Eric Mack On-Line

Two weeks ago, I asked for help posting a flash video movie inside of a web page. There are many ways to do this, and I've successfully used some of them in the past. The problem was that they required that I paste or edit many lines of code for each video clip. I wanted something that would let me do this in one line. I plan to start posting videos and screen movies regularly and I know that if it isn't easy to do, I won't do it.

Several people generously posted suggestions to my blog, and I want to publicly acknowledge Jeff Crossett, Carl Tyler, Tanny O'Haley, and Michael, for their helpful input.

Today, Tanny called me on his lunch break and said that he had just the solution I was looking for. He'd been reading about Jeff Stern's Javascript Flash Player detection and embed script. A short while later, I had my solution. I can now paste a single line in a Dominoblog entry and the server will generate the necessary code to play the flash video movie.

Here's a quick test embedded screen movie that I put together, to demo the embedded video.

Thanks, Tanny!

Tanny tells me that this solution will work across all browsers and all operating systems. Soon,we hope to be able to add player controls to the page, similar to what Camtasia provides. For now, however, I can begin to include screen movies on this blog.

Let us know how this test works in your browser. Feedback welcome.

PS. Perhaps I could find a way to drop a subtle hint to Steve Castledine to include this code into DominoBlog, so that it will be a one-click operation. That would be sweet!