Most webdesigners implement sites with videos / image galleries nowadays, and I have done numerous implementations that required video players. Most people are also using some sort of CMS to publish videos, and although Wordpress is simple it’s not that flexible so usually it’s Joomla / Drupal etc.

In my day job at Ghostwriter we use our own CMS called Content Manager usually. It creates dynamic links and it can be a challenge to “read” the file type from those for some video players that have presented some challenges. I’d like to recommend media players and explain their features in a short way so you can see which one to pick.

If you’ve got a recommendation don’t hesitate to comment. I’m not including the versions tailormade for a CMS, but there’s many of those too, they usually have roots in the original media plugin. But it’s easy to include a lightbox plugin yourself. So in no particular order, here’s those that fit my needs:

• Lightbox JS – incredibly easy to set up. Opens images in a typical lightbox. No extra features, no support for galleries or other media.
• Lightbox JS 2 – new version of the above. Support for galleries and navigation between images. Uses the Prototype JS Framework which is negative for me as I prefer jQuery.
• Shadowbox – my favourite. Easy to setup, detects if you are using a JS framework and takes advantage of it (compatible with all the popular ones), easily customizable styles, and support for galleries with images, video, youtube videos, html, iframes, and so on. If you have dynamic links they may have to be set up manually, which can make things slightly more complicated.
• Flowplayer – this probably started out as a video player, but through plugins you can play audio, show images, html and obviously videos in many formats. It has a good support for dynamic links, and it’s extremely flexible. You can play videos in their place or in a “lightbox”. The reason that I don’t love it is that it’s so flexible that it feels like whenever you need to add a feature it’s hard to figure out how to couple that with what you’ve got already.