FullScreen feature, please!

[macrojd]

We need to be able to go full screen, not only for videos but for any application as well. I will try to answer the proposed questions about this issue:

What is the problem you are trying to solve?

There is no possibility to go full screen by code. So videos are played in a window enviroment and applications are ran with browser's menus and options visible.

What is the feature you are suggesting to help solve it?

Add the interface with the proper methods to go full screen by code.

What is the processing model for that feature, including error handling?

Deactivation of full screen mode with the already known ESC key.

Why do you think browsers would implement this feature?

In a few years applications will become more and more complex, and not having the possibility to run in full screen mode will be almost ridiculous. An application can't run with its own menu embedded in a window that has its own menu, its confusing and is not letting the application to take full advantage of the screen. For 3D applications and games this will get more and more unreasonable.

Why do you think authors would use this feature?

Because the security excuse is just an excuse. Web applications are going to imitate or be better than desktop application and the have to be fully independent, having the browser just as a invisible platform.

What evidence is there that this feature is desparately needed?

The process to create desktop application in the web has already started, and we already experience the uncomfortable feeling of having our video played inside a window that has nothing to do with the video or the player itself.

Thanks
JD

[BlueBoden]

Did you ever try to press F11 on your keyboard while browsing some web page?

Aside from that, i don't really see why this would be useful. HTML is not complex, its a simple text-based markup language, and its not powerful enough to build what you describe, and likely never will be.

If something like this ever was implemented, it would need to be implemented in a way that you couldn't really use it as you intended anyway, because it would lead to abuse by Internet fraudsters and advertisers. You might as well just tell your users to hit the "F11" key on their keyboard, (most won't like it anyway).

You see most flash games, etc, has the ability to go full-screen on the users request. But doesn't force the user into full-screen mode.

Besides, there are already other, much more suitable programming languages and tools, to create full screen apps.

[macrojd]

Please grab a book about HTML5 and you will see the light

Flash applications are nothing compare with what you can do and will be able to do with HTML5. And Flash already is able to go fullscreen by code. They don't force anyone to do it, they PROVIDE the possibility to go fullscreen without pressing some obscure keys like F11 (or you press F11 to watch a Flash video fullscreen on youtube???)

Obviously you have no idea to where the web is going. Do yourself a favor and start reading, the world is changing, and fast...

JD

[zcorpan]

There's an experimental implementation in WebKit and maybe Firefox, however I don't think there's a spec yet.

[macrojd]

There's an experimental implementation in WebKit and maybe Firefox, however I don't think there's a spec yet.

thanks zcorpan, that brings some hope

JD

[BlueBoden]

Please grab a book about HTML5 and you will see the light

Flash applications are nothing compare with what you can do and will be able to do with HTML5. And Flash already is able to go fullscreen by code. They don't force anyone to do it, they PROVIDE the possibility to go fullscreen without pressing some obscure keys like F11 (or you press F11 to watch a Flash video fullscreen on youtube???)

Obviously you have no idea to where the web is going. Do yourself a favor and start reading, the world is changing, and fast...

JD

Flash are still superior in many aspects, and besides, its not the ability to go full screen I'm against, but the forcing of full screen.

Please put a little effort into reading, and less effort into insulting people. That is if, you want to be taken seriously of cause.

[Xdega]

I think that forcing users in to a "full screen mode" would be very intrusive and should be a crime punishable by law. That's just my opinion

[macrojd]

Flash are still superior in many aspects, and besides, its not the ability to go full screen I'm against, but the forcing of full screen.

Please put a little effort into reading, and less effort into insulting people. That is if, you want to be taken seriously of cause.

Hi BlueBoden, sorry for the tone of my answer, but your question about the F11 key was, for me, a little bit aggressive (I understood that as "only a stupid ignorant don't know that the F11 key is available"). Maybe you didn't try to sound like that, but you did.

About Flash, well, doesn't matter if it's still superior or not, we are talking about the future, about implement things for the next years and in my message (you should also read more carefully as well) I was talking about applications for the next few years (I used this two words exactly).

So, full screen is ABSOLUTELY necessary for the future and (as I also said in the first message) it is also necessary for some applications running today (like the HTML5 version of YouTube for example).

So, insults apart, go and read, you will be surprise about how you can already do with HTML5 and you will see how necessary is a full screen mode. NOBODY was talking about forcing anyone, I have no idea why that became an issue in this discussion. The feature that we need to implement is the ability to go full screen mode by code. I repeat, you don't have to press F11 to go full screen in a Flash application, the same has to be available in HTML5 or the applications and games in a few years will looking ridiculous. Flash doesn't force anyone to go full screen, HTML5 shouldn't do it neither, that's out of the question.

I'm pretty sure that the HTML5 developers will come to their senses and implement a full screen mode, I'm just trying to push things forward. Time will give me the reason, not have a full screen interface will be just a nonsense in short time.

[macrojd]

I think that forcing users in to a "full screen mode" would be very intrusive and should be a crime punishable by law. That's just my opinion

Hi Xdega. You can already do in Flash EXACTLY what I'm asking, and nobody from Adobe went to jail. It's not about forcing anyone, it's about to provide the alternative to click a button and take the application/video/game full screen, whenever the user wants. EXACTLY like already happen in Flash applications.

Not implement the full screen alternative in HTML5 should be a crime punishable by law

JD

[Xdega]

As long as some kind of user interaction is required to initiate full screen mode, then it's fine and dandy.
But key thing "required". I fear that Javascript hacks could present the ability to take away the requirement to click a button etc, making things very ugly.

If this were to be implemented, it would have to be very thoughtfully done. Although I agree that it would be useful for projects like YouTube™ they have alternatives available.

For example having a fallback when the user want's to access full screen (I don't believe a majority use full screen full screen).

[macrojd]

For example having a fallback when the user want's to access full screen (I don't believe a majority use full screen full screen).

There are alternatives. For example, popups open automatically are hide by the browser, but popups activated by a click don't. So the browser can control that the fullscreen was requested by the user and not automatically activated. The ESC key is already known as a way out, therefore force that key in the fullscreen mode to be exclusive for fullscreen mode deactivation shouldn't be difficult to do (I suppose, it's just a suggestion).
When I use the HTML5 version of YouTube I have to go back to the "normal" version because I don't have fullscreen available. And the fallback solution is not possible, first HTML5 was developed to eliminate plugins like flash, and second the fallback occurs before the user interacts with the application, so is not possible to know if he is going to need full screen or not. And other point is that fallback is only possible for videos, you can't fallback in an HTML5 game or application.

JD

[macrojd]

Oh, I forgot. I have two websites to watch TV online and almost everybody goes full screen to watch the videos.

JD

[macrojd]

Finally I have my Fullscreen API!!!!
http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/fullscreen/raw-fi ... rview.html

Thanks everyone for the support, thanks the Academy and... oh, wait, that speech is for next month's ceremony

[jdavid]

I was told by a friend at google that this is where the real action occurs.

Recently I have been trying to get VideoJS as our default HTML5 Video player on http://twitvid.com, but in a number of situations we are having to fall back to flash, and it seems like that number is growing unnecessarily for features like fullscreen.

We tried to use the new Fullscreen API as is provided in Firefox and Webkit ( Chrome/ Safari ), however there are performance issues and we are having issues with iFrames. ( on a performance note this will get better with time. )

As for the iFrame, issue it does not seem possible to take a <video> fullscreen from within an iFrame. The example is easily seen on https://twitter.com/#!/search/twitvid. What happens instead is that the video goes full window within the iFrame.

To solve the problem, we could either go back to a default flash player in all embeds ( half of our traffic ), or we could do a two click flow for users to go fullscreen. Neither is ideal, and honestly we might default to flash as the preferred option.

In the two click option a user might click an HTML element that then renders the flash video with a modal confirming the user wants to go fullscreen, to capture a click within flash's user click chain so that flash can go fullscreen.

In cases like these it would be nice if the user click chain stayed intact between plugin and browser, but that is a harder fish to fry.

In this case we can not add attributes to all of the iframes that are in the wild so, that is an issue as well, we might be able to get twitter to change their iframe code for us, but that does not solve all cases, and how would the child frame know that it has that privilege?

[zcorpan]

With the current Fullscreen API spec the iframed page should be able to request fullscreen directly (if granted all ancestor browsing contexts also get fullscreened), although it says an allowfullscreen="" attribute is needed on the iframe. Is requiring the attribute a showstopper for you?

http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/fullscreen/raw-fi ... rview.html