Keep in mind that this post was written 3 years ago.

There is an event on Flash Media Server on Nov 9th in West Hollywood, CA. Here is the link to in the invite. It is a FREE event! http://www.eventsadobe.com/flashmediaserver

Desiree

While I’m sure there are important differences between the versions, I still think that part of the appeal of YouTube is that pretty much anyone who goes to view something on their site will be able to because of the version they use. It’s a big selling point.

It’s the kind of issue that each developer needs to weigh for themselves – which is more important to them: quality or accessible content for all their visitors.

Whether or not the visitors will notice the bonuses from a higher version or if it’s the sort of small differences they won’t notice but someone trained to see those differences (like a developer) definitely sees clearly. Or if it will be more damaging to their business to lose an entire section of user base because of their operating system.

On the other hand, there is nothing stopping a developer from making an ‘enhanced’ version available to people who come to their site using a browser/platform combination that supports it – at least until Adobe has made compatible versions for all the systems people run most commonly.

Just some thoughts – it’s still the choice of the developer. Personally, I would be much more annoyed by an alert of ‘you need to download an update to your flash plugin’. If I didn’t just close the browser window right there (which is 90% of the time for me) I’d be much more annoyed to try clicking on that link to update my plugins and find out that the one the site wants is not even available for me. So as a browser, I’d take a slightly lower quality/less features any time over the alternative of not being able to see it at all.

Again, it’s in the hands of the developer to choose how to handle it – but it’s in the hands of the consumer to determine how they react to those choices. I firmly believe that if you cannot provide an equivalent content alternative to a visitor on your site, you shouldn’t do it.