Option for Web Panel Ubiquity
-
Sorry, wasn't sure what else to call it. As I'm sure many others do, I like to play music from a web panel (in my case I use soundcloud). I like being able to summon the web panel whenever I need to control the music, then hide it again as it continues playing in the background.
With the current implementation, though, the web panel loads a new instance of the site if I summon it in a different window, so I have to remember which window I have it playing from in order to pause or change the music. Similar to an extension, I'd love to be able to control the same instance of the web panel from whichever window I'm currently working in. I'm sure this is why extensions exist in the first place, but I feel I have more control with a web panel. Also, this would enable similar control over other websites that aren't directly translatable to an existing extension.
Would love to hear thoughts on this! I'd really love it as a feature.
-
@dconthe3 I find that Videos in Web Panels stop playing when the panels are closed. With two monitors, I can have the panels open in another window on the secondary landscape monitor, while closing the one on my portrait monitor.
I think that a Video Popout would be a better solution for what you want.
-
Yes, this would also be great for web panels such as Twitter or WhatsApp (particularly WhatsApp).
With the current implementation, I cannot view my Twitter timeline from the same place every time I open a new window, as for WhatsApp, the newer instances always end up closing the previous instance, as the website recognizes them as separate "windows".
-
@pesala Thanks for the reply! Videos are actually not really my concern here, although video pop up does sound like a great feature to have in the long run. In my case, I'm just talking about having music play in the background from a browser-based source (Soundcloud/Bandcamp/etc), and being able to control the music by popping open the web panel from whichever of my many browser windows I happen to be actively using. As @AltCode mentioned, Twitter feeds, forums, and messaging utilities like Whatsapp and Groupme are also great implementations of this. The whole utility of web panels over third party extensions or additional applications is that they can be used for any website.
-
@dconthe3
If I understood your request correctly, you're asking for multiple tabs to be showing/using the same content (because a web panel is basically just another tab).I don't think this is even technically possible from within the browser. There'd be a lot of security implications if it was.
-
@pauloaguia Hmmm yeah I'm not a developer, so I don't know the limitations of the idea. But if a web panel is indeed handled like a tab, I imagine in this scenario opening up the existing web panel in a different window could be treated as "moving" the tab to that window? From my own experience moving tabs between windows this wouldn't be the fastest process, but maybe that's a hypothetical starting point?
Is it not possible/safe to create a "tab" that isn't bound to a particular window but instead sort of exists in limbo, and then summoning the web panel displays that "unbound" tab? Sorry if these questions/proposals are naive, I probably don't understand browsers well enough.
-
@dconthe3 The idea of "moving" the tab as needed seems like a workable (not necessarily easy) idea.
However, you run into a problem if someone opens the panel in two windows at once.
An aside (not entirely relevant):
When I was trying out a streaming service, I instead made a web extension that hooked into their API, which allowed me to make buttons (e.g. play/pause) to control it that could sit on the address bar without me needing to open the tab directly. -
@lonm If the web panel is just treated like a tab hopping between windows, the "move tab" code could be embedded in the "open web panel" button so that even if it was already open somewhere else, it would close in the original window and reopen in the destination.
Like I mentioned before, there's plenty of OK extensions for common sites like twitter and soundcloud, but you just don't typically get the same maneuverability with an extension as you would with just loading an instance of the page (and you're limited to existing extensions for popular sites or making your own for each specific site you want to add functionality to). For example, with Soundcloud loaded in a web panel, I can pretty easily navigate to my own page to listen to my playlists, search a specific artist, or go back to listening through random stuff on my feed.
-
I would really like this feature. I would have a ton of websites in the Web Panel if they were persistent across all my windows. As a multi-window user, the current limitation makes the Web Panels nearly useless for me.
-