📺 youtube-background

Another 100 liner in a form of a simple script (or jQuery plugin) to facilitate YouTube embeds as a cover background using YouTube Embed API.

I wrote this code several times over the years and never bothered to make it reusable. Now when I needed it again I could not even find where I wrote it last...

Goodbye careless days... I'm getting old...

DEMO HERE ➡️

Features

• Fade in CSS animation (Youtube and HTML5 videos only)
• Play/Pause button (Youtube and HTML5 videos only)
• Mute/Unmute button (Youtube and HTML5 videos only)
• No CSS required
• No longer jQuery dependant

Installation

As a JS module

To install the package from NPM run the good old command

npm install youtube-background

To import it in your script add:

import 'youtube-background';

Don't forget to point your bundler to use node_modules as an include path.

If you wish to use it as a jQuery plugin, make sure you import jQuery as well.

Over CDN

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://unpkg.com/browse/youtube-background@1.0.10/jquery.youtube-background.js"></script>

or minified:

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://unpkg.com/browse/youtube-background@1.0.10/jquery.youtube-background.min.js"></script>

Usage

Usage is pretty simple, add a data attribute data-vbg containing a full YouTube, Vimeo or video file link or just the YouTube or Vimeo ID.

You can trigger all elements containing the noted attribute with $("[data-vbg]").youtube_background();, or specify your selector, on jQuery document ready event.

Note: From version 1.0.6 jQuery is no longer a dependency, but purely optional. To initialise youtube video backgrounds without jQuery use: new VideoBackgrounds('[data-vbg]');.

P.S. https://www.youtube.com/player_api is injected automatically, only once per script init. I've seen some implementations like Elementor WP plugin that inject it several times, for no reason. Anyway, you're welcome.

Quick Example

    <style>
        /* optional css fade in animation */
        iframe {
            transition: opacity 500ms ease-in-out;
            transition-delay: 250ms;
        }
    </style>

    <!-- target element -->
    <div data-vbg="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEpEeyqGlxA"></div>

    <script type="text/javascript">
        jQuery(document).ready(function() {
            jQuery('[data-vbg]').youtube_background();
        });
    </script>

Properties

Noted properties can be added as html attributes as:

• data-vbg-play-button
• data-vbg-mute-button
• data-vbg-autoplay
• data-vbg-mooted
• data-vbg-loop
• data-vbg-mobile
• data-vbg-offset
• data-vbg-resolution
• data-vbg-fit-box
• data-vbg-load-background
• data-vbg-poster
• data-vbg-inline-styles
• data-vbg-start-at
• data-vbg-end-at

Vimeo support

Available properties for Vimeo backgrounds:

• muted
• loop
• mobile
• resolution
• inline-styles
• fit-box
• offset
• start-at
• poster

HTML5 Video support

Available properties for HTML5 Video backgrounds:

• autoplay
• muted
• loop
• mobile
• resolution
• inline-styles
• fit-box
• offset
• play-button
• mute-button
• poster

Example - Properties as HTML attributes

    <div data-vbg-play-button="true" data-vbg="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEpEeyqGlxA"></div>

    <script type="text/javascript">
        jQuery(document).ready(function() {
            jQuery('[data-vbg]').youtube_background();
        });
    </script>

Example - Properties as JSON

    <div data-vbg="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEpEeyqGlxA"></div>

    <script type="text/javascript">
        jQuery(document).ready(function() {
            jQuery('[data-vbg]').youtube_background({
                      'play-button': true
                  });
        });
    </script>

Events - Youtube and HTML5 video

• video-background-play - video starts playing
• video-background-pause - video is paused
• video-background-mute - video sound is muted
• video-background-unmute - video sound is unmuted

Events bubble. If you go vanilla, you can get the video object via event.detail.

Development

Development setup uses GULP with Rollup to bundle ES modules into IIFE jquery.youtube-background.js and jquery.youtube-background.min.js

To install the required packages for running GULP, run:

npm install

To run the server on http://localhost:4040, run:

gulp

Code will automatically be packaged into IIFE while you develop.

To generate minified version of the code, run:

gulp build --production

todo

• Autoplay property
• Mute property and button #4
• Add another wrapper so video can fade in when loaded
• Add play-pause, mute-unmute events
• Test the execution order
• Refactor the code to provide foundation for unified solution from multiple providers and sources called video-background
• https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-policy-changes
• Pause and mute on inactivity option - Play only when in viewport if IntersectionObserver available, also can be toggled as an option
• Perform final tests on BrowserStack and comment the code

THE END.