Highly experimental: YouTube videos!

[sctroyenne]

It would be nice to have a "Display videos within posts: y/n" setting in the control panel the same as there's a "Display images within posts: y/n" setting. That way each user could decide for themselves whether they prefer to see links to videos or have them embedded.

Excellent idea - a similar option to a lot of email clients. It could be set so that you can click and display content as you desire (without needing to click through to the video or whatever itself). I find on a site like Tumblr with endless scrolling and nothing but media content (especially with all the gifs) that it will eventually crash a browser on even a decent computer. I'm already thinking I should delay my next music selection posting in my log so as to not make a single page too media-heavy.

[rdearman]

I looked at the thread on a computer with AdBlock plus, it had blocked all the embedded videos.

[emk]

I'm already thinking I should delay my next music selection posting in my log so as to not make a single page too media-heavy.

That's a really fascinating music post and I can't wait to read back through it and listen to all the videos. There's so much awesome stuff there that I've never heard before, and it's great to have somebody to say, "Hey, this is cool! And this is interesting because of XYZ!"

If anybody would like to test out a video-heavy post on a tablet or mobile device, I recommend you try (carefully!) sctroyenne's page. If it blows up horribly, please let us know so we can adjust accordingly. I can confirm that it behaves well under a modern laptop and phone, both running over wifi (so that doesn't prove much).

I admit to being biased in these matters, because I use media-heavy language learning methods, and I like to share stuff so that it's very easy for people to check out. But of course, it's more important to keep the forum usable.

[Arnaud]

deleted

[rdearman]

I looked at the thread on a computer with AdBlock plus, it had blocked all the embedded videos.

Not my experience: I've AB+ in Firefox Win 7 and the videos are correctly displayed.

Wasn't my PC, they might have had AdBlock cranked up the the max though.

[sctroyenne]

Another possibility to facilitate media sharing could be something like the playlister apps created for the Reddit music subreddits like radd.it and Reddit Playlister (such as featured in the sidebar of r/EcouteCa).

[Serpent]

I looked at the thread on a computer with AdBlock plus, it had blocked all the embedded videos.

Not my experience: I've AB+ in Firefox Win 7 and the videos are correctly displayed.

Wasn't my PC, they might have had AdBlock cranked up the the max though.

They might have had a "block flash" add-on as well.

[sctroyenne]

An update after trying the first page of my log across multiple devices (I don't have all stats readily handy right not but I can provide details if wanted):

On a new computer with decent to good hardware (though not a gaming PC) it works pretty well. Only slightly longer to load. Though I noticed that on a PC, the option to play in full screen is present in the embedded player but clicking on it doesn't work (don't know if that's a YouTube issue or forum issue). I have to view the video in YouTube directly to get full screen.

On an old computer (XP) with basic hardware it's a bit laggier to load but it still works with no crashes. By the time I scroll all the way down the page and go back up the all the pictures are loaded and the videos are ready to play.

On mobile (iPhone 4S, Safari, iOS 8.1.3) it's not performing very well at all. Took a while to load, was a big white space for a while, froze for a few seconds, automatically reloaded. It did eventually load (after maybe about 5 minutes) but someone who doesn't have the patience for all that would probably just close it.

I tried all these with minimum to no other tabs open and nothing much operating in the background. I may convert some or most of the videos to simple links to make it smoother again unless we get some other video display options sometime soon.

[emk]

I tried all these with minimum to no other tabs open and nothing much operating in the background. I may convert some or most of the videos to simple links to make it smoother again unless we get some other video display options sometime soon.

Thank you, this was super helpful! It sounds like we need to prioritize making videos toggleable, and to use them with restraint in the meantime. That was really helpful.

[MorkTheFiddle]

Hrhenry wrote:

I just tried viewing one of these YouTube videos on a tablet.
I'm happy to report that it works nicely . . .

And I viewed it on an iPod, where it also works nicely. I am doing this reply on the iPod. Not fun, but we will see if it works.