This is a sales page I think you should watch - note, I said “watch” not “read”!

http://www.IanSays.com/Watch/StunningEffects

It’s all about a new product from Josh Anderson, a guy who’s continually pushing out the frontiers of website video. On the above page, you’ll see a neat effect with Josh seemingly suspended on the page. That is not what Josh’s new product is about. I’ll tell you about that effect some other time. What you should focus on is:

• The video player itself, with its neat semi-transparent player controller background. On Josh’s page, the controls are hidden until you mouse-over the video. But that’s optional. You can choose to make them visible all the time.
• The way that videos can “daisy-chain” - that is, when one video ends, it can trigger another video to play.
• The auto-scrolling. This is a really cool effect, and it enables Josh to take you to a completely different part of the web page when a video ends. This, for me, is one of the most powerful effects that you can use.
• The speed of loading. Maybe this wasn’t so obvious, but Josh’s videos load much faster than I would have expected.

I’ve bought into Josh’s new product, but I need to caution you that it’s quite a techie set of tools to use. OK, you don’t need anything other than a text editor to set all the parameters, but you do need to be able to accurately make changes to the JavaScript files. Very good documentation is provided (including demo videos), but you need to concentrate on what you’re doing whilst you are configuring the files.

So, this neat technology isn’t for “newbies”! But if you are currently using video on your web pages, you should have a closer look at Josh Anderson’s wizardry:

http://www.IanSays.com/Watch/StunningEffects

Don’t expect to get as professional a result that Josh gets - unless you’re as expert as he is at shooting video. But his various “tricks” will work equally well with screen capture videos, such as Camtasia - and possibly with the videos you can create using your new gift in the Download Library!

Oh, and I’ll reveal the “secret” of creating these transparent videos in a future “Webmasters Tricks” article.