14 DAY TRIAL // Yahoo has announced WebPlayer, an interesting new tool which enables websites to add a video and audio player for files from a variety of sources. The Yahoo WebPlayer can play videos from YouTube, MP3s from anywhere online and so on, on your own site in a dedicated popup and all it needs is a link to the source.
"Yahoo! WebPlayer is a powerful Web based media player written in HTML and JavaScript. It supports a variety of video and audio media formats and services, for example Yahoo! Video, YouTube, MP3 or WMA," Yahoo wrote.
"Beyond being a flexible and universal media player, Yahoo! WebPlayer comes with advanced technology that can automatically add relevant video to your Web pages," it added.
All you need to do to add the WebPlayer to your site is add a couple of lines of code. The script detects video and audio sources on your site and adds a small play button next to them.
Clicking the play button will open the video or the tune in a dedicated overlay window. You can play all of the videos and songs on the page in the same window, while you browse the rest of the contents.
The WebPlayer is actually based on the Yahoo MediaPlayer, which has been around for a while now and which works in the same way, but only for audio files, MP3, WMA and the likes.
But the new WebPlayer does more than play the media files or links you have on your blog, it also looks for terms that can be associated with videos, for example movie titles.
When WebPlayer detects a movie title, it can play trailers for that movie, for example. This in turn generates traffic for Yahoo Videos, but, presumably, for other sources as well.
Yahoo will be using the WebPlayer throughout its websites and will also be providing an API for those that want more control. You can find out how to implement the WebPlayer, which is still in beta, and also see it in action at its website.
Yahoo WebPlayer is also avaialble for download here on Softpedia.