Adblock Plus and (a little) more
Adblock Plus screencast online · 2009-03-13 16:02 by Wladimir Palant
Ian Ozsvald and Richard Mitchelson from ProCasts offered me to create a screencast for Adblock Plus. They then went on analyzing what potential users need to know and the result is quite remarkable:
I like it a lot how this video manages to show all the important steps for a new user and to indicate where additional information can be found — all in slightly more than 1 minute. I added this video to the front page of adblockplus.org and I hope that far fewer people will be confused now about what Adblock Plus is and how you “make it work”.
One thing that I would like to improve is the format of the video. In a few months Firefox 3.5 will be out which means that most of adblockplus.org visitors will be able to view Ogg Theora videos with a consistent user interface and without needing codecs/plugins. I already asked Ian Ozsvald for an Ogg Theora version of the video. Ideally I want to present the (lower quality) YouTube/Flash version only to people using old browsers. Only question is where the Ogg version of the video will be hosted — but if the amount of traffic isn’t much higher than what I expect it should be possible to just host it on adblockplus.org.
Update (2009-03-17): After hitting bug 449156, bug 449358 and bug 464272 I think that using the HTML5 <video> tag can wait a little. Maybe until Firefox 3.6.
Comment [9]
Commenting is closed for this article.
dave · 2009-03-13 17:28 · #
The resolution is a bit small, a Youtube HD video would be better. But never look a gift horse in the mouth. ;-)
Ian Ozsvald · 2009-03-13 18:55 · #
@dave I hear you! We weren’t sure how to do an HD version but it looks like we just have to export it at a higher resolution…I’ll see if we can do that over the weekend.
H264, mobile-ready (iPhone) and Ogg Theora versions should follow too.
Ian.
jason · 2009-03-13 20:19 · #
You could use Chris Double’s tinyvid site to host the ogg video. He even has a built in a fallback mechanism for browsers that don’t support HTML5 video.
Adrian · 2009-03-13 22:21 · #
In any explication of AdBlock, even this concise and well-done vidtut, I’d like to see it stressed that users can always choose to allow ads at any site with one simple click on the AdBlock Plus icon.
This critical feature allows any site one finds deserving to continue to receive ad revenue—at least that is my understanding.
Nukeador · 2009-03-13 23:19 · #
An Ogg version would be cool because we can overlay subtitles in different languages or even create a translated audio for it.
Ian Ozsvald · 2009-03-14 17:34 · #
@Nukeador I’ve provided an .ogv version to Wladimir, it is also available directly via our examples page. This is the current ogv link.
I see that YouTube lets us upload subtitles, I’ll see if I can create at least an English set of subtitles. If I can (and if YouTube lets me) I’ll accept others.
@Adrian we wanted to make the shortest video that would work for 80-90% of the viewers, so we opted to keep the message simple. Perhaps others would comment on whether the video does the right job, or ought to mention more things?
I have an HD version on my list to try later in the week.
Cheers,
Ian.
dave · 2009-03-14 18:18 · #
Since this is meant to be a marketing screencast, I think the length and content is enough. You tell the viewer, where he can find more detailed information, this should suffice.
Perhaps you could show the URL while introducing adblockplus.org, so that viewers find this site without misunderstandings.
But apart from that, it is a very nice video, that will help new users. Great work!
PS: You should also metion somewhere, that Adblock Plus is a add-on for the web-browser Firefox.
BenoitRen · 2009-03-14 19:48 · #
@dave
Not only Firefox, but SeaMonkey, K-Meleon, Flock, and maybe others, as well.
Ian Ashton · 2009-06-21 23:16 · #
When will there be a version for FF 3.5?
Reply from Wladimir Palant:
There is one since April: https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/1865