Comments on: Episode 0048: Interview with Grant Oakes, Wedding Photographer and Owner of Tafota.com

By: Forrest Tanaka

Forrest Tanaka — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 20:50:00 +0000

Thanks once again for a most entertaining episode. Grant's thoughts on event photography, a type of photography I've often done, has given me a lot to think about. My comment here addresses a false dichotomy Grant presented regarding the choice photographer's face between using Flash or HTML5, saying that HTML5 is years away from adoption, leaving Flash. However, Flash and HTML5 are not the only choices for photography sites: we also have the existing ubiquitous standards, HTML4 and Javascript. Dave, I looked at davidwarnerstudio.com and saw it has a Flash component for the home page slideshow, and it only shows the missing-plugin icon on an iPhone. You can achieve this same functionality (slideshow with cross dissolves) without Flash or HTML5 by using any of the many easy-to-configure Javascript plugins along with the jQuery Javascript library. It would work on iPhone OS devices, Internet Explorer (even version 6), and the usual great FireFox, Chrome, and Safari for the desktop.

By: Dave Warner

Dave Warner — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 17:43:32 +0000

Thanks for the comments Forrest! On my page, I’m just using a simple Flash image rotation swf. It reads an XML file, which lists the images to be displayed. I know that I could use Javascript, BUT check out the galleries! Haven’t seen any javascript yet that has all that functionality and even if it did, what a LOT of work! I have seen that the JWPlayer folks (the ones I use on LensFlare35 to show the movies) are working on an HTML 5 viewer. So, I’ll have an easy switch (I hope) on this site so that people can see all the content. I’ve already stopped converting movies into Flash and they are all mp4′s, but they are still playing within a Flash player for control. But then, what about all the interactive Flash ads that are out there? It just means LOTS of changes to allow folks to see all my content on every device.

By: Forrest Tanaka

Forrest Tanaka — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 16:50:00 +0000