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Chrome Tests Picture-in-Picture API To Show Floating Video Popups Outside the Browser (bleepingcomputer.com)
Browser makers are working on a new W3C API that will standardize Picture-in-Picture (PiP) mode and allow websites to show a floating video popup outside the browser window itself. From a report: In the past, picture-in-picture has only been supported inside a web page's canvas as a floating window that only appeared inside the current website, as the user scrolled up and down the page. Some platforms added support for a picture-in-picture mode, but those were OS-specific APIs that worked with all sorts of video apps, not just browsers. Now, the Web Platform Incubator Community Group (WICG) at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), has released details about a browser-specific API for standardizing picture-in-picture interactions that allow websites to open an external "floating video" popup outside the browser window itself. [...] Chrome and Safari have already shipped out the new Picture-in-Picture API.
You thought pop-over ads and auto-play videos were bad before?!?? Hopefully this can be disabled...
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
This seems like a return to the bad old days of pop-up ad windows over pop-up windows, but now with extra bandwidth-sluuuurping video. Disable. For good. With prejudice.
Stop with the Standards Bloat.
No user has ever asked for this. Advertisers, yes, but actual users, no. This move should prove once and for all who Google exists for.
Almost every news site now is already being offensive with their autoplay video that follows you and also jumps around on the page as you scroll down. And the video players don't all work the same -- some of them you click in the middle to pause, some you have to locate the pause button (wherever it may be), some of them can be closed entirely, others cannot. But universally I stop all of these videos. Neither the video nor the audio are wanted.
Putting these autoplay video sinto a popout window doesn't solve the problem, it only moves the problem into a popout window. W. T. F.
Just stop, nobody wants this but those who live to make everyone else's life miserable.
Please just stop..
Caution: Contents under pressure
Seriously,,, this browser is getting un installed..like now
Stop using a web browser developed by an advertising company. This is all of our fault, for making Chrome popular.
This breaks the window to content relation, unless it goes away when unfocused. And if it goes away, why bother having it outside the content window? If the user can't figure out which web page/app generated the pop-out, this feature is only going to cause frustration.
Nooooooooooo.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
videos that bypass your volume controls and blast you with their ads!
To me, it looks like the only reason why google is proposing this "feature" is to allow advertiser to be even more intrusive into my browsing experience.
1. Lazy IT guy surfing the internet at desk
2. Boss walks up to desk; Lazy IT guy sees him approach in rear-view mirror taped to monitor
3. Lazy IT guy minimizes Chrome session.
4. Boss stares hard at un-minimized pr0n video auto-playing behind the now-minimized Chrome session.
5. Lazy IT guy does Walk of Shame with box out to parking lot...
Adverts, yes. Bleah.
What about security implications? Perhaps the "video" simulates other applications, other windows?
So it's not hard to stop using their version of this crap takes off. And there's always Firefox.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I use a white list now for javascript. If they want to show obnoxious ads and their site doesn't work without it js, fuck them. Don't need it. Plenty of better things to do than watching lame videos and badly produced advertising.
Only If it's absolutely impossible to auto popup, I just maybe... possibly... nope. Still blocking it.
Born 1991. Died 2018
RIP.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
And if I make the browser window full screen?
Does it pop up on the screen of the dip shit whose idea this was?
Because I could kind of get behind that...
If you are browsing on a phone and lock your phone, the standard dictates a drone deliver a second phone to you with the video still playing where you left off.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Seems like a <blink>GREAT</blink> idea!
First off, it's not enabled just yet. You have to jump through some hoops to enable it. You have to go through all this, at the moment:
In chrome://flags enable the following flags:
#enable-experimental-web-platform-features
#enable-surfaces-for-videos
#enable-picture-in-picture
Download and extract the extension zip file.
In chrome://extensions toggle Developer mode (upper-right corner) if it is not already on.
To load the extension, click Load Unpacked.
In the dialog box that appears locate and select the src/ folder from the directory where you unpacked the zip file.
Navigate to any YouTube video and click the extension browser icon to toggle Picture-in-Picture for the current video.
And if you want to see what all that gets you, it looks like this.
All that being said, I'm sure that this feature will be abused at some point in the future, and there will be a setting to turn it off, and your clueless parents/aunt/grandparents/whatever will call you and bug you about a little TV on your screen they can't make go away.
It's the IT circle of life. Advertiser wants feature to pester people with, people are pestered for a while, IT people turn off feature, advertiser wants new feature to pester people with...
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
This is what the lack of decent window management on all the major platforms has led to. Both Windows, MacOS, and Linux have evolved their window management to the point where the only reasonable choice is to keep everything full screen.
Sure, you CAN have overlapping windows, but:
1) You'll have to fiddle endlessly with the mouse to get them arranged half-decently
2) New windows will appear in annoying places
3) As soon as you try to interact with a window, that window will pop in front of the actually useful data you were looking at in the other windows
You can use keyboard shortcuts to get 2 windows side-by-side on all the major OS's, which is something at least. But woe be you if you try to make windows overlap and stay in the right Z-order.
Now it seems that the ones to turn to, in order to fix this mess, are the website designers?! How can they possibly know where I want my video to be on the screen??
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
To be fair "This specification was published by the Web Platform Incubator Community Group. It is not a W3C Standard nor is it on the W3C Standards Track."
If this ever changes and W3C is willing to pursuit such a blatantly anti-user misfeatures the organization will have lost all remaining respect and legitimacy with me for what little that's worth.
First it says:
"The proposed Picture-in-Picture API allows websites to initiate and control this behavior," he says.
According to the new API, websites will be able to control when to open or close the PiP popup, set the popup size, overlay custom controls, restrict certain
interactions inside the popup, and gather statistics on when users open or leave PiP and how they used it.
Then it says:
Most importantly, during Bleeping Computer's experiments, we've noticed the PiP extension would float almost all videos we tested, meaning the feature doesn't rely on website owners changing their code for it to work.
Which is it? I understand it being a browser feature that the user initiates. I can see the use of playing a video while doing other stuff on the computer. But I can't understand why a website would be able to control this feature and gather statistics about it. Why?
The stated reason for this proposal is:
[blockquote]"Many users want to continue consuming media while they interact with other content, sites, or applications on their device"[/blockquote]
How about, instead web designers design their sites to work well with windows open side by side?!
I'm talking about you, Google! And especially about Youtube after the redesign. There is a reason why I still use the "classic mode" on Youtube.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
I can see this being useful for help videos on some of the web apps we design so that your average user can play a video, slid it out from the content (preferably on a secondary screen) and follow along to the video without having to leave his current session. I can also see this being annoying for pretty much everything else.
The potential fail-level on both security and UI/UX is grand enough to put this in the top running for Worst Tech Idea of the Year.
I bet the PHB's patted themselves on the back as a way to "make our wonderful ads stand out from the crowd", and gave each other raises. Sick.
Table-ized A.I.
https://www.lonniewest.com/wp-...
I rarely use chrome... my go to browser is firefox and it has been for a long time... Sometimes I use Opera but very rarely do I use Chrome, Safari, IE or Edge.