Developers Back to Viddler.com

Watch for falling rocks!  We’re sort of live updating the Viddler’s Developer site.

We’ve got a new template designed by Viddler’s Lead Designer Andrew Smith which will facilitate our needs not only for the Developer site but also for a few other sub-level domains we’ll be launching in the next few weeks.  Andrew provided me with a style guide of sorts and so now I’m put to the task of getting both Wordpress and MediaWiki, the two applications we use to pull off this site, to bend to my will.

Everything should work ok, but will look a little wonky while I’m updating. If you have any concerns, let me know.

The response from the first version of the bookmarklet has been pretty strong. It has now been updated a little, based on the comments we’ve received, and hopefully you’ll find it even more useful.

Changes in beta 0.2

• Sharing via Twitter now works, even when logged out of Twitter.com.
• Window is now resizable.

To upgrade or install

To update your bookmarklet, just delete the old one, and use this new one: ViddlerPop!

As always, if you have any questions, just ask.

I like watching video in Viddler’s player.  All of my favorite podcasts are now using Viddler including WineLibrary TV, DiggNation, Two Guys on Beer, just to name a few.  But sometimes I don’t like keeping a browser tab open to watch these longer videos while I’m doing other things like surfing the Web, writing code, or replying to the endless amounts of email I seem to get.

This is where ViddlerPop!, a new bookmarklet we’re playing with, comes in and saves the day.  Now instead of keeping a browser tab open dedicated to a Viddler video, I can watch this video in its own window.

Here is a quick video demonstration of how this first version works.

Please leave us some feedback to let us know what you think of the bookmarklet, how you’d like it to improve, and if you find any bugs.  Thanks in advance!

Installation

To install ViddlerPop! just drag the ViddlerPop! link to your browser’s bookmarks bar - or, right-click and “Add to bookmarks”. I believe in Firefox it is right-click and “Bookmark this Link”.

Questions?  Fire away!

In an effort to make developing on Viddler’s platform as easy as possible, we’ve moved the lab from lab.viddler.com to developers.viddler.com.  Everything should be forwarded now and we’ll be now setting up shop here.  The wiki is still available, but we’re going to be adding a whole new interface to our Developers area over the next few weeks.

Please stay tuned!

One of the great aspects of Viddler’s API is the ability to embed our webcam recorder right into your site. With only a few lines of code, your users will be able to record video using any camera attached to their computer, and it’s automatically uploaded to Viddler and encoded. Let’s dive right in!

First off, if you haven’t checked out part one and part two of the phpViddler series, you’ll want to do that first, as some of that code will be necessary for recording.
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In order to make it easier for developers to include Viddler avatars in their applications, we’re introducing a simple service called “vAvatar”. To include an avatar, just use an image tag like this:

<img src="http://lab.viddler.com/services/avatar/USERNAME" />

Just replace “USERNAME” with the username whose avatar you want to display. For example, here’s mine, using vAvatar:

Is there anything else you’d like vAvatar to do? Let us know in the comments.

If you haven’t already, please be sure to read part one that Kyle put together, which covers the simple task of initiating the phpViddler class and using it to list videos. Some of the code found herein may not make sense if you haven’t read part one.

I think you’ll find, through these tutorials, that using phpViddler makes it dead simple to use Viddler’s APIs. Please leave feedback if you have any specific areas you’d like us to cover.

Authenticating a user

To authenticate a user you will need both the username and password of the user. For this example, we’ll say the username is my username, cdevroe, and the password will be a fake password of ‘password’.

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Ilya Sabanin (friend: ilya) has released a Ruby wrapper for Viddler’s API. He’s done a great job integrating all the existing API methods, so if you’re a Ruby developer, you’ll definitely want to check this out. To start using Viddler.rb, just install the “viddler” gem:

$ gem install viddler

For more information, check out Viddler.rb’s documentation.

Over the next couple weeks, Colin and I are going to be guiding you through how to use Viddler’s API with phpViddler, the PHP wrapper for our API functions. We’ll be covering everything from embedding videos to registering new users, so keep checking back!

Today, I’ll be covering how to list videos using the Viddler API and phpViddler using the functions videos_listbyuser, videos_listbytag, and videos_listfeatured.
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A mambot is “a small, task-oriented function for Joomla! software”.  Viddler Antonio Edward (friend: labanex) has released a Viddler mambot that makes it easy to embed Viddler videos, using both the normal and simple player, on your Joomla! powered Web sites.

As it stands you have to do some digging into the HTML embed code to get the values you need to make this plugin work, but perhaps someone with some Joomla! experience can help Antonio out by using oEmbed to make this process even easier?

It is a great first step for Joomla! users.  Thanks Antonio!