WP YouTube Lyte 1.2.0: beta testers needed

Yesterday I pushed a beta version of the long overdue 1.2.0 to the SVN trunk at wordpress.org. This is the version at least some of you have been waiting for, as it includes the following new features:

  • LYTE embeds are now fully responsive
  • automatic inclusion of microdata
  • less in JavaScript, more in CSS
  • better performance: even less requests (from 5 to 3), with one CSS sprite containing the player UI.
  • updated to current YouTube look & feel, which results in something like this (Ultraïsta‘s Smalltalk in a Four Tet remix):
Ultraísta - Smalltalk (Four Tet remix)

But don’t go running off to your WordPress admin screens just yet, there’s no update notification to be seen there. This is very much still work in progress: the microdata-stuff isn’t complete yet, I’ll probably load the CSS differently, I’m still not sure what widget sizes will be supported, the translations have to be updated, there’s some PHP notices to take care of … And most importantly: as this isn’t just another small, incremental release, we need lots of testing.
So I’m looking for people who want to join in on the fun and test the in-development version on their blogs. To do so, download the zip-file from http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/wp-youtube-lyte.zip and (optionally) drop me a line so I know who I have to ping when I push an update out. I’m looking forward to receiving feedback from you guys & girls!

10 thoughts on “WP YouTube Lyte 1.2.0: beta testers needed”

  1. Tested the plugin and till now it looks ok, no visible errors.
    Personally I have to fix only two things, changing the grey background to black and a bigger one, to make it parsable in custom fields and it’s good to go 🙂

    Reply
    • Thanks for the feedback Cartonic! OK for the background (guess you want to avoid the color-switch when activating the vid), but can you explain “a bigger one”? do you mean a larger size LYTE player? And what is the relation with the “make it parsable in custom fields”?

      Reply
  2. bigger one I mean a bigger one problem(atlast for me) that has nothing to do with plugin fuctionallity itself. My theme is made to show custom fields content but it doesn’t parse youtube Lyte as it’s appears still as an url.

    Reply
    • Ah OK, now I understand (slow, need more coffee). You should be able to have your theme call lyte_parse somehow (in the theme’s functions.php I guess), using something like;
      if(function_exists('lyte_parse')) { echo lyte_parse($your_custom_field); }

      Reply
    • thanks for the test & feedback!
      regarding replacing the youtube thumbnail; that functionality might be too specific to add to the plugin, but it should be pretty easy to create a helper plugin (or a small block of code in your theme’s functions.php) to search & replace the thumbnail URL’s. something like:
      function lyte_helper_replace($html){
      // do search/ replace here in the $html-string
      // look for something data-uri="http://i.ytimg.com/vi/om6e5jZbs0o/0.jpg"
      }
      function lyte_helper_ob_setup(){
      ob_start('lyte_helper_replace');
      }
      add_action('wp', 'lyte_helper_ob_setup', 10, 0);

      hope this helps,
      frank

      Reply
  3. I just pushed what I consider a feature-complete version to wordpress.org SVN. For those wanting to test, the latest version of the plugin can be downloaded from http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/wp-youtube-lyte.zip
    Goal is to clean up code in the next few days. I probably won’t wait for translations, but push out 1.2.1 a couple of weeks later with some bugfixes (if needed) and updated translations.
    Looking forward to your feedback! 🙂

    Reply
  4. Checked out WP YouTube Lyte 1.2.1, here’s some thoughts:
    – I need to set the default player size, but my theme is adaptive and the player should adapt to different situations (blocking for me).
    – I must add an “v” to youtube urls, (httpv://…), but my blog is multiauthor and authors have barely learned how to copy&paste the URL from the browser address bar to the wp post (no kidding), there’s no way to teach them a new rule.
    – works only for “v” urls, i.e. older posts reain unaffected; (neutral issue)
    – unistalling the plugin breaks “v” urls.
    All things considered, its a very interesting project performancewise and I will follow the developments.

    Reply
    • Thanks for the review Blau! Some feedback:

      • Although you indeed have to set a default player size, it _should_ auto-adjust to the width available in the containing div.
      • I’ll have at least a temporary solution for those who want to work without the ‘v’ one of the next couple of days
      Reply
    • OK, to force http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= links to be parsed by WP YouTube Lyte as well, add this to your theme’s function.php;

      /** test to force wp youtube lyte on http://www.youtube.com url's as well */
      add_filter('the_content', 'force_lyte_parse', 1);
      function force_lyte_parse($content) {
      $content=str_replace('http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=','httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=',$content);
      return $content;
      }

      Reply

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