September 29, 2011

Scientific American`s Video Player and Pages Receive a Makeover

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This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American

In a previous post I introduced Scientific American‘s new slide show pages and teased that our video page redesign would be next to launch. Today I’m pleased to announce that our new video pages are live. Our previous video page was a giant Flash-based media player. It had tabs at the top to help users navigate to videos on select topics as well as related links at the bottom but that was the extent of the functionality. The new pages enable more navigation options, easier sharing and commenting.

Video page prior to September redesign

Also, when we launched this page several years ago it was acceptable to rely on a Flash player. Since the arrival of the iPhone, iPad and other devices that do not support Flash, this is no longer the case. As devices have evolved, so has the technology. We are now able to offer video players via HTML5 (the latest generation of the web programming standard). This means that our videos now play on these devices.

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The new page design enables more navigation options, easier sharing and commenting.

We have also created a unique page for every video. This makes it easier for readers to share our videos by email or on social networks. Unique pages also allow us to enable commenting.

The tabs on the original player were a feature that we wanted to preserve and expand, so we created a module for exploring our videos by category as well as by type to provide readers and visitors with easy access to all our videos and our “Scientific American Exclusive” videos as well.

Take a look at our most recent SA video “New York City’s ‘Ring of Steel’: Motion Capture” and let us know what you think of the new video player and pages.

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