1900503 - Remove pop up "Entering full screen mode" when watching videos

Status: NEW

(Fenix :: Media, enhancement)

Description

[Channing]

In Firefox Android, when you maximize a video player , the text "Entering full screen mode" appears. It stays there for a few seconds and blocks the video controls and subtitles. This string should be removed and has been agreed upon by content and UX.

This enhancement request was reported via Mozilla Connect. https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/remove-popup-quot-entering-full-screen-mode-quot/idi-p/48604

Here is a video of what is happening: https://mozilla.slack.com/files/U03PWGKUYN8/F076QMD3J0Z/screen-20240603-142545.mp4

Here is a link to the code: https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/d9496bfef09039b2642da45585ca821c36917c6d/mobile/android/fenix/app/src/main/java/org/mozilla/fenix/browser/BaseBrowserFragment.kt#1864

Comment 1

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

In Firefox Android, when you maximize a video player

The key word there is "player" -- there is a whole lot more getting fullscreened than the raw video element. A plain video element (perhaps with our built-in video controls, but nothing from the site) might be restricted enough to prevent the kind of spoofing attacks this was designed to prevent, but that's not a practical answer. No one wants a YouTube where you can't click on the "Subscribe" button, or the next video in the brady-bunch at the end, or on an ad in the middle. And if the site can do those things then it can also pretend to exit fullscreen but instead show a fake browser-in-browser experience to control and track your browsing.

The Mozilla Connect reporter sees no purpose because they only see this notice on sites that are not trying to fool them. Is it obvious that the video player is entering fullscreen on a site that is not trying to hide the fact that it is entering fullscreen. It is less obvious in a case like bug 1816059 attachment 9322155 [details] (designed for a mobile form-factor -- won't make sense on desktop). That's not a full-spoof, just enough of a testcase to demonstrate the issue without following through on the "attack" part.

Chrome has an equivalent notice when they enter fullscreen for the same reasons, and they also show it when you're playing a video. Theirs is styled differently and less obtrusive. I think that makes it very easy to miss, which makes it less effective at preventing attacks. One thing I DO very much like about their notice is that they don't announce "you're in fullscreen" (which is already obvious in the normal non-attack case), they tell you how to get out of it! If you see that enough times then you're likely to remember how to get out of it if sometime in the future someone does try to trick you into fullscreen mode.

Does ours need to be a big screaming purple thing? Maybe not, but people sure are noticing it now! No one has done any user research on what kind of styling would be inoffensive while still being noticed, so what we have is an engineering solution that definitely ticks the "will not be missed" box. The equivalent notice on desktop is likewise ugly and doesn't fit with the style of the rest of the product, but functionally they do the job.

Comment 2

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

Let me restate this so it's not lost in the middle above: a fundamental function of this alert/toast/announcement is to tell people how to exit fullscreen. The fullscreen app consumes almost all user input, and users who don't know the one or two exceptions can get stuck in there if the content is malicious and doesn't itself offer an exit button.

The message informing the user how to exit becomes an implicit announcement that you have entered fullscreen.

Placement of the announcement is a design decision. If the current position is commonly blocking video controls then put it somewhere else that users will notice. In fact I've complained that putting it at the bottom makes it easy to miss if the user is interacting with the top of the page, especially on some of the really tall Android phones these days. Maybe put it at whichever end of the screen is closer to the user action event that was used to trigger the fullscreen transition. Or maybe in landscape orientation the announcement should be at the top because that's common for watching video and video controls are commonly at the bottom.