More Controls for Picture in Picture

[Pesala]

@dodger There is a tooltip on the progress bar showing the time. The PiP window is still work in progress. The essential features are there. Some more controls would be nice to have.

Turning off the PiP icon in settings disable the PiP window entirely. A restart is required for the setting to take effect.

I suspect the Opera devs just used the built-in Chrome function, but Vivaldi devs had to build it from scratch.

[Hadden89]

@Pesala I don't think so. If I recall correctly, Opera had PIP before than Chrome.
I think Vivaldi instead is using the standard PIP API and adding the controls (which is fine).
(Or maybe "forked" the standard API. But only a dev can answer to this)

[dodger]

@Pesala In main window an in Opera PIP time under cursor showing immediately in Vivaldi after 1 sec.

(Opera PIP)

Turning off the PiP icon in settings disable the PiP window entirely. A restart is required for the setting to take effect.

It's seems it's doesn't work like that that you wrote.

If you remove the flag from this setting and restart Vivaldi, and then call PIP, then clicking on the progress bar in the PIP window does't work correctly even with a simple left-click.

(Attempts to left-click)

[dodger]

Other issue:

That's more useful placement (to keep current/total time value close to each other):

(Opera)

(Youtube main window)

[Komposten]

@Pesala said in More Controls for Picture in Picture:

@dodger It beats me why anyone needs this on a PiP window. You can click anywhere on the progress bar to restart from there.

I thought the point of a PiP window was so that one can watch a video while working on something else in a tab: reading, writing, searching or whatever.

If one wants to relax and just watch the video set it to fullscreen and have the full set of controls.

I absolutely abuse YouTube's 10 sec, 5 sec and 1 frame back/forward keyboard shortcuts while watching videos, because there are often things I want to re-watch for various reasons. Just because I have a video in PiP it doesn't mean that I don't want to do the same; especially considering that I'm more likely to miss things when I'm focusing on something else.

Being able to easily skip back and forwards in a video quickly and efficiently is vital for me to be able to watch a video in the way I want to. Clicking on the progress bar to jump to a specific time stamp does not provide a easy and efficient way of skipping back/forwards. It requires precise mouse positioning, which takes more time and effort than just clicking a button/hotkey, and if the video is 1+ hours long the difference between jumping 5 seconds and 5 minutes back in time is just a couple of pixels.

So far I've abused the fact that clicking anywhere on the left side of the progress metre skips like 5 seconds back in time, and clicking on the right 5 seconds forward. At least that's how it works in my Vivaldi.

[Endor8]

I definitely miss some form of seeking controls for PiP, since it's a very frequent occurrence when watching a video as a secondary task that you may want to rewatch/listen to something interesting you just missed by focusing elsewhere.

In some sites, like YouTube, pressing Left/Right while PiP is focused seems to pass those keys through to the main window and do the seeking, but it's not consistent across all sites, nor reliable.

Also, since the PiP window doesn't accept keyboard input unless focused (why?), it's not possible to automate this seeking with tools like AutoHotkey, unless you clumsily focus the window, send keys, and focus back, which leads to classic focus issues.

The only gesture I've been able to assign to a hotkey is play/pause by sending a fake click to the buton (Global play/pause shortcut is broken if you have more than one tab offering playback, since it's not always consumed by the currently playing tab).
If there were seeking buttons, I could also workaround seeking with them, but ideally the PiP window should receive keyboard input when not focused, as all windows.

It's technically possible to automate seeking by sending fake clicks to the right position within the seek bar, but I really don't want to do that.

[pauloaguia]

@Endor8 said in More Controls for Picture in Picture:

If there were seeking buttons, I could also workaround seeking with them, but ideally the PiP window should receive keyboard input when not focused, as all windows.

Are you sure that's how your system works? For instance, if I have a text editor open but not in focus and press Ctrl+S, then the file does not get saved. As a matter of fact, if multiple windows not in focus knew how to handle similar shortcuts, how would the operating system know which one to send the shortcut to?

[shifte]

@Endor8

Also, since the PiP window doesn't accept keyboard input unless focused (why?), it's not possible to automate this seeking with tools like AutoHotkey,

eg.

WinActivate, Picture in picture
WinWaitActive, Picture in picture
send, {Right}
Return

[Endor8]

@pauloaguia My wording was probably misleading. Indeed, windows only receive keyboard input when focused, since the OS sends it to the focused window.

However, automation tools like AutoHotkey can generate fake keyboard input and send it to an unfocused window. Most windows react to fake keyboard input as they would for normal input, but the Picture In Picture window doesn't seem to.

@shifte Thanks for the example, I use something similar. However, my point is I don't want to remove focus from the current window, even if only for a brief second. What I'd like to use is something like this, if it worked,

ControlSend,, {Right}, Picture in picture
ControlSend, Intermediate D3D Window1, {Right}, Picture in picture
ControlSend, ahk_parent, {Right}, Picture in picture

Still, I've only managed to get arrow keys to work on YouTube.
Since the PiP window has a seek bar that works on every site, I think Vivaldi could support seeking with arrow keys (or buttons) in all websites.

[shifte]

@Endor8
I understand what you mean.
As for PIP, DetectHiddenWindows doesn't work.