The best WP YouTube Lyte to date!

Today WP YouTube Lyte 1.2.0 got finally pushed out the gates! This new version is beyond any doubt the best version to date, with the following new features:

  • LYTE embeds are now fully responsive
  • automatic inclusion of scheme.org microdata (VideoObject) (also known as “rich snippets”)
  • even better performance (less requests; was 5, now 3)
  • updated to the current YouTube look & feel, see this YouTube video about microdata:
Introduction to Rich Snippets

Although I did go through a small beta-cycle, with feedback from 5 users (thanks guys), I am pretty sure there still are bugs that will rear their ugly head in the following days (some strings haven’t been translated yet, for example). Do contact me, add a comment here or create a post on the wordpress.org forum in case you encounter unexpected behavior!

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!

Are you wishing WP YouTube Lyte a responsive new year?

I’m spending some of the last hours of 2012 as a preparation for one of my 2013 resolutions; a new version of WP YouTube Lyte that will be fully responsive. I just finished a “template” (i.e. plain static HTML + CSS, not integrated in the plugin yet) which I’m pretty happy with.
It features:

  • A responsive player which in this test-case means a width of 820, shrinking when needed. The default width will remain an option.
  • Closer to current YouTube look & feel with a black play button that becomes red on hover
  • All player chrome loaded from just one image sprite (2 images in current, non-responsive version)
  • Embedded microformat data for better search engine discovery (will probably be configurable, “off” by default)
  • Works on all browsers (although e.g. positioning the play-button without CSS3 calc in e.g. IE8 and below is less precise)

You can check out the template on http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9207036/new_lyte_test.html. Feel free to give feedback on this early test-implementation.

WP YouTube Lyte: waiting for the big leap forwards

I’m releasing yet another small upgrade for WP YouTube Lyte to fix a small issue with the fullscreen-button and to allow you to have LYTE-videos without YouTube-cookies being set.
To embed “cookie law”-compliant LYTE-video’s, you have to add the “&showinfo=0” parameter to your httpv-url. This prevents the call to the Youtube API, which is used to fetch the title of the video and stops YouTube-cookies from being set when the LYTE-player is loaded. There are, however,  two limitations to take into account:

But this release is, I’m afraid, still not the one that incorporates responsive and custom player sizes. I know some of you are waiting for that big leap forwards and it will come in the next major version (1.2.0), but I currently don’t have the time to work on this. If you do have the time and the skills, feel free to provide me with patches and I will happily accept your contribution! Because as Billy Bragg sang;

You can be active with the activists
Or sleep in with the sleepers

Billy Bragg - Waiting For The Great Leap Forward.

😉