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** To avoid all the geeky stuff, please see the Summary section for a brief explanation of what to do when posting CNN videos at DailyKos - the rest is a convoluted description of how I derived this suggestion. **
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Hi Folks, I've noticed in some recent diaries that there have been warnings to peer DKos members not to post CNN embedded videos, because those embeds cause problems for some of our users.
My brief investigation of the matter seems to reveal that Internet Explorer (8, at least) is having a conflict between the embed code provided by CNN for its videos and the DailyKos code that supports diaries + commenting.
Below the fold, I'll attempt to explain my reasoning and offer a possible solution, or embarrass myself trying.
Problem description
The example which spurred this brief investigation was a short diary that mostly consisted of an embedded CNN video. Within the diary, I saw some helpful folks who reminded the author that some DKos peers cannot post comments within diaries which contain embedded CNN video clips.
So, I inquired as to the possible symptoms and Catte Nappe offered a very helpful explanation of the problem, which I went through to determine the high-level, reproducible symptoms:
- Use Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0 (32-bit) with the latest Adobe Flash plugin.
- Create a comment through either the "Post a Comment" or "Reply to This" link and notice that the CNN embedded video is no longer visible in the body of the diary within which you are creating a comment.
- Hit the "Preview" button for your draft comment and notice that the embedded CNN video from the diary body suddenly appears where you were expecting to see the preview comment, which seems either overlaid or replaced by that embedded CNN video.
- There is no visible preview comment, so your ability to hit "Post" is apparently lost for that particular attempt.
What seems to be causing the problem?
When you are viewing a CNN video, they provide an Embed option at the bottom, with an associated "Copy embed" button that will copy the entire piece of code into your browser's clipboard:
That "Copy embed" button for the sample video in this test, provides the following code to your browser's clipboard:
<object width="416" height="374" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" id="ep"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /><param name="movie" value="http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/apps/cvp/3.0/swf/cnn
_416x234_embed.swf?context=embed&videoId=politics/2010/06/09/fiorina.open.mic.cn
n" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#000000" /><embed src="http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/apps/cvp/3.0/swf/cnn_4
16x234_embed.swf?context=embed&videoId=politics/2010/06/09/fiorina.open.mic.cnn"
type="application/x-shockwave-flash" bgcolor="#000000" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="416" wmode="transparent" height="374"></embed></object>
So, the intent on CNN's part is that you Paste that entire block of code into wherever you are hoping to embed the video - in this case, we often place these videos into our diaries.
And, that's where the DKos problem for Internet Explorer starts - the CNN code block. So, let's try to get around that problem in a straightforward manner.
One geeky analysis, two possible solutions
Unscientifically, I've noticed in the past that different browsers can seem to have difficulty with different types of embedding tags. Although "Embed" used alone is a deprecated tag, it's still rather safe in most cases that I've seen - so, it's always a fallback in cases like this.
(1)
Before going that route, I decided to see if the specific declaration to use ShockWaveFlash in the object tag was an issue for Internet Explorer in this case - that is, the initial section of that code block shows:
<object width="416" height="374" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" id="ep"> . . .
And, this is not really necessary, IMHO - that classid value references the ShockWave Flash Player policy settings in a Windows system. Your browser is smart enough to know what plugin is necessary for running Flash media type objects, and Flash runs as it's configured within your system. So . . . I took out that bold text area from the CNN embed code.
And, commenting worked properly afterwards in Internet Explorer 8. That was nice.
(2)
As a second test, I removed the "object" code (bolded below) and only left the "embed" code block (remember to remove that trailing </object> code):
<object width="416" height="374" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" id="ep"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /><param name="movie" value="http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/apps/cvp/3.0/swf/cnn
_416x234_embed.swf?context=embed&videoId=politics/2010/06/09/fiorina.open.mic.cn
n" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#000000" /><embed src="http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/apps/cvp/3.0/swf/cnn_4
16x234_embed.swf?context=embed&videoId=politics/2010/06/09/fiorina.open.mic.cnn"
type="application/x-shockwave-flash" bgcolor="#000000" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="416" wmode="transparent" height="374"></embed></object>
which leaves us with:
<embed src="http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/apps/cvp/3.0/swf/cnn_4
16x234_embed.swf?context=embed&videoId=politics/2010/06/09/fiorina.open.mic.cnn"
type="application/x-shockwave-flash" bgcolor="#000000" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="416" wmode="transparent" height="374"></embed>
And, that also has enabled Internet Explorer to post comments correctly in the same diary.
So, we have at least two means of avoiding the CNN video embedding issue at DKos.
Conclusion
For videos from the CNN site, the native code that they provide for embeds can cause comment posting problems for Microsoft Internet Explorer (at least, version 8.0) on DailyKos.
Two possible solutions are offered for DKos peers who desire to post CNN videos in their diaries or comments, and both involve removing choice portions of the native embed code in a repeatable fashion. That is, you always remove the same chunk of code from that block CNN gives you to paste, and it will work.
Whichever means of removing code that seems easier for you is what I'd recommend you try - I am promoting the first solution idea below, because it seems the easier and faster of the two methods just mentioned.
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Summary:
- Copy the CNN video embed code via a "Copy embed" button that they provide within the video of your choice:
- "Paste" that code block from Step 1 anywhere within your diary or comment where it should safely belong.
- At the front of that code block that you just pasted, remove the following portion:
<object width="416" height="374" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" id="ep"> . . .
- Finish your diary or comment, then Preview and Publish.
The result will hopefully be a visually embedded CNN video, placed into your DKos diary or comment, that is now compatible with commenting when using Internet Explorer on Windows.
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Here is a test using the above Summary method:
If this does not work for you, please let me know in comments below or via email (which is available in my DKos profile) and we'll work out what might be done to resolve your own situation.