Here’s a post from the Free IQ Team!
We’ve been busy at Free IQ and just released our new video player!
Check it out by watching Brad Fallon on the vision of Free IQ.
Or see circlecube at Free IQ!
At the surface, the player looks much the same, but as you dig into the secondary functions, you’ll see a slew of enhancements made with you and all freeiq-ers in mind.
The layout has been updated to be more dynamic, more readable and web 2.0 friendly. The graphics got a make-over.
The updates to the playlist have cleaned up the interface and give helpful information about the content. We still get the ReviewRank for each item, and also we can see our personal viewing history, a feature we’re calling the ‘high water mark’. You can see how far into a video you’ve been. This high water mark is also shown in the scrub bar, for returning to where you left off quickly, just click the yellow arrow to return. Also the video currently being played in the player is specified as ‘Now Watching’ (how original).
The author window still displays the author’s portrait, biography and links to the author page. The author biography may contain html- such as links, which help viewers learn more about authors.
The IQPON window connects viewers to providers by giving users access to the content provider’s services!
Sharing options have been improved greatly!
Users may embed content on their own site directly from the player now! By choosing options for auto play and format user’s copy embed codes straight from the player, and paste it into their own site. The normal format uses javascript to ensure maximum compatibility with different browsing software, and the the extra simple format is for embedding content into sites which restrict javascript, such as MySpace and a handful of others, so there is always a way to embed content into your very own space.
Sharing by email is much faster now, as you can send to multiple people at once directly through the player itself (just separate the email addresses with a comma).
Sharing with the web is just as easy! You can copy the link or click your preferred social bookmarking site. Social bookmarking capabilities are built into the player, so with one click you can bookmark content to any of a number of social bookmarking sites (del.icio.us, digg, furl, google bookmarks, magnolia, reddit, stumble upon, technorati, windows live favorites and yahoo! bookmarks) with more to come.
All these methods are used to share content and are useful no matter where the player is embedded!
This player release features updates to the Full Screen mode as well. To take full advantage of the screen size we stretched the control across the bottom of the screen! The control tray will slide away after a few seconds giving access to full screen video playback. To bring the controls back, just more the mouse again.
Volume controls are updated for faster more intuitive interactive control.
By using the internal menu (just right-click to access it) you have access to all options in the player.
Also updated with this release is the integration with Google Analytics! There is new tracking built into the player and best news of all is that the player now supports both versions of the Google Analytics Tracking Code. So whether you’ve updated to the new tracking system or still use the Legacy code, this player logs interactions with the player to your google analytics reports! It will tell you how much people are watching your videos, which ones and how users interact with the player on your site. We’ll post about that later, once you’ve gotten used to your new player!
Another point to mention… if you’re a Free IQ regular and have already embedded content onto your site, the updates are automatic. You have nothing to do to enable these updates! It’s already done!
Enjoy the updates, we put a lot into it!
Let us know any suggestions you have for making the Free IQ video player even better – for you!
APB had the final say on the finishing touches. It came together, although I was suprised that they opted to put so much movement on the page. We set it all up so all speakers have images and videos on their page all in the custom player we built for them… but then they go and embed a youtube video on their homepage… go figure. It came a long way though. Go Web 2.0! Visit American Program Bureau.
