21 November 2012, 2:27

Hi all:

I'm posing this question for discussion prior to working up a bug request, becuase I think the community can help me think it through...

I notice that the Image block always conforms to the column width, indicating some kind of built-in awareness of its context.

What is the mechanism for this? Is this something that can be adapted to the External Media block?

This is a biggie for me and my users (adults in transition), since it's hard to predict the screen resolutions of their audience (employers) for what amounts to a high stakes assessment. Having the frame of your introduction video sprawl over 2 columns does not make a good impression when you're trying to get hired. You want it to fill the column, but no more.

Doing this would tend to make the sizing parameters redundant in most cases, promoting ease of use.

Other wishes for the External Media block (lower priority):

• be able to add a comment, to "curate" the block (need to do this now with an orphan untitled Text block) 
• be able to align left or right in addition to centre

Feedback welcome!

21 November 2012, 9:31

Hello Don,

We've had a similar enquiry about resizing of video content more dynamically on one of our sites. The difficulty I see lies within the iframe code that you can use. If you put in the entire iframe code (Mahara 1.5 onwards with the safeiframe feature), the width and height in there override what you put into the width and height boxes. Those are just for code that you put in via a URL.

I don't know if that behavior can be changed. A dev would need to chip in here.

For your other questions, here are some bug / wish list items to take into consideration:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+bug/1034382

https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1037531

https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+bug/613275

Cheers

Kristina

21 November 2012, 11:40

Thanks Kristina:

Not sure I understand the distinction you're making...I'm just using the External Media Block with YouTube, not the iframe code (though I sometimes do that to embed playlists). I seem to be forced to add height and width with the External Media block.

Getting feedback from a developer would be great!

And I do concur with Bug #613275, so added my vote to that - thanks!