While in the process of planning the future of AlbumExposure, we’ve decided that in order to move forward we’ve got to leave some things behind which are holding us back.  Mostly we think that’s flash.  In the last 30 days, visitors to our site had 24 different versions of the flash player installed.  It’s just not possible for us to keep up with all the different versions and quirks of each flash player release.  The most common fix to a problem with an AlbumExposure presentation is having the user upgrade their flash player and our customers deserve better.

Unfortunately at this time the only browser that doesn’t support the html5 features we need to replace flash is Internet Explorer.  IE 9 is going to have at least much better html5 support, but we don’t think we can sit around and wait until a release date is announced.  The good news is that only a small percentage of our users are using IE.

We’re confident that going this direction is going to make for a better, more reliable experience for you and your clients, and is going to open up opportunities for cool new features in the future that wouldn’t otherwise be possible (drag and drop uploads anyone?)

So, here’s what we’re going to do an how it will affect you and your clients:

The first phase will be the launch of our new site design this week, which is going to some of the newer CSS3 features.  If you visit our main site using IE or an older version of a browser that isn’t html5 compatible, you’re going to see a notification asking you to upgrade your browser.  The client presentations will be unchanged.

The next step will be converting all album presentations to html5.  Our plan is to leave a fallback to flash so that you won’t have to force your clients to upgrade their browsers, but the flash presentation will likely be limited to slideshow view.

The final phase of removing flash entirely probably won’t happen until IE 9 is released, but we think it’s important for us to take steps now to prepare.

We’d love to hear how you like the new design when it launches this week!

Cheers!