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Posted by: baytonemus Jul 10 2008, 10:28 AM

I'm adding video to a site for the first time. I was thinking that QT would probably be the most universal cross-platform format. Of course, the first person I asked to test it for me, (my mother-in-law - the last person I know who still has a dial-up connection), got an error message saying she didn't have it installed.

I'm a Mac user. Doesn't IE automatically install the QT plug? She may also have an older version of IE as well as Windows.

Second question, is IE pretty intolerant of spaces in file names? I had posted a .mov file for testing which I had carelessly not renamed to remove spaces and it wouldn't load in IE6. It's obviously an easy fix but I'm just curious.

Thanks - JAY

Posted by: Frederiek Jul 10 2008, 10:42 AM

No, QuickTime isn't as much integrated on PC as it is on Mac. I'm a Mac user too, but I think PC's rather have Windows Media Player or RealPlayer installed. And I guess they should be able to view a .mov file.

It's always better not to use spaces in file names. Some servers might have problems with them. See (after a quick google search): http://www.netmechanic.com/news/vol6/html_no6.htm.

Posted by: jimlongo Jul 10 2008, 12:47 PM

On a Windows box QuickTime is installed with iTunes, or by itself, but not as part of most factory disk images.

There should be a prompt to install it if it's not already installed, but for a dialup user that could be a glacial download.

Flash is probably the most universally installed video plug-in available, but to deploy it is harder than just embedding a movie. You need some kind of Flash application to produce the flash movie.

If you need some QuickTime embedding pointers you could view http://www.rdiv.com/pages/qtweb_tutorial/documentation/ designed for someone who's never done this before.

Posted by: Darin McGrew Jul 10 2008, 12:48 PM

Spaces in URL should be encoded as %20

All user agents should be able to deal with them then, although the URL won't be as pretty...

Posted by: baytonemus Jul 10 2008, 01:44 PM

Flash is great and I have CS3, but it seems to me that there are lots more updates to deal with. For really inexperienced web users like my parents, those prompts just scare the h*ll out of them. Maybe it would be better in the long run. The updates are much smaller than a QT install, as you alluded to.

Thanks for your input.

Posted by: baytonemus Jul 10 2008, 01:46 PM

You're saying those characters should be part of the file name rather than expecting the browser to add them? If so, yeah, that's ugly.

Thanks.

Posted by: Darin McGrew Jul 10 2008, 02:08 PM

They should be part of the URL.

So if the file is called foo bar.html then the URL should be foo%20bar.html

Posted by: baytonemus Jul 10 2008, 02:15 PM

I'm actually just linking them directly to the file, in this case.

Posted by: Darin McGrew Jul 10 2008, 04:13 PM

If you're linking, then you're linking to a URL. The browser doesn't care whether it's a file on the server's filesystem.

Posted by: deep Sep 25 2008, 10:38 AM

flv is best for me.

Deep

Posted by: Christian J Oct 2 2008, 07:58 AM

Media Player yes, but not RealPlayer.

Posted by: Frederiek Oct 2 2008, 12:42 PM

Yeah, well, thanks for the info. I'm on Mac, as you know ;-)