Then Chrome should have an option to stop the resize handler from firing when entering PiP mode. The user should always have the right to override what the website is doing.
That applies to blocking Google ads, as well as fixing Youtube malfeatures.
Of course, it's understandable you won't see this from a browser paid for by Google. But you can't paint in broad brush strokes like "I don't think hiding side-effects or user actions helps anyone."
I'm not saying that there can't be meaningful response from the browser to user hostile actions, I don't think anyone disagrees.
There's a broader question about a user's will and the sites intent especially when it comes to business plans of the site that I'm not sure if access to features native in the browser is aligned with say ad blocking or tracking etc... I don't know.
The site's business plans are not my problem. Basically, my phone and my computer should do what I want. Why is there even an API to make a video player enter/exit full-screen mode ? That's 100% a user decision and there is no valid reason why that should ever be exposed to JS.
There absolutely are valid reasons and responsible uses for the browser to expose that API. Instead the argument should be around the irresponsible uses justifying hiding that part of the API.
Valid reasons to expose full-screen to the API:
* An "Always full-screen videos when I play them" button. * Remote control of demo displays, kiosks, etc. Force them to all fullscreen and play a video synced up. * Disable unnecessary features when website is full screen (e.g. stop polling website for changes) * Exit full-screen on certain conditions. For example on a shared streaming site like Rabb.it, maybe if someone joins your chat room (assume this is configurable by the user)
In short, you can use JS to respectfully enact user decisions.
I'll also mention a related case. On Safari iOS, you can't autoplay a <video> element unless the user has interacted with it via tapping it. The goal, obviously, is to stop autoplaying videos. The goal, of stopping annoying autoplaying videos, is noble, but at the cost of removing the possibility of responsible usage. Maybe it's worth it, maybe it's not, but there is an undeniable tradeoff.
A possible solution is having a "responsible app mode" in browsers. Whitelisted webpages have full access to these privileged APIs which would otherwise be stubbed out and non-functional (hopefully in a way that a webpage can't detect).
Also, especially for video, the browser should be able to play it full screen without any distractions.
Of course, there are optional enhancements (subtitles, or different audio tracks) driven via JS. And for those the controls have to go somewhere.
Ideally, if there were a standard for those, the browser could handle it. (But then we're at the problem of an ever bloating browser.)
I think you're overreacting to one bad-actor. Inevitably your suggestion here leads to good-actor pages having much less power to present good UI to its users. The browser has to think of all use-cases and have options for that, rather than defining lower-level hooks that pages can do what they want with.
Would it make you feel better that there already many other ways that pages can do user-hostile things? Have you ever visited a page that blocks right-click? Would you want to forbid Mouse Events because of this?
> You're asking that the browser define its own UI for an exit button.
Yes. Currently firefox puts a "to exit full screen press esc" OSD already on videos, that also interferes with visual presentation of sites/directors. So ... directors already don't put shit there.
The same thing goes for walled gardens (like Apple's - they don't allow some things), the problem is not that it's curated, the problem is that there are insufficient tools available for users to put their walls where they want.
Yes, by default I don't want to allow blocking right click. (You might be familiar with the saga of this bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=78414 . )
No, the left mouse button is for interaction with the webpage, the right mouse button is mine. Just don't send any events for the right mouse button.
The historical answer does the same, as browsers were explicitly designated User Agents, as their whole purpose is to act in the name of the user, and fulfill whatever the user wishes to, which also clearly places the will of the user over everything a website may wish to.
How you interpret this is obviously left to you...
> The historical answer does the same, as browsers were explicitly designated User Agents, as their whole purpose is to act in the name of the user, and fulfill whatever the user wishes to, which also clearly places the will of the user over everything a website may wish to.
The browser is a User Agent, I agree. This doesn't mean they can predict all user hostile behavior and fix it before it ever happens. Browsers often fix bad behaving websites over time. Recently there's been a lot of effort to fix pages that cause scrolling jank when they load ads in the background.
There’s been countless cases brought against ad blockers, and all that were about ad blocking, were decided favourable for the blockers.
Additionally, there’s a precedent that users want to be able to control what a site does, and are willing to take extra steps to achieve this, so a browser should implement such functionality ideally in the first place.
I don't care about helping developers who want to hinder my usage of my browser on my hardware. It's my CPU they are executing on, and thus it should be I & I alone who determines what is executed.
Just like my browser blocks popups, and my browser blocks those sites that try to prevent right-click, and my browser blocks those sites that spawn dialogs when you try to leave them, Just in the same way I want my browser to force websites to allow PiP.
The current version 55 is a little slower than Chrome on my 3 year old phone, but performance in the past few major versions has definitely improved. The nighty developer build of Firefox 57 absolutely flies.
Mozilla is doing an amazing job with their Firefox modernization, it's a shame how little attention it gets on Android.
Video Background Play Fix https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/video-backgro...
I think a better question is why would a talk/podcaster be using YouTube for distribution?
Browser block popups, forcefully enable right-click on sites that disable it, browsers allow users to forcefully enable zoom, or background playback.
And just like that, browsers should also allow users to forcefully enable PiP.
Too bad Mozilla won't ever dare to defend themselves from Google's bullying and will happily accept having background playback on YouTube, until now one of the primary motives for people to try Fennec out, being taken away.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1355407
RESOLVED WONTFIX
If not, then since Chromium is open-source, I imagine you could hack it in to a personal copy.