By Out with the old and in with the new? It’s one of the interesting questions to ask about the introduction of EverWeb’s new Map Fill and Video Fill features, that debuted in EverWeb 4.2. Do they replace EverWeb’s inbuilt Google Maps and YouTube widgets! In many cases they might do as these new Fill options help give you more options and features than the built in widgets, making your website building more flexible than ever. In a previous blog post we looked at the Map Fill option, so in this post, we’ll be taking a look at the new Video Fill option.
How To Use Video Fill
As its name implies, Video Fill fills the object that you’ve selected with a video. To use this feature, simply select the object you want to use Video Fill with, then go to the Shape Options tab in the Inspector Window and choose Video Fill from the Fill dropdown menu in the Fill section.
When you apply Video Fill to an object such as a shape, TextBox or an image, the object type will change to become a video fill. If this is not what you desire simply change the Fill type back to its original Fill type.
As well as filling objects with video, Video Fill can also be used to set a video background fill to objects such as the Responsive Row widget. It’s also useful if you want to add a video background to some text in a Textbox, such as a title, headline or call to action.
The other great thing about Video Fill feature is that you can simply drag and drop MP4 video files from your source location onto EverWeb’s Editor Window and it will be automatically be added as a Video Fill object.
The Advantages of Using Video Fill Over EverWeb’s Widgets
The new Video Fill feature simply offers you a lot more options and flexibility than EverWeb’s existing built widgets do. However, this is only the case when using MP4 files. If you are using other video formats, such as legacy video file formats, you may still need to use a built in EverWeb widget.
Video Fill has the following features that cannot be found in EverWeb’s existing built in widgets. To start with you have the option of choosing one of four video sources. The ‘External Video URL’ is where you use an existing URL to link to the video you want. The second option is ‘Local Video File’ which uses a video file that you add or have already stored within your project file. The video file in this case is stored in the ‘External File’ section in the project’s Assets List. The final two video source options allow you to link to either YouTube or Vimeo videos. Usually all you need to do here is to find the video that you want to use on the platform of your choice. Next, use the ‘Share’ button in either app to copy the video’s URL link to the Clipboard. Lastly, go back to EverWeb and paste the URL link in to the Video Fill’s URL box.
Video Fill’s New Options
Once you’ve linked to video that you want to use, set the options that you want for your video display in your site. All options listed below are available for all video sources:
- Loop the video which continuously plays the video
- Auto Play the video, so that the video starts automatically when the page loads
- Mute the video which suppress the video’s sound when it plays
- Show Video Controls toggles video controls on or off
- Default volume level is where you choose the initial sound level should be, from zero to ten
- Scroll Speed lets you set how fast a user can scroll through the video. Values range from zero to 100.
Additional Options for External Video URL or Local Video File Video Sources
When using either External or Local Video Sources there are three additional options at your disposal.
- Video Scaling Options: You can choose to have your video either ‘Scale to Fit’, ‘Scale to Fill’. ‘Stretch’ or as its ‘Original Size’. We recommend cycling through these options to see what looks best in a browser window, so you may want to preview the video first in a variety of different browsers to see which is best.
- Use a Thumbnail for Large Videos: This is the perfect option to use if you find your video loads slowly on the page. A thumbnail is an image file that acts as a cover that your visitor has to click on in order to see the video. This will help give the video more time to load if it’s a large video!
- Pause Other Videos on Play: If you have more than one video on the page, you’ll probably want to use this option so that you don’t get the sound of one video overlapping another video if your visitor clicks to play two or more videos at once!
Our recommendation is to use the new Video Fill option wherever possible as it clearly has more options and flexibility than a regular widget does. It also makes sense that both Map and Video Fill are in Shape Options from a workflow perspective as well. The only time you would want to use a widget is if you have videos on your page that use a legacy video file format.
Have you tried the new Video Fill option? What do you think? Let us know in the Comments Section below!
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