Question

I am developing a mobile website with audio (links to self hosted MP3 files) and video (youtube links). My target users are the blackberry, android and iphone platforms.

I want the audio/video file to play within the browser using HTML5 with flash fallback, or else to open the device’s native media player. If both fail, I can then show a link to download the MP3 or a link to visit the youtube page.

For the Youtube video, I read something on S/O about RSTP but it’s a manual process, I don’t know if there is any way to automate this via the Youtube API.

From my findings, the blackberry might tend to be the most challenging platform because I cannot find a lot of audio/video javascript/css/html support for it. Unfortunately, it’s the major target platform in my case.

Links to any articles, resources or plugins that can help will be highly appreciated.

Answer 1

I have fixed the video part. I stumbled on a blog with this info and unfortunately as I kept on trawling the web I have lost the link again. Here is what he/she suggested.

E.g. PHP code for a video with youtube ID Mgi4fkp9YAg this is what I did. It worked fine on blackberry and Android, I don’t have an iPhone but I guess it should work there too:

    <?php
    $ua = strtolower($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']);
    $pos_blackberry = strrpos($ua, "blackberry");
    $pos_webkit = strrpos($ua, "webkit");

    if (!($pos_blackberry === false)) {
        if (!($pos_webkit === false)) {          
                    $output = '<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mgi4fkp9YAg"><img width="310" height="160" title="videotitle" alt="videoalt" src="http://img.youtube.com/vi/Mgi4fkp9YAg/0.jpg" /></a>';        
            }
    }else{
        $output = '<iframe width="310" height="160" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Mgi4fkp9YAg?controls=1&showinfo=0&showsearch=0&modestbranding=1"></iframe>';
    }

    echo $output;
?>

Now I need to know how to play self-hosted MP3 files within webpages on blackberry and android. Still looking…