The state of WP YouTube Lyte (now with fresh Pomplamoose)
Although it has been a few months since I last wrote about my baby WordPress plugin, time did not stand still between version 0.3.0 and 0.5.2; the player size can now be changed in the options-screen, I’ve replaced my newTube html5-hack with Google’s official (yet experimental) new html5-compatible embed code and I started migrating the CSS from the mess that had become the JavaScript-file. And I almost forgot what may be the most important change; I started searching for blogs that use WP-YouTube-Lyte to see how it behaves in the wild. Some of the bugs I discovered that way;
- WordPress has a lousy “the_excerpt”-function which removes script-tags but not the script itself, which caused my JavaScript to be displayed as normal text in excerpts (typically in category-pages). Fixed with some unpleasant CDATA-tinkering.
- Some blogs allow crawlers to see the contents of a directory if no index.* is in place, so e.g. options.php gets indexed with an ugly (but logical) error-message. Fixed with an index.html.
- There’s a lot of themes and some of those have CSS that impacts the way WP YouTube Lyte is displayed. Most issues should be fixed by better CSS for my plugin, but do let me know if you encounter more weird display-problems (especially the controls that are incorrectly positioned).
But with all those changes you might start to wonder if WP-YouTube-Lyte still reduces download size & rendering time substantially, no? So I ran a couple of new tests for this page on my blog (it has 3 embedded YouTube’s) on webpagetest.org (settings: 5 runs on IE7 via Amsterdam, excluding requests to stats.wordpress.com). The difference is … well, judge for yourself (or see below the tables for the summary)
With normal Flash-based embeds (full results here):
| Document Complete | Fully Loaded | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Load Time | First Byte | Start Render | Time | Requests | Bytes In | Time | Requests | Bytes In | |
| First View | 1.850s | 0.634s | 1.330s | 1.850s | 15 | 343 KB | 5.350s | 22 | 524 KB |
| Repeat View | 1.142s | 0.346s | 0.497s | 1.142s | 5 | 17 KB | 2.455s | 5 | 17 KB |
And with WP YouTube Lyte (full results here):
| Document Complete | Fully Loaded | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Load Time | First Byte | Start Render | Time | Requests | Bytes In | Time | Requests | Bytes In | |
| First View | 1.201s | 0.355s | 0.974s | 1.201s | 10 | 55 KB | 2.065s | 20 | 103 KB |
| Repeat View | 0.605s | 0.352s | 0.473s | 0.605s | 2 | 12 KB | 1.447s | 5 | 14 KB |
Did you see that? Less requests, less data and faster rendering for first and repeat views. Hurray for WP-YouTube-Lyte! But enough with that ego-tripping already, I’ve got an Opera-bug to look into! Or wait, I’ll watch this great new Pomplamoose+Ben Folds+Nick Hornby videosong first:
frank
5 Sep 10 at 10:42
the opera-issue has been fixed with version 0.5.3
fruityoaty
26 Sep 10 at 17:24
I continue to love this plugin (one of my top 10 useful plugins faves). Wondering why it’s not used by more bloggers (using WordPress)… because it really works unbelievably swell. Thank you for continuing to share/update it.
Anyway, just curious… Any plans on providing widget support soon? I really, really, really want to use it on my sidebar (instead of posts/pages) to show my latest YouTube videos.
frank
26 Sep 10 at 18:08
ok, i’ll put widget support on my “should look into stuff”-list
fruityoaty
1 Nov 10 at 06:07
Odd error with version 0.6.0 (widget enabled version). Testing it now… with WordPress 3.0.1
Issue:
If a YouTube video in the sidebar widget is the SAME YouTube video in a post/page, 2 things occur when the page fully loads:
1. First, no video appears in the widget at all. Blank space (approx. 150px in height)
2. Next, the video in the post/page appears TWICE (both same width & height)
Otherwise, as long at the YouTube video in the widget does not match any video on the same post/page, the widget works fine.
Functionality request:
Able to specify height and dimension of YouTube video (although, I do realize I can
hardcode values in widget.php).
Anyway, thanks in advance for any reply.
Good plugin.
frank
1 Nov 10 at 06:33
ow, the same youtube-id, that’s going to be almost impossible to solve as the id is used as id to uniquely identify the div (placeholder) in which the video is to be shown. having the same video on a post/page would have given weird results as well, even in versions prior ot 0.6.0. i’ll think some more, but don’t hold your breath …
as for the feature request; shouldn’t be too complicated, i’ll see if I can add that to the following release.
IBuzzyou
25 Dec 10 at 10:31
Hello,
I started to use this plugin, but do you think this is possible to do the same with Dailymotion videos ?
Regards,
frank
25 Dec 10 at 16:55
that would depend largerly on the dailymotion API, but given some code-juggling it should be possible yes. not sure it’s on the roadmap for the forseeable future though …
IBuzzyou
25 Dec 10 at 17:25
Ok, tell me if you plan to do it. Is it normal that WP YouTube Lyte block iPad and iPhone to watch YouTube vidéos ? (i dont use HTML5 system but embed one).
Tanks in advance.
frank
26 Dec 10 at 08:41
i’ll have to look into that ios issue i guess. does it work with the html5-option enabled?
IBuzzyou
26 Dec 10 at 12:18
No it doesnt work with both versions … Will you try to solve that ?
frank
26 Dec 10 at 17:22
ok, can you check the html5-version after having signed up for the html5-beta on http://youtube.com/html5 ?
IBuzzyou
26 Dec 10 at 18:55
For the iPhone and the iPad :
http://www.apple.com/html5/
frank
26 Dec 10 at 19:01
what i mean; in order to see the html5-version of youtube (which is used by wp-youtube-lyte html5), you have to enroll in the yourube html5 beta, which you can do on http://youtube.be/html5.
if you use wp-youtube-lyte with html5, but have not enrolled in the beta, youtube will show the flash-version which ipad/iphone can’t.
IBuzzyou
26 Dec 10 at 20:49
I also enrol in YouTube beta test it doesnt work it’s strange…
frank
29 Dec 10 at 20:35
update: I tested on an iPad today at work, the normal version indeed does not, work, but html5 did even without explicitly enrolling in youtube’s html5 beta. on which device (and which iOS version) and on which site did you test?
IBuzzyou
30 Dec 10 at 11:54
I will try again, i am on an iPad 4.2.1 last update and on the website ibuzzyou.fr
I’ll tell you if it works
Pieter
22 Mar 11 at 10:00
Lots of respect for you creating this plugin. I just tried it and I’m a fan already. Keep up the good work.
I think your plugin could earn the attention it needs with more languages support, no? If you need any help, contact me. I translate quite often plugins.
frank
22 Mar 11 at 10:31
not a bad idea at all, I just might look into that for a future version Pieter!
groetjes uit Lokeren
frank
22 Apr 11 at 14:30
update: 0.7.1 comes with Dutch & French language-files (for the strings that are visible by the blog visitors, that is). additional translations are welcome.
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[...] Ich habe gestern wieder einmal über das WordPress-Plugin DoNotTrack von Frank Goossens geschrieben. Dabei ist es mir aufgfallen, dass er ein weiter Plugin entwickelt hat: WP YouTube Lyte. [...]