When Macromedia launched Flash for the first time, nobody knew how impactful it will be in the arena of web development. Before Flash came, the Web was a tad boring; there was no YouTube or animation effect on websites until Flash revolutionized the whole experience. It added video, audio, and interactive games to the Web and made websites a lot more dynamic.

Flash rich internet applications saw a massive boom in the past decade. Whether it’s YouTube or Vimeo, several sites are using Flash video players and developing their own customized video players to give users a unique experience.

The open source scripts has made the video player development process easier for Flash designers. With progress in Flash video player’s features, Flash design companies have started changing the user interface of the video player and adding some user friendly features to it.

Let’s see what some of the user interface features of various Flash players are:

Buffer Streaming- You may have noticed that in some Flash video players, when you play a video, the progress bar shows how far the video has loaded. You can watch the video, and at the same time, remain informed about the length of the video. The progress bar also allows you to drag the video forward and backward.

This is a very effective user interface design for a rich internet application like Flash video players. If the viewer is watching a lengthy video or an online cinema, he can drag the progress bar to the exact moment that he wants to see.

A List of Related Videos- This is one of the most common features of Flash players, which YouTube has made popular. In its UI, you can offer a list of related videos to the viewers. For example, when a visitor watches a Michael Jackson video, the video player shows all the other Michael Jackson videos in the sidebar and allows the user to choose a video without searching for it.

Replicating the Home-theatre Look- All of us have used Windows Media Player Classic, VLC Player or any other types of video players on our computers to watch videos. These video players allow you to change aspect ratio and quality of a video. Some of the popular Flash video players are replicating this feature and have changed their user interface to offer more flexibility. They use large control buttons that change colors when you do a mouse over.

Latest Flash video players also allow you to change the streaming quality of a video. You can see a high definition video in both 480p and 720p resolution. Some Flash video players even let you stream full HD 1080p video in the website.

Flash video player’s user interface has seen a lot of changes and Flash designers are trying to make it a lot better. They are adding great functionality to it and making the players lightweight. If you are also planning to design your own Flash video player, these user interface design trends will be helpful for you.