ZANEWS was a South African satirical puppet show first produced in 2008 by Both Worlds, a Cape Town based production company.
ZANEWS was a South African satirical puppet show first produced in 2008 by Both Worlds, a Cape Town based production company.
ZANEWS was a South African satirical puppet show first produced in 2008 by Both Worlds, a Cape Town based production company.
WordPress
Year
Year
2012
2012
Role
Product Management
UI Design
UX Design
Web Development
Tools
Tools
WordPress
Role
UI Design
UX Design
Web Development
Background
Background
We developed a multimedia "magazine" style portal incorporating written blogs and video for the web and mobile.
A custom video player component maximised the use of HTML5 in the latest browsers, while providing full support for legacy browsers with automatic Flash fallback. Videos play seamlessly on iPhones, iPads, Android devices and almost any other mobile platform.
The partnership with local broadband champions WebAfrica ensured all videos are delivered from a dedicated local server. This local bandwidth transfer ensures an immediate video viewing experience without any buffering delays.
Carefully considered video compression and encoding processes ensured that the highest quality video possible was delivered, at the smallest possible file size. This ensured an excellent video viewing experience due to the speed of the video streaming.
Specific server modules were installed to enable video seeking within the video, enabling users to seek ahead to parts of the video not yet loaded without having to wait for the section to download in its entirety. As specific mobile version is dynamically displayed when the video file exceeds the maximum resolution/bitrate.
The editorial workflow and user management system allowed the ZANews Network website to become a nexus for the kind of content it specialised in, with ZANews video content, associated columnists, regular dynamic feeds from well known sources, and user generated content by way of an automated front-end posting system, allowing users to sign up easily, and contribute content, but still placing editorial authority in the hands of administrators.
Content is grouped by category, to help ease discovery and showcase the breadth of varying satirical content on the network. Different styles of layout, shapes of widgets break up the overall interface into recognisable and memorable chunks, and help users to identify different streams of content, and remember where their favourite parts are.
Specific and relevant video content is loaded before the start of each working day and playlists are arranged to display related content. These playlists, along with the videos, adjust for each devices to maintain a consistent viewing experience. Other content blocks contain a selection of videos, articles, cartoons, podcasts, user generated submissions and columnists contibutions.
ZANews went on to win a Bronze Bookmark Award in 2012 (An award recognising excellence in digital production in South Africa).
We developed a multimedia "magazine" style portal incorporating written blogs and video for the web and mobile.
A custom video player component maximised the use of HTML5 in the latest browsers, while providing full support for legacy browsers with automatic Flash fallback. Videos play seamlessly on iPhones, iPads, Android devices and almost any other mobile platform.
The partnership with local broadband champions WebAfrica ensured all videos are delivered from a dedicated local server. This local bandwidth transfer ensures an immediate video viewing experience without any buffering delays.
Carefully considered video compression and encoding processes ensured that the highest quality video possible was delivered, at the smallest possible file size. This ensured an excellent video viewing experience due to the speed of the video streaming.
Specific server modules were installed to enable video seeking within the video, enabling users to seek ahead to parts of the video not yet loaded without having to wait for the section to download in its entirety. As specific mobile version is dynamically displayed when the video file exceeds the maximum resolution/bitrate.
The editorial workflow and user management system allowed the ZANews Network website to become a nexus for the kind of content it specialised in, with ZANews video content, associated columnists, regular dynamic feeds from well known sources, and user generated content by way of an automated front-end posting system, allowing users to sign up easily, and contribute content, but still placing editorial authority in the hands of administrators.
Content is grouped by category, to help ease discovery and showcase the breadth of varying satirical content on the network. Different styles of layout, shapes of widgets break up the overall interface into recognisable and memorable chunks, and help users to identify different streams of content, and remember where their favourite parts are.
Specific and relevant video content is loaded before the start of each working day and playlists are arranged to display related content. These playlists, along with the videos, adjust for each devices to maintain a consistent viewing experience. Other content blocks contain a selection of videos, articles, cartoons, podcasts, user generated submissions and columnists contibutions.
ZANews went on to win a Bronze Bookmark Award in 2012 (An award recognising excellence in digital production in South Africa).
