Newsweek delcared 2007 as the Year of the Widget and fittingly so, G4 came to us to rework their existed embedded video player and further develop it into a widget that can be shared and linked to other social networking sites.

The original video player has a minimal user interface with minimal features, as you can see at the screenshot below

After a couple rounds of consultations with their in-house design team, we finalized on a new design and a list of functionalities that would include enhanced features such as "Share with a Friend", "Embed this video player", "Play List", as well as the "Related Video" feature similar to what YouTube has. We delivered this enhanced video player in 2 different sizes (small, large) and 2 versions (on-site on G4tv.com with playlist, off-site) in February 07.

The project didn't stop there and G4 came back and wanted to enhance the player even more to match their new redesigned official site and overall corporate branding. The new player will have a redesigned skin, the ability to not only have all the existed functionalities, but it will also be able to accomodate a vertical or horizontal play list, as well as the ability for G4TV to dynamically change the overall color of the player with an easy-to-update XML file.The large, on-site version can be seen now on the G4TV homepage and by the beginning of May 07, they will be replacing all the video players everywhere on G4TV with all the different sizes of the new video player.

Kudos to our Flash team for delivering a solid product and continued success with one of our longest standing clients.