Forgot to mention this:
Took a look a the BrightCove JavaScript API and briefly evaluated it for a Flash developer here. Here are my notes:
It looks like a pretty solid API. I guess it’s only meant for a single player in the page, since you don’t have any control over how the scripts initialize. As long as the JS files are included, it grabs the
The JS files are kind of big, totaling about 75 K. They can be included at the bottom of the HTML, which is an IEG best practice, so that’s good. I can’t tell if we would be able to host our own copies of the files and compress them. They would probably have a minor impact on load times if we could.
I like the use of constants on the API modules for event names, and the event listener-based architecture in general. The code is pretty easy to read because of it.
The worst part is how it pollutes the global namespace with dozens of objects. They namespace most of the code but apparently not all of it. It’s especially awkward that the callback function that launches the entire experience is a generically-named global function (onTemplateLoaded).
The examples are good but the documentation is only OK. It looks like just a list of methods and it’s hard to see what context they would be used in for JavaScript.
I wouldn’t mind using it for some simpler experiences. I didn’t dig far enough to see how powerful it is, but for playlists, ad integration, analytics, and common stuff like that it’s a perfectly good resource.
