The return to Sherwood

I can not tell you how happy I am to find this great piece of work. Modx is the future.
However having siad that I believe I must relate the following and allow you to mull it over and consider it as it lays on the future and the fate of modx.

The iPhone and iPad even with the googlers on their heels are setting the standard. Albeit an immovable one and hence counter to evolution.

In developing my own site at videofeedback.com I have struggled of late to bring my site to that crowd. And admittedly out of a sense of greed to enjoin the apps store I pursued their way of doing business.

Recently it dawned on me that they have already given the tools up that will allow any website to post media for playback. It is the quicktime player. Both Flash and Quicktime meet with the MP4 file type.

I admire your efforts here enormously and wish I had been here sooner. Please forgive me for having been resting on my laurels and not finding you sooner. And to find this great piece of work to be nearly at a final code freeze version, it pains me, as this posting will bring pain to all of you, but I believe I must pass on to you that modx needs to be able to discern between flash based users and quicktime users for it’s own good.

If it already is, and I am deficient in knowledge about modx, please forgive my oversight. I have not had time recently to keep up and familiarize myself properly with this work.

But for modx to champion media playback on the web in a ubiquitous fashion, I do believe I have to suggest the above. If modx does not, it may suffer an undesirable fate.

I bow humbly before all of you.

"I shall return..."
-O.Henry VFB cb

This is not the role of modx it is the role of the developer of the site to make sure it works on all formats. IMHO I believe modx based sites are as capable of doing this as any other you just code your site accordingly as you would with managing to cope with different browsers.

Agreed, but for those who do not know how to code for the iphone and hence embed a quicktime movie for playback,
I offer the following:

First this iPhone "safari" browser detection script (place it in the head section just below your meta tag description of your site and before the title arrowpoints, on say an index page that will forward/redirect surfer to the quicktime playback page):

<script language=javascript>

<!--

if((navigator.userAgent.match(/iPhone/i)) || (navigator.userAgent.match(/iPod/i)))

{

location.replace("http://www.yourwebsite.com/folder/iphoneindex.htm");

}

-->

</script>




Second you need this apple javascript to avoid issues on the re-direct landing page:





<script src="AC_QuickTime.js" language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
</script>

<title>notfubarred.com</title>

<script language="javascript">
var ua = navigator.userAgent ;
if (ua.indexOf("iPhone") > 0) document.location.replace("TheMandarinMystery_512kb.mp4");
</script>



Here’s a link to grab your own copy of the .JS file:
http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/samplecode/HTML_video_example/listing1.html


Third embed the movie with desriable params:

<!-- begin embedded QuickTime file... -->
<table border=’0’ cellpadding=’0’ align="center">
<!-- begin video window... -->
<tr><td>
<script language="javascript">
QT_WriteOBJECT(’TheMandarinMystery_512kb.mp4’, ’Width’,’Height+16’, ’’, ’autoplay’, ’false’);
</script>


</td></tr>
<!-- ...end embedded QuickTime file -->


And fourth, for those into smil files, you can swap the URL of the .mov with a smil file playlist, or so I am told, and about to pursue to see if it is in fact true.

Outie and cheers,

-VFB cb

Sorry,

Here is the link to the Apple .JS file. The link above is useful to coders but this link takes you to the actual file downlaod:
http://developer.apple.com/internet/licensejs.html

One more time,
And a tip O’ the Hatlo’s Hat.

VFB cb