1597744 - Warn when closing the tab that is hosting a PiP video

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1561301

(Toolkit :: Video/Audio Controls, enhancement)

Description

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

It's very easy to forget that the PiP video you're using is actually playing from a tab and easy to accidentally close the tab and so lose the video. In fact in my first time using PiP to watch the internal call today I accidentally closed the window twice!

It would be good to have a blocking warning when doing that. Obviously even better would be to just keep playing the video even if the tab is closed somehow but I imagine that that is somewhat harder.

We already have some infrastructure in placed for the onbeforeunload bits so this may not be too tricky.

Comment 1

[Dennis van der Schagt [:dennisschagt]]

(In reply to Dave Townsend [:mossop] (he/him) from comment #0)

It would be good to have a blocking warning when doing that. Obviously even better would be to just keep playing the video even if the tab is closed somehow but I imagine that that is somewhat harder.

This has some overlap with bug 1561301.

Comment 2

[drlellinger]

Any update on this? I find this very disturbing

Comment 3

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Yes, we hope to fix this in the near-ish term - though part of this might involve thinking through the right approach. A few options include:

1. A warning like beforeunload. This is maybe the simplest to do, but also the worst experience.
2. Hiding a tab that is PiP sharing, and only closing it once PiP stops. This has the drawback of the user not necessarily having full control over the video once the tab is hidden (or being able to see captions/subtitles)
3. Automatically pinning a tab that the user tries to close that is using PiP.

UX is still thinking through the right approach, I think - but right now, our main focus for Picture-in-Picture is improving the discoverability of the toggle.

Comment 4

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Instead of warning, I think we've found a way of making it so that the player can stay open (and the video can keep playing) when the tab closes. See bug 1561301.