Decisions around what has been developed and the best options for the future of Synote Mobile.
Synote mobile has been developed as a mobile phone web app as mentioned in the previous blog. It allowed us to play videos, read transcripts and annotations etc. BUT we discovered that much depends on the phone operating system, browser and player as to how much access can be achieved especially in terms of reaching the video player controls and captioning within the web page.
The main comment was that It is easy to navigate around a specifically designed mobile web site and most features can be used in the phones that offer the access as of Sept 2012.
video on a mobile - top view
However, testing also showed it is possible to work with the videos available on the Synote linkeddata site on a smaller screen – 3.5 inches. It may take three scrolls to reach the bottom and require some horizontal scrolling depending on whether one is viewing in portrait or landscape mode.
When it comes to outputs – It is possible to add a transcript and annotations – small fingers and delicate typing required!
The main comment was that the site we have at present could be improved with further work – more responsive designing required.
So…
video on the mobile - second scroll
Should we offer two versions – one for desktop/tablet and then a separate version for the mobile? In other words two websites linking to one media collection – this would allow for an improved user experience on the mobile but mean that two versions need to be maintained.
Or …
Offer one website that is developed in a responsive manner – all the interactions would be available but some may be harder to achieve on a small screen.
Decision…
If time was not an issue it would be preferable to develop two sites as a final output – one specifically for the mobile phone. However, with all the changes occurring with aspects of online video streaming and HTML5 standards it would appear wiser to spend time on making a version of Synote mobile that is as responsive as possible – working on all platforms whatever the size of screen.
Just as a final point and an illustration of the constantly changing scene…
Recent updates on video streaming would now allow us to use an Apple streaming video server that would appear to allow for captioning on the iPhone whereas at present this is not possible with YouTube videos.