by bentcorner on 7/8/20, 3:59 PM
PiP is such a great feature. I have no idea how easy/hard it was to implement but it feels nice to use. It does exactly what you'd expect it to do and nothing more.
I use it while watching overwatch league games in the browser because it allows me to resize the popped-out video arbitrarily, instead of the site's embedded youtube player options of either tiny-window-in-browser or full-screen sizes (there is no theater mode in the embedded player for some reason).
by avian on 7/8/20, 6:38 PM
Is anyone else annoyed that Mozilla chose to spam them with an ad for this new feature via the email address they received when creating the Firefox sync account? Is this really such an important thing that warrants sending an unsolicited message to every Firefox user's inbox?
Yes, the footer says "You're receiving this email because .. is subscribed to Firefox Account Tips." and indeed I can now see that setting in my Firefox account. I'm sure that checkbox popped up sometime after I created the account and was conveniently set to "true" by default.
by knasmai on 7/8/20, 7:13 PM
I love PiP and it's def great in WFH situation where I can just have YouTube videos playing on the side.
If anyone from Mozilla is reading this, one thing I wish Firefox did was to allow us to make it sticky to the corner like Safari does on MacOS.
I think just throwing the PiP window to a corner and expecting it to be there is subtle difference but makes the overall experience much simpler. I don't having to decide where exactly to position the video and keep moving it little by little. Also, if I push the Safari PiP video against the edge of the screen, it simply collapses. That's helpful when the video is blocking something I care about and I need to quickly hide it. Again, simpler experience than allowing free form movement for my workflow.
by actionowl on 7/8/20, 7:45 PM
I'm really surprised to see how many people appreciate this feature. I've tried to use it many times but I've found that when I'm watching a video I either want to give it my full(screen) attention (movie, entertainment) or have it in the background entirely (music, news, podcast.)
I've personally not found a use for it and end up closing it after about 5-10 minutes.
by detaro on 7/8/20, 4:07 PM
by brospars on 7/8/20, 4:42 PM
Wait this is not new is it ? Ive beenm using it for the past 6 months at least...
by t0astbread on 7/9/20, 3:16 AM
PiP is a cool feature but I've recently found another way to "stream" video from the web which is now pretty much my default: For a lot of sites you can either curl or youtube-dl the video to a file and thanks to the way encodings and container formats work you can just play the file back using your favorite media player while the download is still in progress. You can't seek past the download head unfortunately but the playback you get is much more pleasant (and for some reason also faster?) than say, on YouTube.
by gbolcer on 7/8/20, 8:05 PM
There are a couple of sites that auto-started video and when you scrolled down, automatically did picture-in-picture. In fact I think Facebook even experimented with it for a while. The problem with those implementations was that the user had no control over which videos, nor the ability to prevent them from displaying. It took a heavy amount of NoScript isolation to prevent it from happening. I always thought it would be useful if someone would write something that put the user back in control.
by kevincox on 7/8/20, 11:32 PM
I wish it worked by using the regular web fullscreen API to pop out. Instead of going fullscreen it would just spawn a chromeless window that I can position anywhere I want and control using my regular window manager controls. As an advantage this would give sites full control over the content including having the full video (or other content) controls instead of just play which is what Firefox PiP gives you.
by hasbot on 7/8/20, 3:56 PM
I've been using this a lot lately for YouTube videos so I can watch a video and keep web surfing. Works great, though the PiP doesn't have all the controls (e.g. volume and seek).
by sylens on 7/8/20, 4:44 PM
This seems like a massive feature that I can't believe hasn't been baked into Chrome yet. I know Safari has an implementation but it always feels limited and of course cannot be used on Windows or Linux.
I need to put this through its paces, but it may vault Firefox back into the role of my default browser.
by staycoolboy on 7/8/20, 4:11 PM
I've been using this since it was launched and I constantly forget that I need to keep the browser tab open for PIP to work. Doh. Would be cool if the PiP window was another instance of the native window with its zero-decor.
by fulafel on 7/8/20, 4:30 PM
This is normally a window manager feature, why put it in browser where it's limited to browser tabs?
by kords on 7/8/20, 4:09 PM
I've tried it, it's awesome. The things I'm missing in that new window are progress bar and volume control. Or at least I haven't seen a way to make them visible.
by ozaark on 7/8/20, 4:30 PM
Opera has had this feature for years and features more playback controls than FF. It seems many features start on Opera then get "invented" in other browsers afterwards.
by dsego on 7/8/20, 3:56 PM
What's new here? I've been under the impression this existed for a while. Does it finally provide the standard video controls?
by kgwxd on 7/8/20, 10:46 PM
Have other hardcore anti-autoplay users noticed some autoplay getting through as of the last update? I've had it at the highest possible settings for a long time and nothing ever got through, now something is different. It not all the time, but often enough that it bugs me.
by tushar-r on 7/8/20, 4:06 PM
This is brilliant! I've been looking for a replacement for Helium on Windows and this seems to be it!
by jackson1442 on 7/8/20, 3:55 PM
I've been using it with their Dev Edition and it works very nicely for me. On a Mac, it blends in with the design language, and works on just about any video, even video that's been DRM'd to hell and back (Netflix, Hulu, etc).
by kbenson on 7/9/20, 12:20 AM
While I really like this functionality, I can't seem to find any way to change the area the picture shows up. I do not want it in the bottom right, because I get OS messages there (maybe that's how they implemented it and why it's there?), and I suspect either they will be covered up or cover up the picture (a problem I often have with some apps in that location when I get messages). Just being able to change which corner it was in (like many PIP televisions allow) would be amazingly useful.
by xadz on 7/9/20, 1:29 AM
I've been using this in Chrome for Mac in YouTube for a while. It is in Safari too. Just have to double right click a YouTube video to get the browser menu instead of the YouTube one.
by yuchi on 7/8/20, 4:29 PM
«Toddler duty» is a fantastic marketing approach to the feature! (While I usually deprecate using videos to entertain toddlers and kids, using it to have them close to you looks… good I guess)
by jdlyga on 7/8/20, 4:25 PM
Doesn't Chrome do this too? If you click the music button in the toolbar, you can pop out a video to an always-on-top window that you can watch overtop of other apps.
by Jaruzel on 7/9/20, 1:21 PM
I like having a floating YouTube video on my desktop while I work so much that I knocked up this simple solution a few years ago:
http://www.jaruzel.com/apps/youtube/
(Select 'View (New Window)')
It suits me, and gets used lots. I've never bothered to look, but I reckon there's probably a Chrome extension that also does the same.
by rsapkf on 7/9/20, 2:50 AM
PiP is such a useful feature. Even though I use a window manager, I like the fact that I can just take whatever video is playing out from my current tab and move it over to my programming workspace and follow a tutorial or something. No need to create a new window. When I'm done, I can put it right back to the original tab on the original workspace with a single click. Especially useful with floating mode enabled.
by chrysoprace on 7/8/20, 11:29 PM
I really love this feature and I hope that it receives more love and polish in the future. It's unfortunately unusable with foreign language videos as the subtitles don't pop out with the video. Not sure if this is due to the lack of such an API, or if the major video providers (Netflix, YouTube, etc.) simply haven't implemented it.
My other wishlist feature is to have rewind/forward controls natively in the PIP window.
by etempleton on 7/8/20, 8:56 PM
This is a great feature and I love Firefox and what Mozilla stands for, but I have recently switched to Edge because of how hard my CPU is hit when I watch YouTube videos in Firefox. I understand that this is not entirely within the control of Mozilla and the Firefox team, but it became such an issue on my current machine, which is admittedly quite old, that I felt forced to make the switch.
by raspyberr on 7/8/20, 4:45 PM
I'm sure this works great but I've been using MPV/youtube-dl for a while now and I don't think this will cause me to switch.
by 51Cards on 7/8/20, 5:01 PM
I use this feature on a daily basis, in fact it's running right now. I have a few UI issues with it, the resize border is much too hard to hit, it would be nice to be able to click the video to pause, and I would like to see a progress bar and mute buttons. That said it has already been a "game changer" for how I view video every day.
by somishere on 7/8/20, 10:08 PM
I've been enjoying this for a while on the beta channel, however subs/captions are very noticeably absent. Unsure if it's all <tracks> or just those not using the built-in api for display. Needless to say custom caption implementations are extremely common due to the discrepancies in display between browsers.
by thamer on 7/8/20, 10:06 PM
For Chromium-based browsers (I used it in Brave but it should work with all of them), create a new bookmark and set this as the URL:
javascript:document.querySelector('video').requestPictureInPicture()
It works on YouTube, Twitch, HBO Now, Netflix, probably others too. I keep it in my Bookmarks Bar for quick access, I hope others here will find it useful!
by SubiculumCode on 7/8/20, 3:50 PM
This is great. Will it work with Netflix videos in the browser? The always on top is a nice feature for this kind of thing
by xmichael0 on 7/8/20, 8:36 PM
Opera has been doing this for years...
by anotheryou on 7/8/20, 5:55 PM
I want a "fullscreen to second screen" option for it (also without allways on top than)
by naktinis on 7/8/20, 11:52 PM
It may be a nice feature, but for me Firefox's implementation seems to be a bit too intrusive, because as a developer I can't disable it and it is always visible as a browser-styled overlay.
Not all video elements are for stand-alone consumption. For example, there are "hero" videos in landing pages, enterprise solutions requiring smart overlays, or imagine a component in an online video editor.
Firefox also have no plans to support the Picutre-in-picture web API: https://www.w3.org/TR/picture-in-picture/.
See, for example, this bugzilla issue: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1611831
by bvm on 7/8/20, 4:32 PM
I love PiP but I wish it worked for multiple videos simultaneously on desktop.
by stuaxo on 7/8/20, 11:45 PM
The only thing is its easy to forget which tab it came from.
I put it on top and then on all desktops and change desktops with it.
Sometimes I come back and close some tab and it happens to be the parent of the video I'm watching.
by AjithAntony on 7/9/20, 6:16 AM
by phkahler on 7/8/20, 4:56 PM
This should be more of a desktop feature. I'd like to play video wallpaper on gnome/wayland for example. I think this is as much on the desktop devs as the browser devs, if not moreso.
by os7borne on 7/8/20, 5:55 PM
PiP is so functional and I've been using it for sometime now.
by dingaling on 7/8/20, 6:37 PM
This would be great for PiPing a general webpage rather than just a video. Instead of tearing-off a tab, resizing its window and pinning it always-on-top to use as a reference.
by classics2 on 7/8/20, 4:16 PM
YouTube charges for this “feature”. How will that go over?
by nanna on 7/8/20, 3:58 PM
Must admit I've noticed the blue Picture-in-Picture but never thought to click on it. Didn't at all occur to me what it did.
by pixelatedindex on 7/8/20, 6:21 PM
It's too bad that YouTube subtitles still show up in the main YT page and is not present in the PiP modal.
by winrid on 7/9/20, 7:29 AM
FF is getting better, and it seems Chrome has started to frequently lock up in some of my devices...
by aaron695 on 7/8/20, 10:01 PM
If we are going to destroy our brains we might as do it well!
by bondolo on 7/8/20, 10:22 PM
I am glad it can be disabled globally easily. YMMV
by huxflux on 7/9/20, 3:26 AM
PiP made Firefox complete!
by WmyEE0UsWAwC2i on 7/8/20, 4:37 PM
This is a nice feature.
> play alongside while you go about your business on
> other tabs or do things outside of Firefox.
Do we need to watch video while we go about our business?
You better finish your business or the video.
Which leaves me thinking: this is kind of bloat.