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Andrew Johnson
Courses Plus Student 12,617 PointsTransparent Video Player UI
I'm not sure if this is where I should put this sort of feedback, but I think that Treehouse's courses (especially the very code-heavy ones, like Jason Seifer's Rails courses) would benefit greatly from a 50%~ opacity video player UI. I understand that the opaque cool grey design we have right now fits with the rest of the site, but when adding tests in sublime, if I pause the video to copy what is being typed I have to do the following...
- Click over to the window
- Click pause/the video
- The UI covers the last thing typed, since it is generally at the bottom of the video.
- Wait for the UI to fade out...
- Type code.
- Click play.
- Miss the next 4-5 seconds of typing, since they're at the bottom and covered by the UI.
- Get behind again.
- Repeat.
I'm sure this sounds very critical, but unless you were following the courses from the position of someone who doesn't know what to type from experience, you wouldn't notice that this could be problematic. I very well may be the only one who actually has this problem anyway, but I thought I might as well point it out just incase someone else thought it was worth trying. Not a deal breaker, just a little distracting. :)
4 Answers
James Ingmire
11,901 PointsYea I agree with the fade out thing, can be quite tedious when pausing lol however a good tip I use is to just press the window key and the left or right arrow key and do the same with sublime so you have each window next to each other not needing to switch between the two. Hope this helps.
Andrew Johnson
Courses Plus Student 12,617 PointsI'm on OSX, but I actually already do something similar to this, I'm just not quite as quick typing as I should be. The videos have a tendency to switch to the command line the moment the teacher is done typing the code in sublime, so, even if you're basically caught up, you couldn't type it fast enough since the change happens so immediately.
James Ingmire
11,901 PointsYea true.
Jason Anello
Courses Plus Student 94,610 PointsWon't the player controls still somewhat obscure the code though?
My personal preference would be to always have the player controls showing but place them below the video. So the top edge of the player controls is aligned with the bottom edge of the video and we don't have anything obstructing our view. Clicking inside the video area can still play/pause the video for convenience.
Similar to how the youtube video player works. I'm not sure if youtube's player controls are actually cutting off the bottom portion of the video but I don't think that has to be the case.
James Ingmire
11,901 PointsYea, that would be better.
Andrew Johnson
Courses Plus Student 12,617 PointsYeah, I just figured the transparency on the UI might be an easier thing to implement. Make it opaque when the cursor is on the video, and when it isn't, immediately fade the opacity, then after a few seconds, fade it out entirely.
James Ingmire
11,901 PointsYea sounds a good idea. By the way, how did you find the Ruby courses compared to the PHP you've done so far. Not started Ruby yet.
Andrew Johnson
Courses Plus Student 12,617 PointsRuby is beautiful. Once you're in the flow, it makes so much sense. Rails? Not so much. Rails is a complete and total mess. I've been told it is wonderful once you've learned the quirks, but because the whole system ( installing gems, different versions of ruby, rails itself ) breaks itself every single time it updates ( one of your gems is probably going to update every 4-5 days, though you have to intentionally install the update, unless you've told it to install itself and and and... ) and becomes completely non-functional, it is horrendously difficult to learn. It takes perseverance, and the test-driven development process used takes forever. But, the additional time taken, means less bugs. So. It's a trade-off for sure.
-Edit: Crap. Didn't meant to post this outside of the replies.
James Ingmire
11,901 PointsThanks sounds like fun, not. OK well thanks for the reply.
Andrew Johnson
Courses Plus Student 12,617 PointsDon't get me wrong, though. Do try it out. Who knows, maybe you'll have a better time than I have. I am extremely glad to be learning it, because it is doing things in 15 minutes that would've taken me 2-3 hours to hand-code in php. You just have to learn what things Rails allows you to control, and what things it does automatically.
Jason Anello
Courses Plus Student 94,610 PointsNot sure if you're comparing something that the Rails framework provides for you versus hand coding that feature in php but that doesn't seem to be a fair comparison.
PHP has frameworks too and this thing that takes 2-3 hours to hand-code in php might take only 15 minutes too with the right php framework.
I don't have any experience with frameworks from either language and so I'm not suggesting php and its frameworks are as good as ruby and its frameworks.
I'm only suggesting that we compare apples to apples.
If you were saying that you could hand code the same thing in ruby in 15 minutes then that's a considerable improvement.
Andrew Johnson
Courses Plus Student 12,617 PointsTrue, but as far as I know, Ruby is only very rarely used without Sinatra or Rails online, and PHP is very very useful as a "snippet" language, since almost every server can read a .php file directly out to the client as HTML. .rb files don't have that luxury. Also, Ruby was built to be quick and easily understood without sacificing power, though it wasn't built for web use like PHP. I could write code in pure ruby that would do the same thing as PHP in a much shorter period of time, assuming that it isn't dealing with any HTTP requests or the like.
Jason Anello
Courses Plus Student 94,610 PointsWell, it's been years since I've dabbled in ruby. I'll have to wait and see once I get back into it after the php stuff.
I have some experience with python (just the language, not any frameworks) and it seems to me pretty powerful and readable.
Thanks for your input on this.
Zeus Intuivo
13,129 PointsIn my case, I applied the transparency in my own side. I solved it in Chrome using an extension called Stylebot, to activate the User Applied CSS to pages. I am sure Firefox can also use User CSS . Then I made a rule like this,
.mejs-container .mejs-controls {
background: rgba(56,64,71,0.98);
bottom: 0px;
right: 30px;
width: auto;
height: 40px;
-moz-border-radius: 5px;
-ms-border-radius: 5px;
-o-border-radius: 5px;
border-radius: 5px;
-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0,0,0,0.1) 0 0 0 1px inset,rgba(0,0,0,0.1) 0 0 5px 5px;
-moz-box-shadow: rgba(0,0,0,0.1) 0 0 0 1px inset,rgba(0,0,0,0.1) 0 0 5px 5px;
box-shadow: rgba(0,0,0,0.1) 0 0 0 1px inset,rgba(0,0,0,0.1) 0 0 5px 5px;
opacity: 0.4;
}
James Ingmire
11,901 PointsClever stuff, never heard of stylebot will be checking that out thanks.
Jason Anello
Courses Plus Student 94,610 PointsJason Anello
Courses Plus Student 94,610 PointsIt's not just you. Others have posted about this.