Viddler

We’ve made a much needed update to our Viddler Player Javascript Framework page. Essentially this page describes a few of the ways you can control the Viddler players using JavaScript as well as the JavaScript callbacks that the player makes.

One of the more notable updates are getCurrentTime() which will return the timestamp for where the playhead is currently on the player. We’ve had many requests for this function to be added and we feel this is the first step in making it much easier to build complimentary applications to our player. (more updates like this one are coming)

The list of callbacks, once reserved for use only on Viddler.com, have now been opened up for public use. Now developers can listen for events such as tags and comments being added to the timeline as well as when the player is paused and played.

We’re planning some very big updates to our player in 2010 and this is just the beginning. Please take a moment to review the rest of the updates. Happy coding!

The Viddler WordPress plugin, or as some like to call it the video commenting plugin, has now been added to the official WordPress.org plugins directory.  We feel all official about it.

What does this mean for you? It means that now you’re able to install the plugin from within your blog’s WordPress admin. It also means that anytime we release an update to the plugin, like we just have with version 1.2.3 which is now available, you will be notified of this update from within the plugin panel in WordPress.

WordPress 2.7 has made it as easy as ever to find, install, and update plugins that will enhance your blog’s features. We hope the Viddler WordPress plugin is one of them.

As we’re slowly putting together our new developers site we are continously updating the documentation, articles, and projects that are on the site. 

Today we’ve just launched a new article How to: Encode High Quality Video for Viddler. We’ve had this article requested from us several times and we’re happy to finally offer it. Nothing too special in the article itself, really, no rocket science – however it is nice to have an easy to read reference on how to get the best out of your Viddler videos.

If you have any questions or would like to have something appended to the article, or would like to request a new article, please feel free to leave a comment.

Watch for falling rocks!  We’re sort of live updating the Viddler’s Developer site.

We’ve got a new template designed by Viddler’s Lead Designer Andrew Smith which will facilitate our needs not only for the Developer site but also for a few other sub-level domains we’ll be launching in the next few weeks.  Andrew provided me with a style guide of sorts and so now I’m put to the task of getting both WordPress and MediaWiki, the two applications we use to pull off this site, to bend to my will.

Everything should work ok, but will look a little wonky while I’m updating. If you have any concerns, let me know.

The response from the first version of the bookmarklet has been pretty strong. It has now been updated a little, based on the comments we’ve received, and hopefully you’ll find it even more useful.

Changes in beta 0.2

• Sharing via Twitter now works, even when logged out of Twitter.com.
• Window is now resizable.

We still need to fix the Firefox 3 RC1 issue that Evan Sims pointed out, as well as figure out how to make the bookmarklet work on pages where a Viddler video is embedded, and not just on Viddler.com.
Thanks for all of your feedback so far!

To upgrade or install

To update your bookmarklet, just delete the old one, and use this new one: ViddlerPop!

As always, if you have any questions, just ask.

I like watching video in Viddler’s player.  All of my favorite podcasts are now using Viddler including WineLibrary TV, DiggNation, Two Guys on Beer, just to name a few.  But sometimes I don’t like keeping a browser tab open to watch these longer videos while I’m doing other things like surfing the Web, writing code, or replying to the endless amounts of email I seem to get.

This is where ViddlerPop!, a new bookmarklet we’re playing with, comes in and saves the day.  Now instead of keeping a browser tab open dedicated to a Viddler video, I can watch this video in its own window.

Here is a quick video demonstration of how this first version works.

Please leave us some feedback to let us know what you think of the bookmarklet, how you’d like it to improve, and if you find any bugs.  Thanks in advance!

Installation

To install ViddlerPop! just drag the ViddlerPop! link to your browser’s bookmarks bar – or, right-click and “Add to bookmarks”. I believe in Firefox it is right-click and “Bookmark this Link”.

Questions?  Fire away!

In an effort to make developing on Viddler’s platform as easy as possible, we’ve moved the lab from lab.viddler.com to developers.viddler.com.  Everything should be forwarded now and we’ll be now setting up shop here.  The wiki is still available, but we’re going to be adding a whole new interface to our Developers area over the next few weeks.

Please stay tuned!

If you haven’t already, please be sure to read part one that Kyle put together, which covers the simple task of initiating the phpViddler class and using it to list videos. Some of the code found herein may not make sense if you haven’t read part one.

I think you’ll find, through these tutorials, that using phpViddler makes it dead simple to use Viddler’s APIs. Please leave feedback if you have any specific areas you’d like us to cover.

Authenticating a user

To authenticate a user you will need both the username and password of the user. For this example, we’ll say the username is my username, cdevroe, and the password will be a fake password of ‘password’.

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Over the next couple weeks, Colin and I are going to be guiding you through how to use Viddler’s API with phpViddler, the PHP wrapper for our API functions. We’ll be covering everything from embedding videos to registering new users, so keep checking back!

Today, I’ll be covering how to list videos using the Viddler API and phpViddler using the functions videos_listbyuser, videos_listbytag, and videos_listfeatured.
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A mambot is “a small, task-oriented function for Joomla! software”.  Viddler Antonio Edward (friend: labanex) has released a Viddler mambot that makes it easy to embed Viddler videos, using both the normal and simple player, on your Joomla! powered Web sites.

As it stands you have to do some digging into the HTML embed code to get the values you need to make this plugin work, but perhaps someone with some Joomla! experience can help Antonio out by using oEmbed to make this process even easier?

It is a great first step for Joomla! users.  Thanks Antonio!