Videos" link to, embed, open new window, frames?

How would you let your visitors view videos from other sites?

[4thePegeh]

I have a nice little site that has some embedded video from major video hosts. Last night I realized, the video does not display uniformly among different browsers (and that some video host sites use different size players). So, what are the pros and cons of the following options for letting my visitors see the videos, but also having some chance of my visitors remaining on or returning to my site after watching each video? The nature of my site is that visitors will want to look through the videos in the order listed on my site. Here are some I have thought of:

1. simple link to the permanent link for the video on the video host site. This would take the person away from my site and they would have to use a back button to return. I guess I could have a warning message telling them to use their back button to return to my site to select more videos. Hey, maybe this could be an intervening screen or page, but not a dreaded and often prohibited pop-up. Something like, you are now leaving the site to view this video, to return, simply use your back button. Of course, maybe they wont know what their back button is.

2. embed as we are currently doing. Maybe I accept video only from four sites, then I monitor which browsers are using my site the most, and we simply code to make sure things work right for 95% of visitors.

3. link as in 1., except link opens a new window, ideally smaller, so they can see they also still have a window open on my site. I saw an article suggesting that although target blank was being left out of current xhtml and html standards, it may still be able to be done within standards by using rel and javascript. That article may be old.

4. Are frames still used and accepted by popular browsers?

Any thoughts on how to handle this?

[edited by: 4thePegeh at 4:48 pm (utc) on July 15, 2008]

[bill]

iframes are handled by most modern PC browsers. You could embed the videos that way and control the size of the frame window yourself.