20 Embedded Media and Interactive Content

What is Embedded Media and Interactive Content?

Embedded media is media that is hosted outside of Pressbooks and linked to through your webbook. Your readers can watch videos, take quizzes, view interactive maps, and more without ever leaving the book.

Supported Content

Pressbooks supports a wide variety of media and interactive content.

Some content is prohibited for the safety of readers and content creators.

A Word about iframes and oEmbeds

One type of embedded content we restrict is iframes. WordPress, the software Pressbooks is built on, blacklists all iframes for server security. If you attempt to embed an iframe into the Pressbooks editor, it will automatically be converted into oEmbed format instead – a safer standard for media embedding that limits the possibility of malicious use. If the media host isn’t compatible with oEmbed, your iframe may be stripped entirely.

The good news is that a lot of media sources already support oEmbed, which means that all you need to do is paste the link from the media source into your editor and the content will appear.

Here is the list of tools from which you can embed media. Several tools have some specialized recommendations for embedding. They are indicated with an asterisk (*) in the list below:

• Amazon Kindle
• Animoto
• Cloudup
• Crowdsiqnal
• DailyMotion
• Facebook
• Flickr
• Instaqram*
• Issuu
• Kickstarter
• Mixcloud
• Photobucket
• Pinterest
• Pocket Casts
• Reddit
• ReverbNation
• Screencast
• Scribd
• SlideShare
• SmuqMuq
• SoundCloud
• Speaker Deck
• Spotify
• TED
• TikTok
• Tumblr
• Twitter
• VideoPress
• Vimeo
• Wolfram
• WordPress
• WordPress.tv
• YouTube*

There are also some exceptional cases in which Pressbooks will allow iframes. It is possible to embed an iframe from any of the following sources:

• PhET Interactive Simulations
• knight lab Timeline
• Brightcove
• Google Forms
• Google Maps

How to Embed Content

There are a few different methods to embed media in Pressbooks:

• Copy/paste the URL
• Use a shortcode
• Use the iframe embed code supplied by the content provider

Read on for details about when to use each of these methods.

Copy/Paste the URL into the Visual Editor

The copy/paste method of embedding content is the easiest, and in most cases it’s the method we recommend. Here’s how to do it:

1. Copy the URL of the video, audio, or other media
2. Paste the URL directly into the Visual Editor
3. Click Save

Your media should automatically appear in the visual editor. After you save the chapter or post, the content will display in the webbook and can be seen by readers if the book is made public. In export formats, a placeholder note will be inserted in place of the omitted content to let readers know media or interactive elements are available to view in the webbook format of the book. They’ll be given a link where they can view the content.

This method of embedding media will only work for content that’s compatible with oEmbed.

Re-sizing Manually Embedded iframe content

If you want to re-size the content of a manually embedded iframe, you will have to add those parameters manually to the iframe tag for the content. To do this, you will need to edit or modify the iframe embed tag used in Pressbooks. See the example below for a sample video from YouTube:

<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″

src=”https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/7tqL-9z_fFA” frameborder=”0″

allowfullscreen></iframe>

The important values here are the width and height values, which will be expressed in pixels. Note that manually providing values in the iFrame tag itself will give the embedded element fixed dimensions, so that it will not resize as browser width changes.

Embed and Media Shortcodes

Pressbooks has built in compatibility with a number of shortcodes that you can use to format your books either within the editor or before you import your work. Two of these shortcodes, Embed and Media, can be used to embed media in your book.

Embed Short Code

Generally, the embed short code is most useful when you’re drafting your content outside of Pressbooks. Using the embed short code signals to Pressbooks that there’s an embedded video and not just a regular link in your book. Many content creators use short codes to build their content in Microsoft Word or Google Docs and then import to that work to Pressbooks.

1. Start your short code with:
2. Copy/paste the URL in after
3. End your short code with
4. Save your changes

Iframes

As described above, use of iframes in Pressbooks is restricted for security purposes. However, if you are embedding an iframe from a source that has been whitelisted for your network, you can follow these steps:

1. Copy the <iframe> embed code of the video, audio, or other media—this is usually available in the sharing options of the media on its source website
2. Paste the iframe code into the Code editor
3. Click Save

If the source is whitelisted on Pressbooks, the video should then appear in your visual editor and all supported outputs.^[1]

Linking text

When you are unable to find or create an appropriate and needed image, video, or other objects to include in your open textbook, linking to or embedding copyrighted material with all rights reserved is permitted. In general, courts have not considered linking to a website or deep linking to a webpage a copyright infringement, and that permission is not required to do so. However, you should avoid linking to a website that obviously commits copyright infringement, such as hosting pirated music or films. Always include a complete citation to the source.

If you use this method in an open textbook, the link needs to be accessible. This means the link text must describe the content of the link when taken out of context for the surrounding paragraph. Your link should open in a new window.

Embedding a video

Embedding—or inline linking—involves adding an embed code to a web source (such as an open textbook) that results in a visual representation—or streaming—of digital content, such as a video from another web source like YouTube or Vimeo. This is a very popular practice because 1) viewers don’t need to access a second website to watch the video, and 2) the embedder doesn’t sacrifice bandwidth because the video data is stored on the original site.

The question for open textbook authors, however, is: Does embedding violate copyright infringement for videos not released with a CC or open license?

All videos shared on YouTube are assigned to one of two licenses. The Standard YouTube license is added, by default, to all videos uploaded to YouTube.

A Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license is also available, but the user must manually make the change from a Standard YouTube license to a CC BY license by following these instructions. The CC BY license lets the video’s copyright holder give users advanced permission to copy, change, redistribute, and retain copies of the video.

Recommendations

For authors who wish to embed videos by other creators in their open textbooks, it is recommended that they:

make the best effort to embed openly-licensed or public-domain videos

embed videos from video-sharing websites for which:

the Terms of Service clearly indicate this action is permitted

copyright holders can remove their videos in case of copyright infringement

provide proper attribution

If you decide to embed a restricted video in an open textbook, we recommend that this information and a link to the original content are clearly indicated in the attribution statement.^[2]