Is it possible to hide the UserControl in Chrome/Firefox for Windows media player?

Question

I'm trying to remove the user control (only show the video frame) using Windows Media Player inside Chrome, but without success.

The code I use:

<EMBED TYPE="application/x-mplayer2" SRC="..." 
    NAME="MediaPlayer" 
    WIDTH="400" 
    HEIGHT="238" 
    autosize="0" 
    stretchtofit="0" 
    ShowControls="0" 
    ShowStatusBar="0" 
    ShowDisplay="0" 
    autostart="1"> 
</EMBED>

But with no success. The control is still visible in Chrome and Firefox, but it works in IE8.

Answer 1

First off, format your code better. It's really annoying having a single long line of code that you need to scroll horizontally to view. Just break it into multiple lines, like:

<EMBED
    TYPE="application/x-mplayer2"
    SRC="..."
    NAME="MediaPlayer"
    WIDTH="400"
    HEIGHT="238"
    autosize="0"
    stretchtofit="0"
    ShowControls="0"
    ShowStatusBar="0"
    ShowDisplay="0"
    autostart="1"
></EMBED>

You should also use OBJECT instead of EMBED, as EMBED is not a standard tag. And, according to this page, you need to specify a CLASSID parameter to embed the latest version of WMP. Then you need a uiMode param that tells WMP not to display the controls:

<OBJECT id="VIDEO" CLASSID="CLSID:6BF52A52-394A-11d3-B153-00C04F79FAA6"
    type="application/x-oleobject" width="320" height="240">
    <PARAM NAME="URL" VALUE="MyVideo.wmv">
    <PARAM NAME="enabled" VALUE="True">
    <PARAM NAME="AutoStart" VALUE="False">
    <PARAM name="PlayCount" value="3">
    <!-- ...other params... -->
    <PARAM name="uiMode" value="none">
</OBJECT>

Other options for uiMode include full, mini, and invisible.

Edit: I personally prefer Quicktime/.mov over WMP/.wmv for embedding streaming video online, but the best cross-platform solution is to embed a Flash player and encode your video as an FLV. WMP/.wmv would be one of my last choices for embedding multimedia on a webpage (next to RealPlayer). According to this site, WMP browser plugin usage has dropped down to 67% since January (when it was at 72%), whereas Flash support has remained steady at 96-97%.