Behavior of embedded videos in blog feed

[davide405]

Continuing the discussion from Flying concrete chunk startles crowd watching demolition:

@nanite2000

Hey - has anyone else noticed that if you click to play a small video on Boing Boing’s feed, it’s impossible to make it stop playing? The video window doesn’t respond to the mouse over, so it doesn’t show any controls to change volume, pause, etc…

Hi @nanite2000

I responded to you here because this forum is monitored by those who can respond authoritatively to your concern.

For myself, I have not noticed the behavior you mentioned, but it’s also possible that I have unconsciously employed the workaround of simply navigating away from the page to break the video stream. I’ll be extra-alert to it in the next few days to see if I experience what you have.

[nanite2000]

Hi davide405

Thanks for looking into it.

I experience the problem in all major browsers (Chrome, Firefox, IE11)
on Windows 7, all of which are running the latest updates. You should be
able to see it for yourself by clicking to play any of the small videos
on the left hand column of Boing Boing’s main page. Once the video
starts playing, the only way to stop it is by navigating away from the page.

I think I see what’s causing it, but it will require a web developer to
fix it.

There’s an unusual CSS class on the news item element that the video is
contained in. Clicking the video creates a class called ‘catchall’ the
covers the whole news element and blocks the video player controls.

This is also causing a related issue I noted a few days ago. Attempting
to play a Boing Boing video on the iPhone requires the following steps:

1. Click on the small video in the feed. This replaces the static video
   picture with what appears to be a YouTube player (with a red ‘Play’
   button in the middle).
2. Clicking the play button navigates you to a new page which shows the
   full post and a larger version of the video.
3. Click on the larger video, and this repeats the behaviour seen in
   step (1) - the video reloads with a red ‘Play’ button in the middle.
4. Click the red play button and the video finally starts playing.

Perhaps Boing Boing’s web developers could take a look?

[mod edit: removed signature]

[davide405]

Hi Nanite,

I see part of what you’re talking about.

Environment is an older MacBook Pro, OS 10.9.3, Safari browser v7.0.4

When I click on one of the small embedded videos in the blog feed (left column) I do indeed lose the controls to play/pause the video, to mute/control volume, and to go directly to YouTube.

Instead, the whole video becomes a clickable control, with one action. Clicking it takes me to the dedicated page for that article with the video stopped, without preserving the progress I’ve made in the video.

That it, it’s the same as if I had clicked the text link in the lower right hand corner of the blog post in the first place.

This is just a data point for further evaluation, and to let you know that no, it’s not just you