video carousel broken on landscape iPad Safari

[akash1810]

ISSUE

The video carousel doesn't work in iPad Safari when landscape.

• The previous/next buttons on the video carousel do not work
• Big play button not rendered
• Tapping on poster image doesn't play video

We don't enhance fronts on iPad so the event handlers are never attached 😢

Steps to Reproduce

Get an iPad (or launch simulator) Open gu.com in Safari Rotate screen to landscape Witness the video carousel not working

Actual Results (include screenshots)

Expected Results (include screenshots)

• Video playback is possible in the carousel
• Previous/Next buttons to work OR, given we're not on desktop, the carousel should be swipeable

URL

Any front with a carousel (gu.com, gu.com/video).

OS and Browser details

• Device: iPad
• Browser (inc version): Safari (all)
• OS: All iOS

Please add relevant labels

[scottp719]

@sammorrisdesign any word on this Sam?

[sammorrisdesign-zz]

I remember chatting with @jamesgorrie about waiting and seeing how this was performing before making any large changes with this. I say large because I think the solution to this problem is to progressively enhance from the mobile version. This would require quite a bit of work to make sure fallbacks and enhancements work everywhere.

Given that we've had this for running for a reasonable period of time, are we happy with how the current carousel works? When this was initially designed there were alternatives that were more playlist than carousel. These could also work.

I'm also reluctant to make large changes to this if we change the way we host videos. It would be good to avoid having to refactor this a bunch of times...

Thoughts?

[scottp719]

I discussed with Sam and Akash regarding this and the current plan is for this to stay as it's being used more and more so by editorial.

I appreciate your concerns about the refactor work but I think at the very minimum we need to ensure this works on the core fronts on ipads as this is still a considerable part of the audience (9.1% of uniques in the last month) who currently can't use it and just see something that seems broken. Any work beyond that I agree would not be worthwhile but can you come up with a solution to ensure that it works for this device group?

[SiAdcock]

Update!

✅ The big red play button is now rendered! 🎉 ❌ The next and previous buttons do not work ❌ Tapping the poster image does not play video ❌ In portrait, tapping the poster image does not link through to video article 🆕

I'll add this to the backlog because frankly it's madness.