Multimedia:Cross platform

Overview
Cross platform issues relate to the ability of an application to perform on a variety of computers, operating systems and web browsers. This can include
 * Hardware issues
 * Operating systems
 * Environment
 * Software
 * Elements
 * Design
 * Publication

Case study

 * /Broken link - if anyone can find this video would be good to have? -vmvadmin 05:08, 13 March 2011 (EDT) / Developing a Cross-platform Flash Game for Dolce & Gabbana (Trento, 2008).

Hardware issues

 * Device type
 * PC/Laptop (including Tablet PCs)/Mobile devices (Phones, PDAs)
 * Device performance
 * e.g. processor / hard drive / optical drive performance


 * Available Peripherals
 * Mouse, Keyboard, Stylus (PDAs), Screen (Size, touch-screen), Speakers, Microphone (for voice input), hand controllers (also, joysticks)
 * Media
 * CD/DVD available
 * Internet connection (Broadband/Dial-up)
 * Monitor/Screen resolution for a PC ..
 * 2005 -: 800 x 600 pixels
 * 2010 -: 1024x768 pixels (Superior Web Solutions, 2011)
 * Remember many people now use mobile devices to surf the Internet.

Operating systems
Windows/Macintosh/Unix
 * Some 'old' multimedia applications
 * Designed for different screen resolutions and colour quality
 * Need to be run in compatibility mode (or on a virtual machine)

Environment

 * Internet v's CD-ROM/DVD
 * Graphics - File sizes, types (e.g. gif, jpg, png on web)
 * Video - File sizes, Codec availability
 * Updates - CD-ROM fixed, Internet - easily changed
 * Errors - CD: Remastered, Internet - easily changed
 * To build an iPhone application requires an Apple Computer (Intel only!)
 * Web issues
 * Corporate firewall policies may restrict access to certain sites,(e.g. game sites and social networkig sites are often blocked)

Software

 * Browser issues
 * Browser specific tags (I.E.- Marquee)
 * HTML-5 multimedia tags
 * JavaScript capabilities (e.g. Google Chrome Experiments (n.d.) ).
 * Plug-ins
 * Adobe Flash Player Version, Microsoft Silverlight
 * Application specific
 * Flash able to create stand-a-lone exe/swf files or html/swf files.
 * Supported file types
 * Images: on web - gif, jpg, png (animated pngs?)
 * Videos: Microsoft WMV format for Windows, DivX (usually wav), Apple Quicktime (mov), and mpeg.

Elements
For the web
 * image size: using thumbnails for images, use file compression (jpg), resize
 * Music: background sound may clash with foreground sounds or user preferred music
 * Music formats: midi, wma (not Linux), mp3 (Linux)
 * Font choices: Difference betweek PC/Mac/Linux (e.g. Arial Helvetica)

Design

 * Different conventions for different systems. For example, applications developed for Mac OS X and GNOME are supposed to place the most important button on the right-hand side of windows and dialogs, whereas Microsoft Windows and KDE have the opposite convention (Cross-platform, 2010, March 7)).
 * Different interfaces.
 * Google Android


 * Microsoft Windows Phone 7. (Microsoft, n.d.)
 * Colours can be handled differently in different systems.
 * Web page colour's may vary in different browsers on different platforms. The 216 of 250 possible index colours are safe to use (Sim, (n.d.) lists browser safe colours). The 40 left over colours can vary between platforms. Intermediate colours such as gradients, colour tweens, filters, transparent overlays and alpha transitions will not be constrained to the web safe colours possibly creating some issues with how these are displayed (Reinhardt & Dowd, 2007)
 * Different default fonts available (text may need to be converted to a graphic, or CSS font families used)
 * Often leads to developing an application to the lowest common specification.
 * Different languages: Text is easier to convert though may require a language pack to support special characters (e.g. Chinese, Japanese, Russian)

Publication

 * CD-ROM/DVD requires burning to CD/DVD, producing labels, physically distributing (includes marketing)
 * Internet requires uploading to web server (usually using FTP)
 * Internet based requires a technology infrastructure.
 * Choice of Web Host
 * Cost of Uploading/Downloading files and capacity