[thelist] client to post video

[Richard Bennett]

On Monday 03 April 2006 01:35, Daryl Brown wrote:
> benefits: 95% install on web connected PC's around the world, no
> proprietary player required,
Firstly, Flash IS proprietary software that you are requiring.

Secondly, I don't know how they find 95% Flash 7 players on a survey... or 89% 
Java penetration in the same survey - that's plain crazy. 

Anyone dealing with customers knows that you have to ask them whether they 
click a blue 'i' to open their internet program because they have no idea at 
all what they are using, and don't even know what a browser is. 
So I figure the second question on the flash penetration survey:
http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/survey/npd_survey/2_info.html
is pretty sure to weed-out any non-technical users. 

I have about 10 computers I manage here, each have 2 or 3 browsers in use, 
being Opera, Firefox and Konqueror . None of those 25 browsers have Flash 8, 
and maybe 3 have Flash 7. All of the computers have a stand-alone media 
player.
The reason for that is that it is only Internet Explorer that constantly bugs 
you with alerts if Flash is not installed - other browsers just display a 
yellow field where the Flash was embedded.
So this means much less irritating advertising on the internet.

OK, I'm probably that 5% left over in the survey. I guess that is why they 
don't claim 100% penetration.

Anyway, I'm not saying you should not use your embedded flash players, by all 
means do, but don't suppose that everyone has chosen to install or upgrade to 
that particular plugin, and can actually see the content.
You can simply offer a link under the flash movie pointing to the mpeg file 
"Open in stand alone player". 
That way people can also download the movie, and they have a choice of which 
viewer they would like to use. 

Ok, rant over.

Richard.

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