I am trying to find a web hosting site that is NOT optimsed for windows explorer. I was told I should use godaddy.com for the domain name. That went well until elected to take the option of using the web hosting and site design site that they offered. "Website Tonight" I spent 2 hours fighting with trying to re-arange the web site and having it send me popups and kicking me out over and over again till I called them back.

The tech asked me if I was using windows explorer. I had been using netscape. He informed me that the site was optimised for explorer and that it is not compatable with netscape, aol or most of all OSX unless you have windows explorer. I hate windows explorer because it is the most suceptable to viruses of any program on a PC and can not be removed from the @#$!R&^ machine. There is no way in hell I am putting it onto my Mac.

I got a refund for the Website Tonight but still own the domain through Godaddy as they don't give refunds on those. So, can anyone suggest what exatcly I should do next. I am kind of new to putting video on the web and could use some guidence. Thanks!

you want to design your website on your mac, not over the internet, so look for reviews on website design software, or buy a cheap site that has already been designed.

once you get the site looking good on your mac, you can upload it to your web host.

and you need to be aware that the vast majority of people on the internet use internet explorer(well over 90%?), so you'll want your website to look good and work well on that browser... so at least test it on another computer.

also be aware that only ~4% of the desktop computers on the internet are mac-based... so don't let your computing platform preferences or browser preferences interfere with communicating your point to others.

As far as design your on your own but I do own a hosting company if your interested in a web host. Some sites I host:
expertmagic.com
macgpspro.com
tristatetuners.com

As you'll see they are quite fast. Not trying to advertise but if you want hosting just e-mail or PM me for me info.

Thanks,
Eric James

Thanks Dan! That is very informative. I guess that kinda makes it a little bit more difficult. However, the issues I have with explorer are probably the being had by plenty of other poeple. For instance. I had this problem of my homepage on explorer being constantly reset to something else. I could not make it stop no matter what I did. Then it started putting up strange toolbars and I could not get rid of them. It would redirect me everywhere but where I wanted to go on the net.

So I got Netscape and that problem was no longer an issue. However, I could not get rid of the viruses and they still kept putting things back on my computer. The virus software would get rid of it and the very same virus name would be right back on my computer within minutes. I have not used explorer in over a year but the problems never went away. I finally had to erase and reload everything to get rid fo the problem and it has not returned since. That was about 2 weeks ago. But I still do not use explorer.

That being said, since Netscape and other internet browsers, do not seem to have such problems while still allowing me to search the net with ease. Is it possible to make a web page on my mac without putting anything windows explorer on my Mac? I need to be able to put video clips online. I could post quicktimes with the Mac and then put windows media player files on by first transfering them to my PC.

I am still confussed as heck about this. I think we may see some drastic changes with the advent of Mozzilla and Firefox.

Cleveland, all Dan was trying to say is that you need to make sure you don't make your website unusable to IE users on PCs. For basic sites you should be fine. It is when you get into higher level CSS and JavaScript that you encounter more issues as IE is less compliant with standards. As long as your site is pretty basic and has a QT and Windows Media version of your videos, you should be fine.

That said, you should test your site on PCs with IE, Netscape and possibly FireFox. On a Mac test with IE and Safari. In general Netscape, FireFox and Safari show web pages the same way and IE PC and IE Mac are a little different.

How HTML works: You write "code" in HTML, but really it is just text with some special symbols thrown in to tell the browser how to disply your text and images. The problem is that, even though there are standards for how to display this "code", not everyone does it the same way. That is why you need to test. Just because stuff looks right on your Mac using Safari, doesn't mean it will look the same on your Mac using Netscape, or on a PC using IE. This is why good web developers get paid good money... they know all of the tricks to get stuff to work on multiple browsers...

Mark,

Thanks very much for the attitude adjustment. I think there is a lot more to the endeavor of learning that aspect of things than I initially thought. Right now I am spending so much time learning other things that your suggesion of paying someone to do that for me sounds like an old Ford sloagan.

Mark has a better idea. Get someone else to do it faster and better. So I can worry about production.

Dan I meant no offense to you with my last post and appreciate the help.

You need to make it W3C compliant. FireFox is the best browser currently out for displaying proper HTML and XHTML but it even has differences on Mac and PC's.
It sounds like the se.dll or "about:blank" virus/trojan. Nasty little booger! I spent several hours at a friends house trying to get it off his PC yesterday. It is horrible! I think I got it fixed but I downloaded FireFox for him anyway and now that's what he's going to use.
IE really is a horrible browser, and it is used by a good majority of the general public, the question for you is... are you marketing to the general public? I was doing some site analysis for a company and it turns out that 80% of their traffic was from NON-PC users. Now what do you do? Optimize your site to work on IE on PC's so that the 20% see it properly and the other 80% have to suffer? It goes both ways you know. YES, most of the internet world uses IE on Windoze but, is that your target market? There are a few hundred million users in those figures that don't even live in this country or speak our language. It's all relative. (kind of like the battle between WMP and QT video on the web. WMP is so unreliable and ugly, 9 times out of 10 I won't even watch anything in WMP format because it is such a hassle)
It would be safe to say though, you might try to find someone who will design your site with both platforms in mind. That's always the safest bet. It takes a little trial and error and a good knowledge of code but it is completely possible. Anyone can host it for you afterwards but it's best to figure out what they host on (Linux, Unix, WinServer, Mac Server etc.) because some of the tools you could need aren't available on all platforms.
If you want to try and tackle it yourself, there are literally hundreds, if not thousands of free or inexpensive templates out there on the web or on those CD's that come with Computer Magazines like "Web Designer" you could start with.

That is exactly what it was. about:blank! And I could not do anything about it. I had pest patrol, and McAffee and nothing got rid of it. No restore back to a previous date. Nothing I knew how to do anyway. How did you get rid of the darn thing?

A friend just gave me Dreamweaver and said if I followed the tutorial, I would be able to make it on my computer and then find somewhere to host it. One thing is for sure, I would never recomend Website Tonight to anyone.

Thanks Rhett!

Hey Cleve, You've got a chore ahead of you there. I'm sending you an email with some of the tools and links I used to extract it. The problem is that there are a few files involved in the registry that, when you delete one, the other re-creates it. Yuck! It was soooo annoying. The program HijackThis (http://www.hijackthis.de/) was one of the key elements in removing it, but it seems like it's a little different for each user.

Dreamweaver can certainly help you build a decent site and there are a lot of templates on the Macromedia website.

Thanks Rhett!

What exactly is a W3C Complaint?

http://www.w3.org/
It is the standards group that specifies HTML, CSS and such. There are even links to basic tutorials and stuff there. Again, just because they set a standard doesn't mean a browser follows it.

no problem cleveland, i'm about ready to start a side business cleaning viruses off of pc's... it's horrible! but easily preventable if you know what you are doing... and there is a cure for every virus and trojan out there, you should never have to reformat a hard drive to get rid of an infection.

>>>I was doing some site analysis for a company and it turns out that 80% of their traffic was from NON-PC users. <<<

that sounds like classic fud-mongering to me, lol.

cleveland, don't let yourself get roped into becoming a mac platform fanatic who doesn't have a clue what the state of the internet is... search the archives here for posts i have made that give detailed internet stats, plus some video samples that prove just how bad quicktime video picture quality really is.

the other thing to watch out for are the differences in gamma settings between macs and pc's... you'll most likely want to encode your web video using pc gamma settings, since there aren't any significant numbers of macs on the 'net.

here is a great link to understanding how gamma on crt's works... it's not really applicable to lcd monitors, because you can't get decent blacks and contrast out of an lcd: http://www.aim-dtp.net/aim/photoshop/v5/ps5_rgb_calibration.htm

Hey Dan, if someone teaches FCP, Shake, Motion, or builds software for Macintosh, do you think having a website optimized for Windows users is going to do them any good? Probably not considering the one undeniable fact is that in order to be a customer you MUST have a Macintosh computer.
There are instances that I have seen that it just turns out that the client base is using Mac's (because they cater to ultra high-end image conscience clients or cater to Mac users specifically). I'm not saying it's always the case or even usually the case, but I have seen it. When you cater to the upper end of specific fields of creative's, they are going to be visiting your site on their Mac. Also of note is that wealthier families and individuals are using Mac's in droves because it's the "cool", "in" thing. They are also more likely to actually "buy" something (and be willing to pay more for it), which is after all, the whole idea of having a site. I'd rather not have the 100 million looky-loos sucking down my bandwidth and not spending money if the 2% will actually buy something after visiting. If your customers use Windows, design for Windows, if they use Mac's, design for Mac's, if both, design for both (usually the best suggestion) but you should at least know "WHO IS BUYING" and not just "who's looking" and specifically cater to them. It's the same concept as a Yellow Pages Ad .vs Word of Mouth referals. You'll spend much, much more time answering the phone and fielding questions without getting a job from the Yellow Pages Ad than you will from Word Of Mouth referrals.
My point was to ask "WHO" his audience "IS". I could care less what they are viewing his site on but when you design your marketing material you need to know WHO you are trying to sell to. Maybe it is Ma and Pa Kettle in PeeDee Arkansas (real town, fictitious names...maybe) on a 28.8K dial-up using some Cyrix 350Mhz machine running Windows 95, he needs to know that information because those are a target market for someone.
Yes, some Mac fanatics do actually have a "clue" what the state of the internet is, and there are more than a few of them on the internet. Be careful who you pigeonhole, there are quite a number of highly educated and highly intelligent people out there using Mac's (and are obviously not afraid of spending money) and an extraordinary number (because of the percentages, not because they are "all" dumb) of the "not so smart" using PC's, hence the rapid proliferation of Spyware, Adware, Spam and Virus's on the PC.

As for web video, show me a WMP site with anything near this (http://www.apple.com/trailers/) quality. The problem with the WMP isn't even the quality as much as it is the fact that a few seconds into it, it has to go into eternal buffer mode (I have a 6Mb line) and there is no way to back up or do anything other than wait and hope or quit. The other option I've seen is site's that zip up the WMP file so that you have to download the whole thing before you can even view 1 second of it. QuickTime progressive download doesn't freeze up and prevent you from continuing. If you watch for 1 second or 1 minute and the server can't keep up, it pauses, you can drag the slider back to the beginning and start over when it's done OR just wait until it's finished caching the whole file or even just more of it and watch it then, and if you have QuickTime Pro you can easily download it for viewing again later.

Please don't make this some stupid platform war, nobody wins those. There are both machines in use on the internet and in an ideal world a web page would look the same on both platforms. But this isn't an ideal world. The best you can do is try to make a compliant page, even if it means simplifying your code. And for the record, I do own several machines of BOTH platforms so it's not like I'm talking out of my rear. I have first hand, current, experience working on them both, I just prefer Mac's.

Based off of the idea that you must consider who your market is, I think it may be in line for me to consider making it more mac friendly based on the fact that I am doing it to eventually market movies to distribution companies. Most of whom I'd imagine go with industry standard type stuff. I will however do my best to make sure that it is available to all internet users. Just in case I am wrong, and I have been wrong many times.

One thing I can say, my mac has never gotten a virus. My PC gets them all the time. What's up with that? Viruses waste a lot of my time. When something wastes my time, I feel like it is wasting a part of my life and I naturally remove myself from the ill intended entity which was causing me unhappiness.

Sorry for the little rant, I just spent all morning reconfiguring my router to help try to keep the bad guys out.



____________________________________________
When Cheech went down to the corner store to get a
pack of smokes and a box of smores, where was Chong?

unfortunately, the reason that all the viruses are written for pc's/internet explorer is because that's where all the targets are... remember how i said that only ~4% of the desktop computers on the 'net are mac-based? who cares whether or not they get a virus? there simply aren't enuf of 'em to matter... virus writers want attention, so of course they have to target pc's.

and yeah, i know that the security for internet explorer sucks... it's a p.o.s. browser that's long in the tooth, and it needs to be re-written from the ground up... but remember when people were bragging about that firefox 20 million download milestone? it caused about a .4%(??) decline in the internet explorer market share... like it or not, insignificant is how you describe macs and alternative browsers on the internet.

wrt virus removal on a pc: boot the computer up in safe mode(f8 key?), then run your virus removal software... do that a couple of times in a row... also: http://www.michaelhorowitz.com/removespyware.html

rhett, i think that it's foolish to tailor your website to macs-only, regardless of what your market is, because the potential for pc users to buy a mac-based product is overwhelming, simply because of the huge pc market share... the proof of that is in the huge ad $$$ that apple has spent over the years trying to convert pc users to macs.

i don't have a buffer problem with wmp video on the 'net, perhaps you are seeing a mac-based problem? have you tried altering the settings for the buffer in the windows media player itself? i've heard that microsoft has not done a good job with the mac-based wmp, but then, who cares? you are only talking about ~4% of the computers on the 'net, microsoft probably figures that making a perfect wmp for macs is a silly way for them to spend their huge profits :-) macs compete with windows for both computing market share and internet video standards.

>>>As for web video, show me a WMP site with anything near this quality.<<<

www.wmvhd.com

"virus writers want attention, so of course they have to target pc's."

I think they should all be shot on live television. They are evil like Smeagle! Down with them.

Rhett, I am sorry but I am gonna have to go with Dan on the part about not cutting yourself short from all of the potential business of PC users. Maybe a good idea is to sell them on the need for them to get Macs so they don't have all of those bougus hassles. But my main reason for switching was work related. Now that I have had a Mac for over a year, I will never use a PC for anything else but word prosessors and internet porn. "My name is Dave Chappell and I love internet porn". By the way I wonder what his show is edited on.

<<<-- Originally posted by Dan Euritt :
QuickTime Movie Trailers (http://www.apple.com/trailers/) vs www.wmvhd.com -->>>

You're pretty good at this comparing Apple's to Oranges thing aren't you? Aside from the downloadable executables I didn't happen to find any samples of web video posted on that site. And did you happen to catch the minimum system requirements they suggest? Does that fit within your findings of the average world wide web users system? Heck, I consider myself a pretty advanced user and I don't think I even fill the requirements. (my fastest PC is an Athlon 2600+ with 1G of RAM)

I don't think designing a site to specifically exclude one platform or the other is a good idea by any means. When you design a site you need to "consider" the target market. I had a site that used a javascript slideshow effect and the "fade next slide" transition didn't work properly on the Mac side. The target market was using PC's (about an 85/15 margin) and the slides still looked good on the Mac (they just flipped instead of faded) so the decision was made to keep the effect because it looked best to the majority of the visitors. It's this kind of problem I refer to.
And unless your target is very specifically Mac based, I would test it for PC's anyway because there are a lot of them out there. The quote about Apple marketing to PC's because there are so many is true. That is Apple's "target market" for that campaign. They want to attract more users to the platform, it makes sense. Now take somebody like Ferrari, do you see them sending brochures out to every Honda owner trying to win them over? Nope, that's not their "target market" even though there are about 10,000 times more Honda drivers than Ferrari drivers.
It's funny because I sent a letter to this company that made my sailboat asking for information on it's original production features (because mine was custom built) and they sent me a brochure for their newest sailboat. This brochure must have cost at least $20 to make, it was VERY nice (full 8x10 glossy photos and everything), BUT, the boat in the brochure probably costs around $20 million dollars or more (it's 95' long and mine's only 35')! I was dumbfounded! I couldn't be further from their "target market". What do you think would happen if they sent this brochure to every person who owned a boat just because there were a lot of them? Well, for $20mil per boat they might be able to swing it but you get the idea.

Make a pretty site, make a useful site, make it available to everyone and you won't have to worry about it.

I hate to get into a QT vs WM debate, especially since that wasn’t the original subject of the thread, but I’d like to point out something I discovered fairly recently: The reason the QuickTime trailers look so good is because the bitrate is extremely high. I have some QT trailers I’ve downloaded, and the bitrates are anywhere between 544kbps to 1500kbps (1.5Mb/s). I have a couple that are 2900kbps (2.9Mb/s)! Now show me some similiar bitrate WM trailers. You probably can’t find any. I have yet to see one above 1000kbps. So to ask to be shown some WM trailers as good as the ones at apple.com isn’t really a fair challange. The highest common bitrate for WM content seems to be 300kbps. That includes the trailers on the Windows Media web site, which puzzles me because you’d think Microsoft would want to show off some there.

I do have to agree the WM HD isn’t a fair comparison. HD is a whole other game.

That being said, I have found some trailers available in both QT and WM at similar fairly high bitrates. Once the playing field is leveled both formats look similar, in my estimation. Take a look for yourself and decide.

A Very Long Engagement trailer (http://wip.warnerbros.com/trailerplay.html?id=averylongengagement&settings=true) (QT 936kbps, WM 947kbps)

The Passion of the Christ trailer (http://www.passionrecut.com/trailers.html) (QT 736kbps, WM 848kbps)

Cinderella Man trailer (http://www.cinderellamanmovie.com/trailer.html) (QT 896 kbps, WM 700kbps)

Madagascar trailer (http://www.madagascar-themovie.com/main.php?swf=trailer) (QT 850kbps, WM 700kbps)


Here are the bitrates on the QT trailers I looked at. Notice how high they all are.

The Passion of the Christ 736kbps

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy 1504kbps

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy 2900kpbs

Year of the Yao 696kbps

A Very Long Engagement 936kbps

Before Sunset 544kbps

Cinderella Man 896kbps

We Were Soldiers 1160kbps

The Alamo 2936kbps

Rhett, I don't have problems with buffering in WM Player. It's hard to say why you experience this. It could be anything from a configuration problem on your computer to congestion on the internet between you and the server that's streaming the video to you.

I watched "A very Long Engagement" in both formats. They both look very nice (looks like a good film too, I liked Amelie).
WMP did not stutter or stall and was properly embedded in the page (instead of opening an external viewer). Really the only thing that was different was the fact that you can't back up the play head to watch something again or jump around in the play head and you can't download the WMP version very easily, but they both looked quite pleasing.
I did watch these from my Mac so that's a good testament to the configuration as well. It's too bad that MS doesn't give the Mac version of WMP as much attention as Apple gives to the PC version of QT. I guess that's just how it goes with different business philosophies, one cares about the user experience, the other one cares about money (not that Apple doesn't care about money, it's just not necessarily the "first" thing they consider. Their CEO made $1 in 2004, no bonus, no stock options, nothing more than his $1 salary, that's commitment).

True, there may be some higher bit-rate versions out there on QT but QT doesn't care what your connection speed is. If you are willing to wait for it to load, you can watch it. WMP won't even load it if your connection isn't fast enough to keep up and if it stalls out because of network traffic, you have to start all over, it's not very good at reconnecting where you stalled out (sometimes it does though). It's the difference between progressive download and streaming. I will be the first to admit that QuickTime "streaming" leaves something to be desired but the "progressive" is a very fine multi-platform solution for high quality video where you don't "need" to specifically re-encode for each connection type. Granted, a dial-up user is probably not going to sit there and wait for a 75MB download but they "could", and it would work fine if they did. That's the difference.

Thanks for all the links, well done.

p.s. didn't you just love the "HitchHikers" trailer.

Rhett,

I was able to back up and jump ahead the playhead in the WM version of the "A Very Long Engagement" trailer. Maybe something is different in the Mac WM Player that prevents this. I don't know.

And I guess it's easy to download any QT trailer if you pay for the QT Pro player, but it wasn't easy for me (I don’t have the Pro version). All the trailers on the Apple site seem to be configured in a way that prevents downloading. I had to find some on the actual movie sites that I could download. On the other hand I have a free program (SDP) that can download just about any WM file or stream.

It's possible to encode a progressive download WM file. In fact, that’s the default preset in the WM encoder for a file delivered via HTTP instead of a WM streaming server.

Yes, I did find the “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” trailer humorous. “Did you ever have one of those days...”!

So Cleveland, did you get the answers you needed?

Yes, the mac version of WM sucks compared to it's PC counterpart. I use both platforms.

Scott

Mark,

Thanks for asking. Yes I did get the answeres that I need. Unfortunately they are a little more complicated than I had hoped. I am still trying to digest some of them and am pretty sure, I'll understand it a little better once I actually start putting the site together. I have joined forces with an IT guy who also has given me permission to use his server to host my site. With a little help from him, I should be able move right along with what my real intentions are anyway. Making a movie. Thanks Mark, Rhett, Chris, Dan, Scott and Eric. DVinfo.net is the best place to find good advice and different perspectives for nearly all manner of production related quesitons.

P.S. Could somebody break down the rank structure and at what post numbers moves you up to the next level? I know what the Wranglers do. But what about the rest of us peons?
Probably a burning question in more than just my mind.

The answer to your question about "rank" is in the FAQ. Also, you may want to sort the DVD and Web Video Delivery Forum by "Replies" and learn about some of the posters here from the threads with highest reply counts.

Some posters here make media player market share claims based on OS marketshare which is faulty reasoning. If you think about this a little, you'll see why many here don't decide format based on OS installs. Ditto browsers. But unlike media players, there are at least better accuracy in statistics tracking browsers on the web (insert caveat about statistics here). You can then overlay your own visitor demographics.

Do your own analysis and make your own conclusions. An interesting exercise is to evaluate stats given in this thread above with those found here:
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

For example, WMV 9 is only included in XP which has a 63.1% presence on the web. Similarily, share of its IE 6 browser has plunged steadily from 72.6% to 64% between May of 2004 and March 2005.

Lastly, while you're in the FAQ, note the section on Rules of Conduct where it talks about ad-hominem attacks which are basically:
Person A asserts point a
Person B asserts point b and says Person A picked his nose in 4th grade therefore point a is false

Person B is conducting an ad-hominem attack.