Overview

At VideoSift we have always made available the embed code for every video on the site. Until now, the provided code has just been the raw <object> and <embed> tags as you would acquire directly from the video host, but we wanted to provide a much more attractive embed.

We opted to achieve such a thing by providing users with a <script> tag that builds the fancy new widget into the DOM of the host page. Initially, the plan was to just generate a pretty simple DOM structure wrapped around a video, but it evolved from there to include:

• the ability to optionally start out as a thumbnail image that when clicked will expand into the full widget
• a functional vote button that would remotely cast an up-vote for logged in members
• a brief, scrollable listing of comments on the video

There were a few interesting issues that needed to be resolved along the way:

• Where on the host page should the widget be inserted?
• What happens if the host page contains multiple widget <script> tags?
• How should we dynamically load the widget in comments on VideoSift?
• How should we cast votes on remote host pages that need to be posted to VideoSift?

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