How to make responsive video player with css

According to smartinsights.com, mobile exceeds PC internet usage for the first time in history in 2014. This is why is so important to have a mobile or responsive version of your website. If you have a video player on your site, this article may be helpful for you.

In this article, I will show you a simple CSS trick to make your embed video player from youtube, Vimeo or etc. responsive with a 16:9 ratio.

First, you should create a CSS class for the wrapper container ( e.g. .responsive-video-player) of the video. The position of the wrapper container must be relative because the child element will be in absolute position. The width of the wrapper should be 100% of the parent element. One of the most important property to set the height of the wrapper container is padding-bottom with a value of 56.25%.

Why is 56.25%?

This is because 56.25% height of 100% width equals to 16:9 ratio.

.responsive-video-player {
  position:relative; 
  width:100%; 
  padding-bottom:56.25%; 
}

Second, you should define a style for the child’s iframe element. The position for this element will be absolute. The width and height will be 100% to fit the parent container.

… and that’s it 🙂

Here is an example usage:

CSS

.responsive-video-player {
   position:relative;
   width:100%;
   padding-bottom:56.25%;
}

.responsive-video-player iframe {
   position:absolute;
   width:100%;
   height:100%;
}

HTML

<div class="responsive-video-player">
    <iframe
        src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xTYJpmljVmM?rel=0&showinfo=0"
        frameborder="0"
        allowfullscreen
    </iframe>
</div>

This example you can find here

Hope this article will be useful to you!

Have a nice code day!