Shame about the huge banner at the top of the page that stays there as you scroll. Website designers that purposefully waste my screen space, please get a different job!
Well, it's not a banner. It's a video, and the main reason for the page to exist :)
But yeah, agree with you. Particularly in this format, where there's so much value in the transcript below it, it'd be better to not have anything sticky. Like YouTube/Vimeo, where sometimes I go down to continue reading, and leave the video playing on top (off screen).
Fascinating and educational information from Ilya, as always, especially about improved mobile latency in North America.
Regarding the format of the webpage: The video completely blocks my laptop browser window in Firefox v. 31.0, making it almost impossible to read the transcript. Sticky HTML elements on text-content heavy pages drive me crazy. Awhile ago I made a simple bookmarklet that makes me a much happier consumer of such pages. One version of it walks the DOM and unaffixes fixed DOM elements. The other changes them to display: none. You can roll your own pretty easily, or try out the ones I made at StaticDing.org. They both make it easy for me to read the transcript of Ilya's presentation. Without them, I probably would have given up.
I'd rather see a fixed tab on the left or right that was less intrusive that allowed you to open a modal or slide in the video div. I do understand the video is the focal point and the ratio of any video is important to show something non-squished, I've been there, but as others on laptops and netbooks have mentioned the video div takes up nearly 45% of the vertical spacing and it's distracting as you get your bearings figuring out what's on the page. Perhaps the video should be nearly above the fold and it remains fixed once you get to it, until the next informational section similar to a table header? I live for solving these types of problems and it's a shame I don't run into them more in my work -- and at no time am I saying I have all of the answers.
Edit: I like what you are doing on mobile since you are hamstrung without many options, maybe on iPad portrait and wider you could go for a 2 column approach with the video on the left in a "sidebar" and the text flowing on the right? Again, just an idea. At any rate what you have is fine and gets the point across and I'm just being picky!
Hey there. Tim from Heavybit. I wanna make sure you're having the best experience possible. Can get me some more info on the banner? It might be the video of Ilya's talk.
Sometimes it's nice to skim a transcript when a video can't be watched or when deciding whether to invest the time into watching the video. Some way of hiding the banner would be useful here.
Yes, it's the video of the talk that follows you as you scroll down the page. If you are not watching the video it is a terrible format as it blocks a large amount of the reading area.
yes, it's the video. Some of us, though, would prefer to just read the transcript (thanks for providing a high quality transcript, awesome) instead of watching the video.
Some way to collapse the video 'banner' into a smaller area, so we can use the full screen, or nearly, when reading the transcript, would be welcome. Perhaps if you click on the transcript to open the video at that point, it could expand again.
