The New Year brings the new version of Box of Broadcasts with a host of new features:
- it now supports non-Flash web browsers by using an HTML5 player – great news for iPad/iPhone users!
- transcripts appear next to the video – excellent for international students and for those with hearing difficulties
- a better programme guide with a wider range of channels, including the facility to request material from the BBC Archive (takes a little time to transcode, but very much like eternally available iPlayer content)
However, there have been some changes in the embed code that is provided – although existing embedded videos are not affected. However, the ‘need to log in’ warning isn’t there any more, so you may need to add this as text to existing content that still in use that doesn’t already have a warning like this.
An ‘iframe’ version of the embed code is no longer available, having been replaced with a ‘script’ code. Sadly this code will be automatically removed by the Blackboard text editor as we don’t allow scripts to be run directly in NILE.
The suggested way to link to BoB videos on NILE is to use a Weblink that uses the ‘WAYFless URL’ as its URL. The advantage of this method is that students are prompted to login (if they are not logged in to BoB already) before being redirected to the video. This avoids having to remind them to log in to BoB first.
If is still possible to use the embedded iframe technique (via ‘insert media’ icon on the editor) providing the link is changed from ‘http’ to ‘https’. The WAYFless URL would be the one to use for the reason cited above. You need to set the iframe width to at least 900 px to avoid cropping off the transcript box. As iframes containing external web site data are becoming less and less acceptable in new browsers, this probably isn’t the best way to go in the long term.
Please speak to your LearnTech support if you have any difficulties, but be aware that this new site is new to us too so it would be worth checking the BoB help information first.
