7 ms·

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 webs

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.

kinlan 9y ago
So you would like us to not tell the page what the render is doing? I'm not sure how that would play out for any number of API's that exist on the web. Developer's have consistently had the means to override the default actions of the browser (think drag and drop) but I don't think hiding side-effects or user actions helps anyone.
- avaer 9y ago
  I'd like to be able to tell my browser what it should tell the pages it's loading, especially if pages are leveraging it to do things against my will. 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."
  - kinlan 9y ago
    I'm disputing the fact there was a casual offhand design, and I don't think hiding the state of the render or the browser helps anyone not least developers who need the information about the state of their page. 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.
    - Aaargh20318 9y ago
      > There's a broader question about a user's will and the sites intent especially when it comes to business plans of the site 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.
      - Touche 9y ago
        What if I want to present an X button that the user can click to exit fullscreen? How would I do that without a programmable API?
        pas 9y ago
        That should be a browser option. (Show exit full-screen button or not.) 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.)
        Touche 9y ago
        Sounds like you are advocating for something very different than the current APIs. You're asking that the browser define its own UI for an exit button. How does it know where to put that? What if it is a game in a `<canvas>` element and the button overlays some important UI in the game? 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?
    - Touche 9y ago
      Thank you for staying level-headed here. This is indeed a gray area question, and it's worth having a debate over. No one is clearly in the right.
      - kuschku 9y ago
        Well, the legal answer clearly places one side in the right (the user has the right to modify websites that are shown on their system however they wish to, and the right to circumvent all measures on that site, as in the countless ABP vs. ... cases has been ruled). 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...
        ariwilson 9y ago
        Do you have some legal references to this? Curious. The site also has the legal right to refuse to serve you content, of course.
        kuschku 9y ago
        ArsTechnica had a list of 6 of the recent court cases between AdBlock Plus and media corporations: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/11/adblock-plus-wins-its-6th-court-case-brought-by-der-spiegel/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/11/adblock-plus-win... There’s been countless cases brought against ad blockers, and all that were about ad blocking, were decided favourable for the blockers.
        Touche 9y ago
        What does any of this have to do with YouTube blocking PIP?
        kuschku 9y ago
    - zeveb 9y ago
      > I don't think hiding the state of the render or the browser helps anyone not least developers who need the information about the state of their page. 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.
      - awesomepeter 9y ago
        Well you do determine what is executed. Don't use chrome, don't open the website.
- kuschku 9y ago
  Actually, yes. I want that the user is able to force a page to do whatever the user wants, if they choose to do so. 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.
  - annnnd 9y ago
    I agree with you, but that is probably something that belongs to a plugin.
    - kuschku 9y ago
      Which Chrome for Android does not support.
      - AndrewDucker 9y ago
        Then use Firefox for Android.
Mindwipe 9y ago
That would be an excellent way to force Google to switch distribution of all content via YouTube to HTML5 EME with Widevine DRM, given it's pretty clear their music agreements prohibit permitting this.
- izacus 9y ago
  Most of YouTube content isn't music though. Why are they so user hostile - e.g. why can't I listen to talks/podcasters in the background while browsing the internet?
  - arjie 9y ago
    If you're in the US, you can do that with Youtube Red.
    - avaer 9y ago
      Amusingly, this does answer the parent question.
    - izacus 9y ago
      But I'm not, so I'm not allowed to. I wouldn't have a problem with it if I could - paying for ad-free YouTube with added features seems like a fair deal to me.
      - noisem4ker 9y ago
        I wouldn't call "letting me turn off the screen or switch to another application while still consuming media" an "additional feature". Especially since they must go out of their way in the first place to detect when that is happening and to prevent me from doing so, as they do on their mobile website.
        nol13 9y ago
        Curious to know if with youtube red, if i play in the background is it smart enough to switch to an audio only stream, or still full bandwidth?
fixermark 9y ago
Is that something that can be done with a Chrome extension? If not, then since Chromium is open-source, I imagine you could hack it in to a personal copy.
- kuschku 9y ago
  Chrome for Android does not support extensions.

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.

kinlan 9y ago

So you would like us to not tell the page what the render is doing? I'm not sure how that would play out for any number of API's that exist on the web. Developer's have consistently had the means to override the default actions of the browser (think drag and drop) but I don't think hiding side-effects or user actions helps anyone.

avaer 9y ago
I'd like to be able to tell my browser what it should tell the pages it's loading, especially if pages are leveraging it to do things against my will. 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."
- kinlan 9y ago
  I'm disputing the fact there was a casual offhand design, and I don't think hiding the state of the render or the browser helps anyone not least developers who need the information about the state of their page. 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.
  - Aaargh20318 9y ago
    > There's a broader question about a user's will and the sites intent especially when it comes to business plans of the site 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.
    - Touche 9y ago
      What if I want to present an X button that the user can click to exit fullscreen? How would I do that without a programmable API?
      - pas 9y ago
        That should be a browser option. (Show exit full-screen button or not.) 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.)
        Touche 9y ago
        Sounds like you are advocating for something very different than the current APIs. You're asking that the browser define its own UI for an exit button. How does it know where to put that? What if it is a game in a `<canvas>` element and the button overlays some important UI in the game? 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?
  - Touche 9y ago
    Thank you for staying level-headed here. This is indeed a gray area question, and it's worth having a debate over. No one is clearly in the right.
    - kuschku 9y ago
      Well, the legal answer clearly places one side in the right (the user has the right to modify websites that are shown on their system however they wish to, and the right to circumvent all measures on that site, as in the countless ABP vs. ... cases has been ruled). 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...
      - ariwilson 9y ago
        Do you have some legal references to this? Curious. The site also has the legal right to refuse to serve you content, of course.
        kuschku 9y ago
        ArsTechnica had a list of 6 of the recent court cases between AdBlock Plus and media corporations: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/11/adblock-plus-wins-its-6th-court-case-brought-by-der-spiegel/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/11/adblock-plus-win... There’s been countless cases brought against ad blockers, and all that were about ad blocking, were decided favourable for the blockers.
        Touche 9y ago
        What does any of this have to do with YouTube blocking PIP?
        kuschku 9y ago
  - zeveb 9y ago
    > I don't think hiding the state of the render or the browser helps anyone not least developers who need the information about the state of their page. 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.
    - awesomepeter 9y ago
      Well you do determine what is executed. Don't use chrome, don't open the website.
kuschku 9y ago
Actually, yes. I want that the user is able to force a page to do whatever the user wants, if they choose to do so. 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.
- annnnd 9y ago
  I agree with you, but that is probably something that belongs to a plugin.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    Which Chrome for Android does not support.
    - AndrewDucker 9y ago
      Then use Firefox for Android.

Mindwipe 9y ago

That would be an excellent way to force Google to switch distribution of all content via YouTube to HTML5 EME with Widevine DRM, given it's pretty clear their music agreements prohibit permitting this.

izacus 9y ago
Most of YouTube content isn't music though. Why are they so user hostile - e.g. why can't I listen to talks/podcasters in the background while browsing the internet?
- arjie 9y ago
  If you're in the US, you can do that with Youtube Red.
  - avaer 9y ago
    Amusingly, this does answer the parent question.
  - izacus 9y ago
    But I'm not, so I'm not allowed to. I wouldn't have a problem with it if I could - paying for ad-free YouTube with added features seems like a fair deal to me.
    - noisem4ker 9y ago
      I wouldn't call "letting me turn off the screen or switch to another application while still consuming media" an "additional feature". Especially since they must go out of their way in the first place to detect when that is happening and to prevent me from doing so, as they do on their mobile website.
      - nol13 9y ago
        Curious to know if with youtube red, if i play in the background is it smart enough to switch to an audio only stream, or still full bandwidth?

fixermark 9y ago

Is that something that can be done with a Chrome extension? If not, then since Chromium is open-source, I imagine you could hack it in to a personal copy.

kuschku 9y ago
Chrome for Android does not support extensions.