Dear The CW: GRADE F - Video Player User Experience

My wife and I do not subscribe to cable.  We subscribe to Netflix and use the instant play a few times a week for "catalog" shows.  For current shows, we use Hulu.  However for my wife's Gossip Girl obcession Hulu sends you to CW network website.  The CW offers recent episodes with commercials cut into the normal broadcast commercial breaks.  This is normal and expected for "free" content and I'm not bothered by it.

My first impressions of the CW network's video player is that is a step up from Netflix because the CW uses Flash instead of Silverlight that Netflix uses (yeah, it's the web developer in me).  The honeymoon lasted all of 20 minutes because their player user experience is down right frustrating.

The player has all the normal features you see at Hulu and Netflix: full screen, pause ability and chapter navigation.  It fails in most areas which I'll get into later.  The first question I ask of the CW about their video player is: Why do you bother offering video online at all?

The user experience is horrible not to mention the bugs it has.  Let's get into the user experience before the bugs:

• Duirng commercial breaks, you cannot pause the video, exit full screen or change/mute the volumn.  FAIL: I can understand not letting people not watch the commercials, but to hold a computer hostage by not allowing pause or muting is horrible.


• When the player actually works long enough to finish an episode, the behavior is to play the previous episode in the season instead of the next available episode. FAIL: Why would the default behavior to play episode 2 if you just finished episode 3?  I just watched episode 2 before finishing episode 3!


• When you start an episode, a series of commercials plays.  During this period you cannot put the player into full screen mode. FAIL: Why do I have to wait to put the video into full screen until the actual show starts?


• If you stop an episode or experience a player bug where you have to restart an episode in the middle, you cannot do that easily because you have watch the commercial breaks that ensued before the section you want.  FAIL: So if the player fails in the fourth act, you have watch the initial commercial series, click to the fourth act, watch break #1, notice that now the player decided to start in the second act, click to the fourth act, watch break #2, notice that now the player decided to start in the third act, click on the fourth act, watch break #3 and then the fourth act starts.  Hopefully the player didn't mess up with a "bug" during all of this and you have to restart the process again.

For unkown reasons, the video player behaves badly:

• Sometimes the episode just ends in the middle (from 1 -39 minutes) and it stops and just starts playing the previous episode as if the episode ended.  This usually happens 1-2 times per episode.


• Sometimes during the commercial breaks, it plays the same series of commercials two, three or four times.  So you end up with 6-9 minutes of commercials.  If I was an advertiser on the CW online video network, I'd be upset for all the additional times I'm paying for these plays.


• Sometimes the player just hangs.  No message that "your internet connection slows" or anything.  We have solid 6MB internet connection and it plays HD from Netflix and Hulu just fine.  Getting back to where you were is just a PITA as I outlined above.

Ultimately, the CW does not care if people can actually watch content from their network.  Dare I say all they care is repeated watching of commercials to get money from advertises. Bottom line is their player sucks.

User Experience

F

YAF - Yet Another Framework: Giftware Versus Open Source

With the seasons changing and Fall fast approaching, it must be time for yet another framework (YAF) to show signs in the CFML world.  I'll give credit for this post to a tweet from Matthew Reinbold:

Playing with new ColdFusion framework that still is in stealth mode. Do programmers need another MVC/ORM set of scaffolding? Let's find out.

Before I take issue with having another framework pop up in the CFML world and why I feel that it is possibly detrimental to our small sect of programmers, I want take issue -- moreover -- more notice to the word "stealth" in the tweet.  What bothers me there is a big difference between developing a framework for internal / personal use versus public consumption.  If I was developing an internal "framework" for my personal use, having input from possible users of my "framework" really would not matter.  I would be using it for my own needs; Programmer Paul doesn't need to put his own two cents on how feature Z should work.  On the flip side, developing a framework for public consumption in a vacuum (i.e. "stealth" mode) is less than beneficial to all parties that possibly would use the framework.  Therefore if Programmer Paul had interest in what I was doing, his knowledge can only make the "framework" better.  This means that public interaction, even if it's just one person, is beneficial.  You can't pay somebody enough to give you bold and honest views on stuff.  This begs the question: How do you make somebody care?

Developing transparently is key to building an user base.  Without transparency in a project, you cannot call yourself an open-source project.  I've found out in that most developers consider the main tenant of open source is that the code is freely available (i.e. the "license").  Giving users the software for free where the software is developed in a vacuum and there is limited means or encouragement to contribute back to the project is merely giftware*. Open source is much more than the license; it's about philosophy on how software should be developed and a community that rallies behind it.

The big different, other than transparency in developing software in the open, is that interested parties will help you develop new features if you let them be "shareholders" of the project.  As with anything in life, nobody cannot care about everything.  Humans weren't designed to function that way.  We make hundreds of decisions everyday on what we spend our time on, what is important to us and what we do so we are happy individuals.  This is no different in open source software.  Consider this situation:

If Developer Dave uses Project Perfect and finds a Big Bug, what encourages Developer Dave to contribute his fix back to the Perfect Project instead of just working the next Alluring Application that will make millions when it hits the world?

The answer to this is: nothing.  Unless you are financially tied to open source to make a living, most developers don't count themselves shareholders in the project because they don't own it.  Whereas if the project  helps you succeed at your job, there is a reason to become involved in some of these projects.  This is where being transparent, making people's opinions count and accepting (acceptable / valid) contributions into a project makes everybody in your user base a potential shareholder and champion of your project.  Making this conversion of your user base to shareholders is something that needs to be cultivated from the start of the project.  It's nearly impossible to make conversions when your project starts in "stealth" mode because it sets the "tone" of the project from the start.  Transparency is the biggest reason in my book why 99% of all CFML "open source" projects are just giftware and will always be one-man operations.  Giftware is just viewed by "Developer Dave" as a free tool where open source is more -- it's a community of like minded folks using the tool.  All in all, the side effect is a better software.

Therefore if you make philosophy and transparency #1 on your list, will you see your project succeed (provided it's a good tool too).  Otherwise, you'll just be YAF that gets forgotten in 6 months time.

* I want to attribute the term "giftware" to by good friend Matt Woodward.  I heard it applied by him first so I can't take credit on the term.