Category: Upgrades

External VfE / My Plugins / Upgrades / WordPress

1 Jun, 2010

External VfE 0.7

I have just released External Video for Everybody 0.7 as the new stable version. The big change here is that following Video for Everybody 0.4+ I have dropped the embedded QuickTime objects.

Part of the rationale for dropping QuickTime objects is to simplify the HTML, though I would not have done it for that reason alone. After all, the plugin doesn't care about having to write some complicated markup.

I made the switch for three additional reasons:

  • I think it is valuable to stay close to Video for Everybody rather than to fork off in a different direction
  • Dropping QuickTime objects lowers the overhead when preparing files. There is no need now to create a "poster.mp4" file.
  • I want to avoid preloading movies that will not be played, but using the "poster.mp4" was creating an odd user experience. You had to click on the movie to get it to play rather than clicking on the "play" button. So really the poster needed to have some kind of "click me" label. I'm sure I could have automated a smarter poster creation for myself, but it added to complexity for providers and consumers alike. Better to let it go.

External VfE / My Plugins / Upgrades / WordPress

18 May, 2010

External VfE 0.6

Version 0.6 of the External Video for Everybody WordPress plugin allows you to designate (on the options page or within a shortcode) whether or not you wish to include a poster attribute in your HTML5 video tag. Dropping the poster follows Video for Everybody 0.4 in order enable playback on iPads. Leaving posters as an option allows each user to decide globally or on a video by video basis. You might even turn posters off but continue to create and upload them with the idea that you can turn them on when iPads can handle them. Or you can just start making your posters into the first frame of the movie.

Additionally, version 0.6 offers experimental support for video URL's that require a query string after the file name. Amazon S3 has been pointed out as a case in point, but I do not use the service, and so I cannot test whether my accommodation actually addresses the problem.

External VfE / My Plugins / Upgrades / WordPress

11 Apr, 2010

External VfE 0.5

I've just released a minor adjustment to the External "Video for Everybody" plugin. The change follows the official version 0.3.3 of Video for Everybody. In the code the .mp4 file is now listed as the first <source>. That's the only difference. Firefox still plays the OGG video, but Chrome will play the .mp4 now instead of the .ogv.

Category Feeds / My Plugins / Upgrades / WordPress

10 Apr, 2010

Feeds 0.5

Just committed a new version of Feeds a la carte. This version includes a first line that links to the home page of the site and to the site-wide feed. The "name" on the line is "All Categories." The new line shows up by default, but it can be suppressed using the site_feed shortcode. Any value other that "true" for that attribute will suppress the site-wide links.