A web-based minimalist, distraction-free YouTube video player

Demo

youparty is minimalist video player written in html/css/javascript. It uses the YouTube javascript api to load and play videos from YouTube. Videos are selected from curated play lists.

The YouTube javascript api loads and manipulates a flash-based video player. The flash security model requires that flash player and the html/javascript that loads a flash player be served from an http server. Therefore you need to install the html/css/js/images on an http server.

If you want to test locally before deploying to a remote server, and you are developing on a Mac or Linux, then you can use the script dev/server.sh, which is a wrapper around Python's in-built SimpleHTTPServer (the "wrapper" sets HTTP cache headers to expire assets immediately):

dev/server.sh

then simply point your browser at http://localhost:8000/

To get rid of YouTube ads you should install an ad blocker in your browser such as Adblock for Chrome or Adblock Plus for Firefox.

YouTube has a number of APIs to choose from, such as the iframe api, the javascript api (which actually uses/manipluates a flash player) and the flash api.

At first glance the iframe api appears to be the best: it gives the opportunity for the browser to load either an html5 player or a flash player, depending on the capabilities of the browser. However, the videos served from this api have lots and lots of popups.

Videos served from the javascript api + a good ad blocker give almost distraction-free viewing of videos.

The playlists are currently configured in the playlists.js file. Feel free to add to it / modify it.

Each playlist is an array of song data tuples like the following:

{
  "title": "Happiness (2010)",
  "artist": "Alexis Jordan",
  "vid": "26jKtELitQE",
  "start": 65
},

where:

• "title" is the name of the song
• "artist" is the singer/band
• "vid" is the YouTube video id.
• (Optional) "start" is the number of seconds into the video to start playing

• Add the ability to load videos from a YouTube play list
• Allow users to define their own play lists and persist those list to a web-friend database such as FireBase

MIT license

As usual I stand on the shoulders of giants. youparty makes use of the following libraries:

• jsUri - Uri parsing and manipulation

• yt_videos presents recently uploaded YouTube videos pinterest-style. Uses the YouTube iframe api.
• Youtube mixer grabs recently uploaded YouTube play lists and plays the songs while hiding the videos
• The Nostalgia Machine is a curated collection of YouTube videos for songs from the Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles charts.
• YouTube Disco playlists for featured artists.