Flowplayer 5.0.0

http://flowplayer.org/

by AntonTrollback • 14 years ago

155 65 14 years ago

flowplayer.org

TazeTSchnitzel4• 14 years ago

Really sleek, very nice minimal UI. More "fast and fluid" than Windows 8!

Love it, certainly going to use it when I need a video player. It even has full screen!

Edit: Even better, it's responsive to browser width changes!

tammer• 14 years ago

Agreed. It's all win; testing it on some pretty old hardware and it's really smooth.

mddw4• 14 years ago

To make a <video> responsive, you only have to set its width to 100%... not a big deal.

But yeah, I love flowplayer, it has a nice js API. Too bad it's not IE6 compatible.

TazeTSchnitzel4• 14 years ago

Well, yes, but it's nice to see how flowplayer resizes its interface with browser width on-the-fly.

taylorbuley• 14 years ago

Why on earth do you need IE6 support?

IE6 is not even in the top 12 browsers according to StatCounter.

tipiirai21• 14 years ago

Not really. You obviously need to take care of the height too and it must depend on video dimensions. Other players out there are designed for fixed widths.

dysoco• 14 years ago

Well, that was fast. However, I don't think deleting the pause button is a good idea, yeah: you can click in the screen, but some people might not realize that.

TazeTSchnitzel4• 14 years ago

I think people will figure it out. But it would be interesting to do some usability tests on this.

ams6110• 14 years ago

Well the pause button has been around since tape players and VCRs, I think it's a pretty well established control that people will look for. Why should clicking the video do anything?

recroad• 14 years ago

I just did one for you. It failed.

jannelehtinen• 14 years ago

Yeah, we need to give people some credit... If a dedicated stop button is the only thing left of the legacy tape machines and vcr's left us, then it makes sense to question that, too. Stopping the video by clicking on it is logical when no other options are given and everyone I've seen try this took about 3 seconds to figure it out. This gets even more logical if the video was originally started by clicking it.

Fitt's Law directly tells us how efficient "the video as button" approach is: if we presume that a hypothetical start/stop button is 1/10th of the width of the whole video (which would be one large button!) then the time to navigate to the button can be up to 10 times slower. (Testing this now with Hacker News' minuscule "reply" button.)

With touchscreens becoming more and more common, this probably becomes a standard anyway, as people are now starting to connect interacting with objects with the objects themselves, not with separate buttons.

seiji• 14 years ago

How does this stack up to http://videojs.com?

phase_9• 14 years ago

Anecdotal, I know, but I found VideoJS to be a bit of a mess. From a code point of view, the player instance would not destroy correctly resulting in a memory leak for single-page web apps and IMHO the CSS was a pain to work with.

johnx123-up• 14 years ago

What about http://mediaelementjs.com/ ?

sbarre• 14 years ago

One of the things I love the most about HN is reading the comments on something cool (like Flowplayer) inevitably leads to the discovery of comparable and equally cool things!

Thanks for the link!

tipiirai21• 14 years ago

Same as with videojs, you should compare at what Flowplayer can actually do: http://flowplayer.org/demos/ . There is a difference.

tipiirai21• 14 years ago

VideoJS has done a pretty good job at promoting HTML5 video and giving a viable alternative for Flash.

Flowplayer is not just HTML5 video but common API for video - no matter what the backend is: the VIDEO tag or Flash (for older browsers).

This universal API is for both CSS and JavaScript. Same CSS rules or JavaScript methods apply for both backends. Think of implementing plugins or skins that work on all browsers and devices.

That's not all. A lot of features that were only there for Flash are now available for HTML5: cuepoints, playlists, random seeking, fullscreen, keyboard shortucts.. to name a few. For a full list of features please have a look at:

http://flowplayer.org/why/

Demos: http://flowplayer.org/demos/

Make sure you try with various browsers. Note: iPad support is unbeatable.

Heff• 14 years ago

Actually video.js has had a common API/skin for html5 and flash for a while now.

mddw4• 14 years ago

VideoJs is free (ass free speech), Flowplayer is not : it's a badgeware.

acdha• 14 years ago

Looks nice but I was really hoping for <track> support - based on some recent testing, it appears that currently only mediaelement.js supports both the Flash fallback and support for subtitles / captions.

tipiirai21• 14 years ago

Track element is coming. We thought it was not a blocker for a first release.

Note: I'm one of the developers of Flowplayer.

mfjordvald2• 14 years ago

Some US states require that you caption your streamed content to comply with the American with Disabilities Act.

http://articles.boston.com/2012-06-22/business/32352980_1_di...

I'd honestly say it should have been a blocker but at the least it should be high priority for next release.

supjeff4• 14 years ago

safari 6.0.1 on mountain lion: http://cl.ly/image/0d0V1B1C3V28

woadwarrior01• 14 years ago

Seems to work just fine for me with Safari 6.0.1 on Mountain Lion. https://www.evernote.com/shard/s186/sh/2b0936f2-0581-4b57-96...

supjeff4• 14 years ago

fiddlesticks.

tipiirai21• 14 years ago

Works here too: http://d.pr/i/XRdu

supjeff4• 14 years ago

tabarnac...

davidcollantes• 14 years ago

No issues here, same browser and OS. It seems you have a problem.

supjeff4• 14 years ago

con sarnit...

anssip2• 14 years ago

It forks flawlessly on iPad too, using the same controls as in desktop browsers.

denzil_correa2• 14 years ago

I like the clean design but for some reason by browser hangs up while scrolling through your site.

Safari 5.1.7 on Snow Leopard

tipiirai21• 14 years ago

We currently have an Amazon micro instance! We have static pages served with nginx. Thanks, we're studying these occasional 503 issues.

denzil_correa2• 14 years ago

Uh ... well it is not a 503 issue but looks more a HTML5 issue to me. My browser works absolutely fine when your website is not in one of my tabs.

doctorpangloss• 14 years ago

The dolly shot (the rails shot) near the end stutters on Chrome 21 on Mountain Lion. I think it's probably always stuttering, but it's only really obvious then. Maybe cut the dolly shot?

erikano• 14 years ago

I tried to play the demo videos on my Samsung Galaxy S II (Android 2.3.5), both with Dolphin Browser v8.8.2 and the stock web browser, but it doesn't seem to work in either of them.

TorKlingberg• 14 years ago

Same here. It does not work in the stock Android browser or in Chorme, but it plays in Opera Mobile. It seems like a very basic oversight. I suspect this is the reason YouTube is so dominant: It works reliably everywhere.

tipiirai21• 14 years ago

But not on iPads or environments where Flash is not supported. They have certainly improved here but definitely not reliable everywhere.

And obviously Android we'll make Flowplayer work on stock Android browser. That's a oversight from our part on the initial release.

tipiirai21• 14 years ago

Made Android work with native controls. Similarl to iPhone. Here is a demo:

http://flowplayer.github.com/demo/seek/

This is for upcoming 5.0.1 version.

degenerate• 14 years ago

You guys finally came out with a release that rivals JWplayer. Congrats! I switched from flowplayer to jwplayer when it started to get bloated/buggy in v3. Looks like I might come back for 5 :)

tipiirai21• 14 years ago

Welcome on board!

liamgooding• 14 years ago

Congrats Tero and Anssi, this is such an awesome update! Being on the FP journey over the years has been great, and V5 proves that journey is still very relevant and very exciting!

Going to have a play with it this week for sure.

deepuj• 14 years ago

Does GPL 3 mean that I cannot use it for in my commercial projects?

tipiirai21• 14 years ago

No restrictions. You can use it commercially.

Flowplayer 5.0.0

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