Federico was the only other kid on the block with a dedicated ISDN line, so I gave him a call. It had taken six hours of interminable waiting (peppered with frantic bouts of cursing), but I had just watched 60 choppy seconds of the original Macintosh TV commercial in Firefox, and I had to tell someone. It blew my mind.
Video on the Web has improved quite a bit since that first jittery low-res commercial I watched on my Quadra 605 back in 7th grade. But for the most part, videos are still separate from the Web, cordoned off by iframes and Flash and bottled up in little windows in the center of the page. They’re a missed opportunity for Web designers everywhere.
But how do you integrate video into an app or a marketing page? What would it look like, and how do you implement it? In this article, you will find inspiration, how-tos and a few technical goodies to get you started with modern video on the Web.
When Video Leaves Its Cage
Video combined with animation is a powerful tool for innovative and compelling user experiences. Imagine interactive screencasts and tutorials in which DOM elements flow and move around the page in sync with the instructor. Why not combine video with animation to walk new users through your app? Or what about including videos of your product on your marketing page, instead of static JPEGs? Getting carried away is easy — video can become little more than sophisticated blink tags if you’re not careful. But there are plenty of beautiful, inspiring examples of video tightly integrated in a design.
Apple’s new marketing page for the Mac Pro is a stunning example of video reaching out from its cage into the surrounding content. The new Mac Pro is featured in the center of the page, and as you scroll, it swoops and spins and disassembles itself. Supporting copy fades in to describe what you are seeing.
A static screenshot of the new landing page doesn’t do the new Mac Pro justice. (larger view)
Another great example of interactive video is Adrian Holovaty’s Soundslice. Soundslice is filled with YouTube videos of music sliced and diced into tablature (or tabs), which is notation that guitar players use to learn music.
The musical bars at the bottom stay in sync with the video. (larger view)
When you watch a music video, the tabs are animated at the bottom in time with the music, so that you can play along with your guitar. You can even slow down the video or loop selections to practice difficult sections, and the tab animation will stay in sync.
How Do You Add Video To A Design?
If you venture into video and animation in your next project, you won’t have many resources to lean on for implementation. No canonical, easy-to-use, open-source library for syncing video with animation exists, so every implementation is a bit different. Should you use a JavaScript animation library or pure CSS keyframes and transitions? Should you host the videos yourself and take advantage of HTML5’s video tag events or use YouTube or Vimeo? And then how exactly do you tie animations to a video?
Together, we will explore answers to the above-mentioned questions and more as we build our own micro JavaScript framework. Charlie.js provides an easy-to-use API for building pages with synchronized video and CSS3 animation.
Charlie.js, named in honor of Charlie Chaplin. (Image source)
The best way to learn is by doing, so let’s dive in.
