692873 - Should be able to watch long duration video while surfing the web in a single window

Status: RESOLVED INACTIVE

(Core :: Audio/Video: Playback, defect)

Description

[Alex Keybl [:akeybl]]

Similar to 692871, I'd like to see better support for media that is consumed over longer sessions without regular user interaction (as opposed to a video clip site like YouTube).

A user should be able to select a video on a webpage which is then embedded in the lower righthand corner of your webbrowser (just trying to paint a picture). The user should then be able to switch tabs and continue to watch the video while surfing, chatting with friends, etc.

I believe the current alternative is to pop the video out into a new window and leave it up to the OS window manager to arrange the windows in a way that makes sense.

I would preferably not limit this to HTML5 video but also support plugins (Flash/Silverlight) so that the user can watch video from sites like Hulu or Netflix while surfing other pages.

It's unclear if this would be part of an API that we would expose to web developers or if the browser would recognize video and offer to yank it off the page.

Comment 1

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

I believe that the Mozilla China addition does this or used to do this. There may be code available from them.

Comment 2

[Chris Pearce [:cpearce (Not reading bugmail)]]

Sounds like what you want is an API to make new windows (or a div or video element perhaps) always on top?

Comment 3

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

yeah, we aren't interested in fully replacing the OS window manger.  a context menu toggle that just sets the always on top property would achieve the same use case (as would running firefox in a non-maximized window).

Comment 4

[Alex Keybl [:akeybl]]

Is your suggestion that a user in this situation would pop the video out of the page (if the page allows) and then set that window to be "always on top"? If we somehow include it in the chrome of the browser (for instance, the corner as I suggested), we could handle the case where the video is blocking interactive parts of a website. Keeping the video in the browser UI may be a good strategy for tablet browsing as well.

Comment 5

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

(In reply to Alex Keybl [:akeybl] from comment #4)
> If we somehow include it in the chrome of the browser (for instance,
> the corner as I suggested), we could handle the case where the video is
> blocking interactive parts of a website. Keeping the video in the browser UI
> may be a good strategy for tablet browsing as well.

It was a failure, I suspect, but Microsoft did something like this with a windows media player "media bar" sidebar in IE6 (I think it was 6.)

Putting something in the corner probbly won't work because you'd lose page content behind it. To avoid that, you'd probably need to do what the IE6 media bar did and make it a whole sidebar. But the aspect ratio of most videos makes that a not great use of space unless you pack the sidebar with lots of other stuff.  

I like the idea of a pop-out with allways on top set. I think for the case that a site wants the video to remain with the page, they can do smart things with fixed-positioning or otherwise "pinning" the video to a corner of the browser while letting the user explore further on their site. I could see someone like Facebook doing something like that.

Comment 6

[Nils Ohlmeier [:drno]]

Mass closing do to inactivity.
Feel free to re-open if still needed.