After this, this, this and this, I've just posted this:
Currently, the only way to get Google Reader to display a YouTube video is to include the invalid HTML code provided by YouTube. However, it is possible (and recommended if you care about standards-compliance) to embed YouTube videos using valid XHTML 1.0, as described here:
http://www.bernzilla.com/item.php?id=681
However, when YouTube videos (or other videos from services like Viddler, Vimeo, etc.) are embedded in this way, they are ignored by Google Reader and simply do not show up in the Google Reader interface.
The workaround to this problem is providing an enclosure element in your RSS feed, but including that element without a length attribute (which is the way I've seen it recommended at the Google Reader blog) is not valid RSS 2.0. And who wants to actually figure out the valid integer value for the length field, anyway?
I've verified that Bloglines recognizes YouTube videos embedded via valid XHTML 1.0 without the enclosure element. It would be great if Google would, too.
See the following for more information on how this change could potentially impact a lot of users:
http://www.bernzilla.com/2008/02/16/wordpress-on-the-verge-of-valid-youtube-embeds/
Thanks for your time and consideration.
Bernie Zimmermann
...in the Google Reader Feedback and Suggestions group.
Comments
Thanks for dropping by with an update, Mihai. It's good to know the feature has made it onto your to-do list, regardless of how long that list currently is.
Post Comments
If you feel like commenting on the above item, use the form below. Your email address will be used for personal contact reasons only, and will not be shown on this website.
Thanks for pinging us about this, I've added this to our todo list (which to be fair, is quite long already).
Mihai Parparita
Google Reader Engineer
Permalink