Playing QuickTime Movies

The <object> element can play QuickTime movies.

The QuickTime Format

The QuickTime format is developed by Apple. Videos stored in the QuickTime format have the extension .mov.

QuickTime is a common format on the Internet, but QuickTime movies cannot be played on a Windows computer without an extra (free) component installed.

With the object element, code that will play a QuickTime movie can easily be added to a web page. The object can be set to automatically install a QuickTime player if it is not already installed on the users computer.

The Solution

This is the code required to play a QuickTime movie:

<object width="160" height="144"
classid="clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B"
codebase="http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab">
<param name="src" value="sample.mov">
<param name="autoplay" value="true">
<param name="controller" value="false">

<embed src="sample.mov" width="160" height="144"
autoplay="true" controller="false"
pluginspage="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/">
</embed>

</object>

The <object> Element

The width and height attributes of the object element should match the size of the movie in pixels.

The classid attribute uniquely identifies the player software to use. It must be set to "clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B". This unique code identifies an ActiveX control that must be installed on the users PC before the movie can be played. If the user does not have the ActiveX control installed, the browser can automatically download and install it.

The codebase attribute specifies the base path used to resolve relative URIs specified by the classid, data, and archive attributes. When absent, its default value is the base URI of the current document. Note: Internet Explorer uses this attribute to specify a location from where the player can be downloaded. It must be set to "http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab". This location will always contain the latest version of the QuickTime player.

The src parameter should point to the movie file.

The autoplay parameter should have the value "true" if you want the movie to play automatically.

The controller parameter should have the value "false" if you don't want the control buttons to show.

The <embed> Element

The embed element is added to support browsers that don't support the object element. A browser that understands the object element will ignore the embed element. The object element will be used by new browsers that support ActiveX controls (Internet Explorer 5 and 6). Older browsers (Netscape 4 and 5) will use the embed element.

The width and height attributes of the embed element should match the size of the movie in pixels.

The autoplay and controller attributes of the embed element should be set to the same values as for the parameters in the object element.

The pluginspage attribute defines the players download path. It must be set to "http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/".