Library Voice

This morning a colleague asked about embedding a meebo me widget into her wiki.  The problem is that a default installation of MediaWiki does not allow embedding of Flash.  After some searching around the web, I found this extension at Glenn’s Junk Chest.  I installed the extension on her wiki (not yet public), and on the Biz Wiki as well.  Thus far it seems to work fine, and it was very easy to set up.  If you’re interested, here is how I did it:

1. Copy this code into a text file and name it gflash.php.
2. Put gflash.php into your MediaWiki extensions directory.
3. Enable the setting in your LocalSettings.php file by adding the following:  include('extensions/gflash.php');
4. Add your meebo me widget with the structure as follows: 
   480 340 http://www.somewhere.com/someflash.swf 
   In the example, the numbers determine the display size of the widget or flash file.
5. Have fun with your widget. 

Update:  Thanks to Paul’s question in the comments, I tested embedding a Captivate tutorial in the Biz Wiki.  You can see the results here.  I think it looks kind of nice and keeps the user in the wiki.  (However, this screencast was originally programmed to go to our library home page on conclusion, so users eventually leave the wiki.  This might be something to change in future versions.  )