Ask Freelock: Why should I use "Media" links instead of just embedding, in Drupal?

Joaquin asks:

Sorry, John.

But when it comes to adding Youtube and Vimeo, you still haven't made the case for not going into the HTML.

Here is a test page I created.

The top video I used the "WEB" tab in the "Add Media" button (BTW, it is a little confusing that there is still that tab labeled "Youtube").

The bottom video I copy and pasted from the HTML that Youtube presents you when you click the "Embed" tab.

As you can see, pasting the HTML looks a lot better. And the first option doesn't seem to be working.

Thoughts?

Hi,

First a little context. This is a site set up using Drupal, with the Media modules that provide embedded media management. And we had not set up the "File type File Display" setting to load YouTube videos. So that's all fixed.

The YouTube tab allows you to search for videos on YouTube, the screenshot shows what this looks like on an arbitrary search for "sailboat drone". Might be useful for finding a video of a current meme, but not very useful for finding your own videos -- the web tab is where to go to paste an embed code.

Now: 3 reasons to use the Media browser instead of manually pasting an embed code into a page:

1. WYSYWIG editors often (at least in the past) clobber the embed HTML -- any time I feel like pasting in code snippet from elsewhere, I'll usually create an input format with very restricted use for this purpose and shut off the wysiwyg editor, because otherwise if you have somebody editing it they may accidentally remove or mangle the embed code, sometimes completely unaware they are doing so. It looks like CKEditor can handle iframes now just fine, so this may not be as much an issue anymore -- but I generally err on the side of caution -- you never know if it will break for your particular embeds in a future update...
2. Security. While we haven't locked down the editor by limiting the allowed tags, we often do when there are lots of people involved in a site. Comments are locked down from the start, stripping all dangerous HTML. Allowing any sort of embed functionality opens your site to easy compromise (cross-site scripting attacks) to anyone allowed to use that. Embedded Media allows us (you) to offer video embedding while not opening the site up to attack.
3. Media management. Any video you add through the media buttons get added to "Files". You can easily find them in the media browser, or by going to Content -> Files. From there you can also pull of a list of pages using that media, with the "Usage" link next to that file. You can search, sort, filter uploaded media, review thumbnails in one place, etc.

Oh, and a bonus one: You can set things like player size, skin, available controls, etc site wide, by changing the "File Display" settings.

All of this is essential for sites with a lot of media, and/or a lot of authors. I think you'll find it useful, too, if you start getting more people involved -- it opens up possibilities like getting other people to blog/post videos on your site to help your cause...

... and if you'd like to see drones flying around a sailboat, here's a video...