I’m currently working on a website project where we will be uploading large MP3 files to a Joomla site. Smaller MP3 files would load fine, but larger files just refused to upload. I checked all the obvious settings within Joomla, all of which were fine and set for 100MB max upload.
I then thought to check my php.ini settings, and sure enough upload_max_filesize variable=2M (maximum of 2MB), I changed this, restarted Apache and it still didn’t work!
Eventually I found out that PHP uses the POST method to upload files and an additional variable post_max_size was set too low. I upped the size, restarted Apache and ihey presto, upload of large files now worked fine.
Most people will realise that Steve Jobs has got a bit of a strop on about Adobe’s Flash technology. He argues that Flash is buggy and a performance hog, hitting battery life and causing user crashes. Steve believes the way forward is to embrace HTML5 in all of its goodness.
I am a big fan of web standards and I think HTML5 is a great leap forward, however blocking Flash content on iPad and iPod devices causes issues for many markets including advertisers (yes – we get to feel sorry for advertisers today).
Smokescreen (http://smokescreen.us) have come up with a workaround that is very clever technically, however my opinion is that it circumvents the problem and does not resolve it. Smokescreen takes a Flash movie and renders it in JavaScript, thus allowing it to be run on Mr Jobs devices.
A solution to a problem to be sure, and the advertisers (bless their little cotton socks) will be happy as their investment in Flash is protected.
I’m not quite sure this is the ideal solution for the end user though, the JavaScript is quite large, and after my (admittedly cursory) glance at the technology I believe it will work devices quite hard – thus coming full circle back to issues such as increased CPU usage and subsequent reduced battery life.
Let’s see how this one develops.
