That's great Decibel, you

Nostradamus — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 19:30:12 +0000

That's great Decibel, you have my gratitude and eternal respect

ok, here we go, based on the

decibel.places — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 04:04:16 +0000

ok, here we go, based on the demo here

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
	"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
    <title>
      YouTube Javascript API Autostart
    </title>
    <script src="swfobject.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

    <script type="text/javascript">
    setTimeout('myytplayer.playVideo()',5000);
    </script>
  </head>
  <body>
  <div>
    <div id="ytapiplayer">
      You need Flash player 8+ and JavaScript enabled to view this video.
    </div>
    <script type="text/javascript">
      // allowScriptAccess must be set to allow the Javascript from one domain to access the swf on the youtube domain
      var params = { allowScriptAccess: "always" };
     // this sets the id of the object or embed tag to 'myytplayer'. You then use this id to access the swf and make calls to the player's API
      var atts = { id: "myytplayer" };
      swfobject.embedSWF("http://www.youtube.com/v/OdqhDcAoQuc&amp;border=0&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;playerapiid=ytplayer", 
                         "ytapiplayer", "425", "344", "8", null, null, params, atts);
    </script>

  </body>
</html>

You need to

1. Download SWFobject, not link to YouTube's

2. Change swfobject.embedSWF("http://www.youtube.com/v/OdqhDcAoQuc to the URL of your video

the setTimeout is very important, it will not work without it - but you may be able to set the timer to less than 5000 milliseconds

I think you are best off

decibel.places — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 23:28:47 +0000

I think you are best off using the YouTube API including SWFObject

Be aware that you cannot test it on a local file, as there are security issues connecting your client computer to remote files - you need to upload your code somewhere to test it

If/when I come up with a solution, I'll post it back here

what about a Javascript

decibel.places — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 22:54:21 +0000

what about a Javascript like

<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
function clickit() {
document.getElementById('idofflash').click();
}
onload = clickit;
}
//-->
</script>

where "idofflash" is the id="someid" of the flash component you need to add

I am not sure this will click an embedded YouTube flash video, however, I do believe that a click anywhere on the YouTube video will play it, it is not necessary to target the play button

if this works, it has an advantage over webwiz's method because it will autoplay the video on document load (I believe that is your goal), not triggered by a click

[EDIT] I have been testing this, but the only way I can get the embedded YouTube video to play automatically is the autoplay=1 parameter which will not be counted because it was abused...

webwiz wrote: Okay. I just

Nostradamus — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 22:36:17 +0000

webwiz wrote:

Okay. I just googled this. Check out this simple explanation:
http://www.loganrenz.com/wordpress/?p=334

Hope it helps.

Yes I am aware of both of these options Youtube gives you, but unfortunately Youtube does not count either od these actions as views.

I am currently playing around with that Javascript as I think it's the best chance I have. Many thanks to you both for the wise words

Okay. I just googled this.

webwiz — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 22:31:53 +0000

Okay. I just googled this. Check out this simple explanation:
http://www.loganrenz.com/wordpress/?p=334

Hope it helps.

Assuming you can initiate

webwiz — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 21:52:57 +0000

Assuming you can initiate the "play" button with a script, you could take a leaf out of Sitepoint.com's web site. They have an "onclick" handler on the BODY element. A click anywhere on the page normally bubbles up - so they create a pop-up advert the first time a visitor clicks anywhere on the page. Perhaps you could adapt this to trigger the "play" button?

I don't know about the YouTube API so can't be more specific. Sorry.