YouTube Fine-tunes URLs and HTML Embed Code

YouTube has always been embarrassed by its unsightly URL format where it was using an ampersand instead of a question mark. Now it's fixed that problem so it's time to rejoice
Alright, seriously it doesn't really mean a whole heck of a lot does it? Wrong! It means more universal compatibility with a wide range of web-capable programs from the dark days of web browsing to the most modern and up to date versions.

What's the big change? Well that first parameter after the actual URL should have a ? and not an & yet in all the YouTube links it's been & all the time. You didn't even really notice, did you? Well they're really happy because they fixed it (chorus of Happy Happy Joy Joy echoes in the background).

Yeah, not all that major of an announcement, I know. But hey, we write what we're assigned, right? Maybe a bigger piece of news is that they've also cleaned up their embed code. Really it just incorporated their new changes and supplies all new embeds with that same universal appeal.

Here's an example:

<object width="425" height="344">
<param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/0XjwoVqM_qE?color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1">
<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true">
<param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always">
<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/0XjwoVqM_qE?color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"
type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true"
allowScriptAccess="always" width="425" height="344">
</object>

As you can see (if you look closely) it's incorporated that leading question mark we were referring to earlier in the article. Additionally, they have removed  </param> which makes this code cleaner & "battle-tested," yet still not XHTML compliant... ;-)

So no matter if your readers are using Netscape, Safari or some Linux-based open source browser, they should see the videos as they were meant to be seen...in the browser window.