📺 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/youtube-background/jquery.youtube-background.js"></script>

or minified:

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://unpkg.com/youtube-background/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

Property	Default	Accepts	Description
play-button	false	boolean	Adds a toggle pause button
mute-button	false	boolean	Adds a toggle mute button
autoplay	true	boolean	Autoplay loaded video
muted	true	boolean	Load video muted
loop	true	boolean	Loop loaded video
mobile	false	boolean	Keep the youtube embed on mobile
fit-box	false	boolean	Set iframe to fit the container, meaning width: 100%; height: 100%
inline-styles	true	boolean	Enable/disable inline styles from the iframe and wrapper. The default wrapper styles are: background-size: cover;, background-repeat: no-repeat; and background-position: center;; the default iframe styles are top: 50%;, left: 50%;, transform: translateX(-50%) translateY(-50%);, position: absolute;, and opacity: 0;
load-background	true	boolean	Fetch background from youtube
poster	null	string	Provide your own background
offset	200	int	showinfo:0 id deprecated since September 25, 2018. - this setting makes the video a bit larger than it's viewport to hide the info elements
resolution	16:9	string	declare video resolution (work in progress)
pause	false	boolean	Adds a toggle pause button (deprecated)
start-at	0	int	Video starts playing at desired time in seconds
end-at	0	int	Video ends playing at desired time in seconds. 0 means it will play to the end.

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.