I used to get my news from CNN because I had a great deal of control over my consumption of the content. With the advent of so many video stories, however, I have to limit myself to the articles that are text as I usually don’t have (nor want to spend) time having a story reported to me. I’d just watch CNN on TV if that’s what I were interested in.

From a technological standpoint, if CNN insists on continuing to post video rather than text content, is it possible to have a menu in each flash movie with story highlights that link to sections of the video? That way I have a little more autonomy over my experience; I can choose the content of the story and watch 15 seconds of what I’m interested in rather than waiting a minute and a half.

I like the “WATCH VIDEO” section of the online news; fellow readers…if you want to bypass the commercials, simply click on the left fast rewind button as the commercial starts, or anytime during…

Flash video is the only way to go! It’s smoother, virtually universal and speedy.

I’m a Mac user, using different browsers (Safari, Firefox, Camino, Opera) and they all can view these videos flawlessly.

Thanks for abandoning the proprietary viewer model that so many others rushed to embrace. And thanks for having the vision to make the video experience just as important as the written experience.

Thanks for the in-page video player. I hated the popup.

I prefer text news to video and rarely watch video on my computer. I do appreciate the depth and range of your daily news and appreciate the opportunity to respond. I sometimes quyestion your facts or bias regarding items that have a dfinite history rather than revised history or distrotions of facts

I can’t wait to see “Pipeline” for free. At work I’m fortunate enough to be able to watch online every now and then. Since I don’t have a TV, it’s going to be nice to be able to watch the news and not have to sift through hours old content clips.

Would really like to see a better video integration on the home page. “Now in the News” version every hour or something, larger thumbs definately on the right. I’m guessing when everyone can be focused on the same site instead of running the two at the same time, that video content will increase.

Everything’s working fine on IE7 WinXP SP2 but that’s probably what you’re designing for then creating work-arounds for the others. Gotta love standards! ha

A much better video experience. It does tend to load a little slowly and it started before enough was loaded to allow the audio to be clear. Slow down the start of the video a bit or load it faster.

I also liked the guided tour. However, it screamed for audio. Forcing the audience to read the description of the features takes attention from the features themselves.

The video site looks very clean, and I do like the widescreen; however, users should have the ability to detach the video screen. More and more users have widescreen monitors and having the ability to multi-task with the detached video is very desirable.

Keep up the good work.

The in-page flash video is AWESOME! I have no idea why more news outlets haven’t started using it. YouTube proved its effectiveness and ease-of-use. Great job!

I don’t really appreciate the videos because they’ve started to *replace* the text version, which is not only time-consuming as someone said earlier, but inaccessible to the 28 million deaf and hard of hearing people in the nation. There’s nothing more frustrating than to see an interesting story, only to see that I can’t understand a word.

So if you must, have videos. But for Pete’s sake (or at least my sake), have text versions available. Besides, a lot of us – me included, again – access cnn.com on our pagers or devices like the Sidekick 3 where we can’t view video yet. And even if we could view videos on our devices, I couldn’t understand a word of it.

Otherwise, I think the new look is pretty good. Eye-friendly.

I don’t like the videos for two reasons. One is that they don’t provide as much information as reading the equivalent amount of text. The other is that unlike youTube or similar sites it appears wedded to Windows Media which means that I can’t play them unless I’m using Internet Explorer – the Windows media play won’t start reliably from something like Firefox and I’m not about to switch back to using IE. (There are also other platforms out there….). So rather than bother messing with the video I ignore it. If I want to see videos I can go to sites like youTube that just work.

Video destroys the non-linearity and hyperlinking of the internet that makes it a great place for information. Video as an ajunct to text-based stories is great, but more and more I see a move to video-only presentations. I have a TV at home. Why duplicate it on a medium less suited for it?

I prefer text news to video, too; besides making news inaccessible to handicapped people, videos make news inacccessible to people on dial-up. It’s discouraging when you have no access to half of the featured stories. Please provide text!

I’ve yet to be able to view your video on the Beta website. It does not appear to work with Firefox. I thought perhaps it was an issue with Linux, however I have tried Firefox with a Windows machine and likewise, cannot get video. If I switch to Internet Explorer on a Windows machine, the video works fine.

Considering the number of Firefox users who will not use Internet Explorer for security reasons, I hope Firefox users will not be left out. Especially since the your standard website, BBC and literally every other news source I use work fine with Firefox for viewing video.

Am I missing something here?

I think both text and video should be provided, when possible, to the primary stories. However, complete text should be provided for all stories. That way, all of your information will be accessible to those with and without disabilities. Having the option to read an article or watch its video is always good. I tend to read the articles, and watch the video, if it was interesting.

SMC

I am over 50 and much prefer text to video, Maybe because that’s the way I am used to getting my news (besides cable TV). What worries me is the fact that we are making it easier and easier for people to access information WITHOUT THE WRITTEN WORD. Kids these days don’t read as they did in past years. For some reason it upsets me that ordinary reading and writing seems to be going by the wayside. Why should they learn when you can use a keyboard rather than a pen to communicate. Why read a newspaper when there are 24-hour news channels, and videos in on-line newspapers. There is something even worse. Outside local news, many people don’t even care what happens nationally, much less globally.

I vigorously concur that text should remain the preferred medium for conveying information on the internet. I like to keep up on current events during the day, which means I’m accessing the web from my office computer. I have no desire to burden my company’s network with video. Bandwidth isn’t free–either it costs more $$ for more bandwidth, or it costs my co-workers’ time while they wait for their share of the bits on the wire.

As a Mac user, I thank you from the bottom of my heart!

Andrea

Unlike many of the other people who have posted feedback, I prefer the videos as they are easier to consume while multitasking. I’m a Firefox user and since the CNN site change, I’ve had trouble viewing the videos. I use a browser extension called Flashblock which disables Flash objects until I activate them manually. I discovered that the new CNN video scheme doesn’t play well with Flashblock. There is obviously some portion of the way the Flash video loads that leaves me unable to activate the control to load the video properly. I don’t plan to stop using Flashblock, so hopefully those smart guys over at CNN can figure out a way to make it play nice. I’ve had no problems with any other websites in the past.

Since I am deaf, videos without text or captioning are useless to me. And where are the links to Lou Dobbs? Your new format is nearly as bad as your TV coverage has become. Newer is not necessarily better.

Videos stopped playing two days ago. What’s up?

I know every IT person in the world has heard ‘I didn’t do anything’ after asking what changed on the users computer.

Are others having this problem? Any chance of posing ’system status’ messages for users?

Thanks! Don

I agree with others. I do not like the switch from text to video. I prefer to read my news. Also, the video no longer plays on my computer. I don’t know what you all did, but it’s not new and improved in my opinion. It’s new and inefficient. Please try again and please keep text news as our main source of news on the internet. Right now I’m getting my News from MSNBC.