adding support for http://vids.myspace.com on http://iwatchthis.com/. Despite their trademark hideous design, they also mostly fall into the above group. The 'Myspace.com' title that appears on every video page isn't really search-engine or bookmark friendly, but that's a fairly common mistake in this segment. This week however, I'm looking at a site that's really decided to reinvent the whole concept of video sites.
Fair enough, http://video.msn.com/ does sport a Beta tag, but in recent years, we've come accustomed to seeing those on several web apps out there, and it's a bleak excuse for major design flaws. Screwing bookmarkability and navigation is just the start of it.
Welcome to AJAX hell. Leave your 'back' button at the door. Of course, MS provides a patch for this problem.. However rather than using the common 'bookmark this' link to give a bookmarkable URL, they do a neat bit of Javascript fuckery to open your browser's bookmark toolbar. Never mind that some of us like to use online bookmark managers like magnolia,delicious or stumbleupon. Scratch that. never mind that the javascript pile of crap actually bookmarks whatever page you landed on in the video site, be it the frontpage or some video link a friend sent you, not the video you are currently watching. Admittedly, I am a Firefox user on a Mac, and this app might be shooting sparks out of it's ass in MSIE 7, but I didn't get very impressed.
On my test of the site, they also seemed to have some serious infrastructure issues. When I tried to watch some of the music videos listed on the sidebar menu, I got a screen says 'The Video you requested is not available'. They did manage to show me the ad first tho. While we're on the subject of ads, Microsoft's use of AJAX has facilitated another "innovation". You can't switch videos during ad play. It just ignores the click. This means that if you change your mind about which video you want to see just after clicking the link, you have to wait while the 10-15 video sequence plays, then watch another 10-15 sequence before you hopefully get to the content you wanted to see.
After the 'not available' video, MSN Video goes on to display another neat "feature". Rather than giving me the option to pick some related content to continue with, MSN picks for me, determining that the appropriate followup to not seeing a Pink video was a report from the Anna Nichole Smith verdict, the current non-issue raging in the US press. Gee, thank you Microsoft!
As a final insult, MSN has decided that the 'embed' feature that every other site out there provides to allow videos embedded in blogs and other web sites was a blind path. That means I don't get to refuse to support them on iwatchthis, they've refused to support me. Oh well. I wish MS good luck on their continued voyage as a iceberg floating through cyberspace, isolated from all the others. Wonder why they fear Google, huh?
