Browsers : Flash Embed - Google video - YouTube

by Elizabeth Castro

It has always gotten my goat that Internet Explorer’s non-standard use of the object tag has forced standards-loving browsers to use the non-standard embed tag in order to embed movies on a web page. Even on Apple’s site, the embed tag—a Netscape extension, for Pete’s sake!—is so entrenched that it’s hard to even find information about using the object element for QuickTime, except in a non-standard way.

The use of embed has gone on too long. Wishing for it to become part of the official specs is like wishing your partner would start putting the cap on the toothpaste. It’s not going to happen. It’s time to move on. If you want to validate your website, you have to get rid of embed. In this article, I’ll show you how.
Online Movies: Google Video and YouTube

ALA readers will remember Drew McLellan’s seminal article on Flash Satay. In that article, Drew described a method for inserting Flash animations on a page without using the embed element. Flash Satay has two parts. First, Drew figured out that you can use a single object element to call Flash as long as you specify its type adequately. Second, to properly stream Flash movies, you have to embed a sort of reference movie.

I’ve been experimenting with Drew’s code on Google Video and YouTube content. I was shocked to find that Google Video suggests you use only the embed tag to embed their video on Web pages. Alas, not shocked that they would suggest such a thing—just shocked that it actually works on Internet Explorer, which stopped supporting the non-standard, but universally-supported embed tag years ago in favor of its proprietary implementation of the standard object tag that renders that tag completely invisible to standards-loving browsers. It turns out that IE supports embed as long as the visitor has the appropriate player already installed. If not, they get an error and a generic broken-plugin icon, but no help. YouTube, for its part, does the often seen but hardly standard twice cooked approach, offering both the object and embed tags.

Since both Google Video and YouTube serve movies through the Flash player—regardless of your movie’s format when you uploaded it—you can use Drew’s single object method to embed such movies on your page. Indeed, you don’t have to use the Satay part of his code; movies on Google Video and YouTube stream even without the reference movie he suggests. (Line wraps marked » —Ed.)

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
data="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf? »
8755581808731033658"
width="400" height="326" id="VideoPlayback">
<param name="movie"
value="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf? »
docId=8755581808731033658" />
<param name="allowScriptAcess" value="sameDomain" />
<param name="quality" value="best" />
<param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" />
<param name="scale" value="noScale" />
<param name="salign" value="TL" />
<param name="FlashVars" value="playerMode=embedded" />
</object>

My real peeve, however, as I mentioned above, isn’t with Flash movies—which I have little experience with—but with QuickTime and Windows Media Player movies. I’ve been trying to embed these in a standard way for years, but without much luck. Quite recently, I came upon the MIME type that will let you use a single object for Windows Media Player files (.wmv). I still can’t quite believe it.

One object for Windows Media Player

I am a firm believer in paying attention to mistakes. It’s only when I notice that I’ve done something wrong, and figure out why, that I am able to figure out new ways of doing things right. As I was reviewing the technique, I noticed that although it did work well for QuickTime movies (as described below), it didn’t work for Windows Media Player movies…on Opera…for Windows. I suppressed the urge to ignore it, and as I dug for an answer to that problem, I came across the MIME type that will let you use a single object to embed Windows Media Player files: video/x-ms-wmv.

To embed a Windows Media Player file, you should be able to use this code (Line wraps marked » —Ed.):
<object type="video/x-ms-wmv"
data="http://www.sarahsnotecards.com/catalunyalive/ »
fishstore.wmv"
width="320" height="260">
<param name="autostart" value="true" />
<param name="controller" value="true" />
</object>

But it turns out that IE6 and IE7 and Safari (strange bedfellows if ever there were), all need a little extra push, in the form of an extra param element:
<object type="video/x-ms-wmv"
data="http://www.sarahsnotecards.com/catalunyalive/ »
fishstore.wmv"
width="320" height="260">
<param name="src"
value="http://www.sarahsnotecards.com/catalunyalive/ »
fishstore.wmv" />
<param name="autostart" value="true" />
<param name="controller" value="true" />
</object>

And it works.

Personally, I consider this pretty experimental, or at the very least sacrilegious… embedding a Windows Media Player movie without a classid! (What’s next? Valid documents with no DOCTYPE?) I tested this simple example in IE5.5, IE6, IE7, Opera Win/Mac, Firefox Win/Mac, and Safari and it worked just fine. That said, I don’t do a lot of scripting or Microsoft stuff, so your mileage may vary. (Note: Of course, there are many more param elements that you may wish to use.)

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