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Mobile Meow: Bringing YouTube Videos to a Mobile World

This is the story of the glory and struggle of bringing a high quality YouTube experience to the mobile web. Once upon a time there was a web developer who wanted to play videos on the web. So he filmed a cat and wrote a Flash and a HTML5 player. He spent many hours making it work on his favorite desktop browsers and even the one his grandfather still used. People could watch his cat video, he smiled, and the world was good. Then one day someone put a browser in a phone and soon there were many phones with many different browsers. This new set of environments were even harder to develop for and had a slew of new terrifying bugs. The web developer was miserable knowing people couldn’t watch his cat video. With much time and effort he figured out many of the secrets needed to combat the evils of the different mobile platforms. Once again people could watch his cat video, he smiled, and the world was good. The end.

• Difficulty: Fundamental

Session Detail

This talk is great for anyone new to the mobile space. The rise of mobile browsers has drastically changed web development and has created many new best practices and interfaces. Most of the information and best practices can be useful for anyone who's not used to developing for mobile and dealing with the new challenges it presents. Although it is focused on video, many of the concepts still apply to general mobile web development and working with touch devices.

Speakers

Greg Schechter (YouTube, USA)

Greg is a fearless web warrior, fighting for browser and website progress. While training at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, he published articles with the Opera Web Standards Curriculum. Subsequently, he went on to battle alongside many different web companies, including Amazon, Yahoo, and Google. His current alliance is with YouTube, where he spearheads the movement for HTML5 video capabilities. More...

Matt Ward (Google, USA)

Matt is one of the engineers that pushes the YouTube Flash video player to the limit. He studied computer science at Columbia University and his passion is creating amazing user experiences. Prior to YouTube, Matt was a freelance designer/ developer and an intern at College Humor. If he isn’t coding or sketching a new, crazy design, you can find him surfing or skiing somewhere in California. More...