Recent Reading (Analytics, WordPress Short Codes, Jira, JavaScript Videos, Protocol Relative URLS, Facebook)

February 11th, 2010 by Rob Larsen

There's a lot of content this week, including about 5 hours of video embedded right in the page for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy.

Analytics – The Usability Lab of the new decade

Peter Merholz from Adaptive Path talks up analytics. Don't I feel like a smart guy with all my fancy analytics experience?

That's probably something I don't talk enough about here- analytics. I've got a ton of experience with both Omniture and Google Analytics, doing some pretty advanced work. I should share that.

Anyway, good article talking about the UX benefits of analytics data. Check it out.

Short Code resources

This is a little resource page from one of the WordCamp Boston Ingite talks. Wordpress Short Codes are clearly awesome and I don't use them enough. I aim to change that.

I'm actually using them for the table of contents on my ongoing How To Make a Web Site series.
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HTML5 Demo: Tracking Video Progress With Google Analytics

September 10th, 2009 by Rob Larsen

There's a back story to this one. I once failed to get video progress tracking working with a Flash video player and Big Expensive Analytics Company™ code. It was a real pain in the ass. We missed the deadline, wasted about 8 hours and eventually just dropped the feature. A frustrating experience for all involved.

With that in mind, then, it should come to no surprise that I returned to the problem when exploring the <video> element and related APIs. What was a fruitless 8 hours of hoping the Big Expensive Analytics Company™ code would "just work," turned out to be about 30 minutes of light hacking to get it up and running with Google Analytics and HTML5.

By the way, between you and me the Big Expensive Analytics Company™ code never "just works," even though that kind of feature is one of the reasons they get the big bucks for their product. I don't really like working with Big Expensive Analytics Company™. I'm much happier with GA. It behaves as expected and is a lot easier to "get" right out of the box.

Anyway, here's what I did. It's hack-y, but works:
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HTML 5 Notes: The Video Element Rocks

August 26th, 2009 by Rob Larsen

Now if we could just get everyone to support it.
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HTML 5 Notes: In Case a Client Asks… No Full Screen Video

August 25th, 2009 by Rob Larsen

I'm going to be posting a series of notes on the production of my first HTML 5 demo page. I'm doing a presentation on it at work (to be shared here, of course) and I want to capture my thoughts as I have them in the process of producing some fully formed HTML5 content.

One of the things I'm looking at with interest is the new Video element. Anything that simplifies embedding video on a web page gets a thumbs up in my book.
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