Adding Videos to a Web Page

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Today, someone asked me about how to add a video clip to a Web and show the controls.  This is relatively easy, so I thought I would share with all of you how to do this.  You can do this by using the Windows Media Player. To do this, switch to Code (or HTML) view and paste the following HTML code:

 <object id="WMPlayer1" classid="clsid:6BF52A52-394A-11d3-B153-00C04F79FAA6" height="250" width="250">
 <param name="uiMode" value="full" />
 <param name="autoStart" value="true" />
 <param name="URL" value="SampleVideo.WMV" /> 
 Your browser does not support ActiveX controls or the Windows Media Player.
 </object>

To make this work for your video file, change the value of the value attribute (see red text above) to the path and filename of your video file. If you want to change the size of the view, change the value of the height and width attributes (see blue text above) to the height and width that you want.

Once you add the HTML, you can change the filename and size using the properties dialog box also. Just switch back to Design view and double click on the control.

This code displays video files in Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. I was unable to get this to display properly with Mozilla.  (I'm not sure if that means that Mozilla doesn't support Windows Media Player or ActiveX controls, or if there is a property that I need to set.  Anyway, I wasn't able to find an ActiveX property in the Preferences dialog, so I'm assuming that Mozilla doesn't support any ActiveX controls. If anyone has any information about this, please let me know.) I didn't test it in Opera (which I don't have installed on my computer, but I am rectifying since so many have offered comments about Opera), so I can't tell you whether it works in Opera or not. In addition, the visitor must have Active X controls enabled in their browser.

Note   This code works well as long as the visitor has Windows Media Player installed on their local computer.  If they don't, then they may be asked to install it. ActiveX controls are installed locally on the visitors machine, so they can have security risks associated with them.  Most browsers allow users to turn off installing, displaying, and running them, and Internet Explorer allows users to run them if they are signed, to prompt before installing them, and to disable unsigned ActiveX controls.