Embedded YouTube issue

Seairth

Over the past several days, I've encountered a new(?) behavior when reading posts on my android device. Every so often, I'll select a post, and as soon as it starts to load, a file is downloaded. As you can imagine, that sort of thing makes me suspicious (esp. since i haven't seen the same behavior on my laptop). Well, it turns out to be benign. The thing that is being downloaded is a compressed flash file from YouTube, which only occurs if the page I'm hitting has an embedded video.

So... has something changed? Is there any way to stop it? (it's an annoyance, mostly.)

Tor

I've seen exactly the same. It's strange, it seems I just have to move the cursor on a page and straight away a mystical file is downloaded (which turns out to be flash). I don't like it, it behaves as if the web page has been infected with some malicious javascript.
So you have seen this on Android? I'm seeing it with Chromium on a desktop Linux PC.

RDL2004

I think if you block scripts from youtube.com and ytimg.com the problem will go away. You will just get a black box or maybe just a blank space. That's what works for me anyway.

Heater.

Hmm...odd.

On my old Samsung Galaxy S FLASH does not work at all. Keith Young's video here http://forums.parallax.com/discussion/comment/1348232/#Comment_1348232 is shown a pile of random text in the post.
Whereas eroc's video in the following post shows as an image that does nothing when poked at.

They are both links to YouTube but one is a link to "player_embedded": www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Ex0rstYf8Gs but the other is not: youtube.com/watch?v=qg1ckCkm8YI

I would expect "player_embedded" to start downloading the vid in the background in case you want to play it.

I don't see any untoward downloading happening on my desktop Chrome of Debian though.

Seairth

In Chrome (windows), I see that same comment with a IFRAME whose src is http://www.youtube.com/v/Ex0rstYf8Gs&rel=0

Though I can't view the source in chrome on my Android device (or is there a way?), this is the same URL format I'm encountering (i.e. it's automatically downloading a file named "Ex0rstYf8Gs&rel=0").

Tor

RDL2004 wrote: »

I think if you block scripts from youtube.com and ytimg.com the problem will go away. You will just get a black box or maybe just a blank space. That's what works for me anyway.

No, it's not the same thing at all. This is something that doesn't normally happen on sites with embedded youtube videos. It does not happen on the other forums I read, and it did not happen on this forum before. And it makes no sense either, why should there be a sudden download just because you're visiting a page with an embedded youtube video? It's still there as usual, and you still have to click on it to play it. That part is normal and as it used to be. What's wrong though is the ghost download of a bit of flash, when clicking on absolutely nothing.

Seairth

Tor wrote: »

RDL2004 wrote: »

I think if you block scripts from youtube.com and ytimg.com the problem will go away. You will just get a black box or maybe just a blank space. That's what works for me anyway.

No, it's not the same thing at all. This is something that doesn't normally happen on sites with embedded youtube videos. It does not happen on the other forums I read, and it did not happen on this forum before. And it makes no sense either, why should there be a sudden download just because you're visiting a page with an embedded youtube video? It's still there as usual, and you still have to click on it to play it. That part is normal and as it used to be. What's wrong though is the ghost download of a bit of flash, when clicking on absolutely nothing.

It might be something that YouTube did. For instance, they may have changed the content type is that's being returned for the above URI (the one in the iframe).

Frankly, I'd rather get rid of embedded videos altogether. Just add a link to YouTube instead. No unexpected behavior. No page bloat. No need for blocking anthing. Simple.

RDL2004

All I can say for sure is that whenever there is an embedded youtube video (the kind that shows the player with a static image displayed and the red play arrow) I always get a bit of lag when it loads. If there's just a text link to the video there is no loading lag. Turning off youtube's scripts keeps the player from loading so there's no lag.