Browsers vs. 6 Video Sharing Sites
Entertainment and informational video hosting services, such as YouTube, Blip.tv, etc. can play quite a huge role in today’s people life. As millions of visitors spend more and more time on those sites, it’s time to see, which web browser works and which doesn’t. Yes, we are talking about compatibility here, from the most visited and popular sites, to not so well known.
For traffic stats, we are going to use Compete.com, 04/2009 data. As per my personal experience, actual numbers can be more than 10x times higher than reported. At least, that’s the case of FavBrowsr.com
1. YouTube.com – 78 million visitors / month
Video: Best Jaguar Commercial
Every browser works fine
2. MetaCafe.com – 5.7 million visitors/ month
Video: The Snail (Remi Gaillard)
Every browser works fine
3. DailyMotion.com – 5 million visitors / month
Video: Gigi D’Agostino – La Passion
Every browser works fine
4. Blip.tv – 4 million visitors / month
Video: Caramel Candy Apple Martini
Internet Explorer 8.0, Firefox 3.0.10, Safari 4 Beta, Google Chrome 2 works fine
Opera 9.64 / Opera 10 Beta
Full screen button doesn’t work, pauses video instead
5. Vimeo.com – 3.8 million visitors / month
Video: You are the Devil
Every browser works fine
6. GameTrailers.com – 800k visitors / month (per whole site)
Video: Duke Nukem Forever gameplay Leaked
Internet Explorer 8.0, Firefox 3.0.10, Safari 4 Beta, Google Chrome 2 works fine
Opera 9.64
Full screen button doesn’t work.
Opera 10 Beta
Automatically turns full screen on after opening link. Controls work fine.
Conclusions
Not much to say here, really. All web browsers were working fine with the most popular video sharing sites, expect for Blip.tv on Opera. Although there were issues with GameTrailers.com as well, v10 Beta has shown some nice improvements which will benefit this browser users.
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About (Author Profile)
Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism career back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.
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gametrailers on opera has a fair share of issues:
– wmv downloads in opera often do not work, while the same file is downloadable with firefox
– full page zoom does not work with their flash/video player, again works ok in firefox
there are several minor youtube issues in opera as well
I blame Adobe.
for what? that full page zoom in any other browsers works ok, and fails in opera on gametrailers? how it is adobe’ fault?
place where opera really fails is youtube embeds. most of them wont play, saying ‘sorry, that video is unavailable’. yet you launch the same page in any other browser – and bang, it works.. that is also adobe’ fault?
How is it Adobe’s fault… hmmm, lets see… they have all the versions and the developers tools used on all of the major browsers and repeatedly it has gotten so that 1 or 2 browsers work and the others don’t, and the ones that have the problems are the ones like Opera and Firefox who are the most standards compliant.
Coders who have broken the terms of use and have hacked on Flash and Shockwave have often found that the fixes take minutes to write and implement and almost always are caused by Adobe breaking their own standards or the webs so IE and certain modified versions of it work by coding for the breaking in standards and quirks in the IE code, which they then modify to work with all the other browser engines.
Opera makes their browser by the rules, and then codes for all the tweaks that break the rules in other browsers, as Firefox does to an extent.
Adobe is not alone… Google also does this with the exception that they do go the extra step and make sure their favourite browser, Firefox, was also coded for, but leaving Opera and other browsers with malfunctioning and broken pages, that are often fixed with a single line of UserJS(Greasemonkey)code that amature and proffesional coders pop out in under 15 minutes of figuring out what is wrong with the page.
As for the GameTrailers page I have read that it is caused by custom Ajax code added to the webpage for the player that malfunctions when Opera tries to run it like IE because that is what the page was coded for.
Adobe has to adhere to Netscape Plugin Architecture, and they do. Opera always had problems with flash – on linux, on windows, everywhere. and it is opera itself to blame for majority of these problems. not adobe. Opera understands Netscape plugin standard a bit differently than all other browsers – plugins fail accordingly (silverlight is also the victim – slverlight fails even WITHOUT browser snifing)
“Adobe is not alone… Google also does this with the exception that they do go the extra step and make sure their favourite browser, Firefox, was also coded for, but leaving Opera and other browsers with malfunctioning and broken pages, that are often fixed with a single line of UserJS(Greasemonkey)code that amature and proffesional coders pop out in under 15 minutes of figuring out what is wrong with the page.”
have you ever checked what kind of fixes are there in userJS files? it is 50/50 for google and opera bugs. opera is to blame also, fascinating fact is, that google fixes their problems sooner or later, opera still hasnt got ‘oncontextmenu’ support, so you CANT set directions on google maps. it is opera deliberate decision NOT TO support this event breaks more than one major page (all that use right click)
“”As for the GameTrailers page I have read that it is caused by custom Ajax code added to the webpage for the player that malfunctions when Opera tries to run it like IE because that is what the page was coded for.””
any link for that? gametrailers for what ive checked is very neatly written page and i cant believe that they did something as brutal as not forked a code for IE and others..