Intent to Implement: Picture-in-Picture (PiP)

[François Beaufort]

Contact emails

fbea...@chromium.org, mlam...@chromium.org, apac...@chromium.org

Explainer

https://github.com/WICG/picture-in-picture/blob/master/explainer.md

Design doc/Spec

Specification: https://wicg.github.io/picture-in-picture/

Tag Review: https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/226

Summary

Allow websites to create a floating video window always on top of other windows so that users may continue consuming media while they interact with other content sites, or applications on their device.

Motivation

Many users want to continue consuming media while they interact with other content, sites, or applications on their device. A common UI affordance for this type of activity is Picture-in-Picture (PIP), where the video is contained in a separate miniature window that is viewable above all other activities. Most desktop (Windows, macOS) and mobile OSs (Android, iOS) have announced or released platform-level support for PIP, as have many browsers. The proposed Picture-in-Picture API allows websites to initiate and control this behavior.

Risks

Interoperability and Compatibility

Safari has shipped a vendor-prefixed API for Picture-in-Picture and we’re working with them on this specification.

Edge: No signals (but part of the conversation)

Firefox: No signals

Safari: Public support

Web developers: Positive

Ergonomics

The API is currently limited to video elements to punt security issues around PIP-ing arbitrary HTML content and handling events. The API will have to be used with the Media Session API for customising the avaiable controls on the PIP window.

Activation

It will be very easy for web developers to add a custom PiP button to their video players. And they will even be able to use a polyfill to handle the Safari vendor-prefixed API for backward compatibility.

It will also be covered by developer documentation such as https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/picture-in-picture.

Will this feature be supported on all six Blink platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Chrome OS, Android, and Android WebView)?

Yes.

Link to entry on the feature dashboard

https://www.chromestatus.com/features/5729206566649856

Requesting approval to ship?

No

[Jochen Eisinger]

What happens if you switch tabs, will the PiP window stay visible?

What happens if you navigate the tab to another side while a PiP window is open?

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[Kenneth Rohde Christiansen]

Hopefully, that would be quite useful, I think. I often want to watch a YouTube video but need to respond to emails and chats in other browser tabs, which forces me to pause and interrupt the video stream. Having PIP as a solution to this, would be quite useful for me

Kenneth

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[François Beaufort]

On Wed, Feb 7, 2018 at 12:02 PM, Kenneth Rohde Christiansen <kenneth.ch...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hopefully, that would be quite useful, I think. I often want to watch a YouTube video but need to respond to emails and chats in other browser tabs, which forces me to pause and interrupt the video stream. Having PIP as a solution to this, would be quite useful for me

Indeed!

 

Kenneth

On Wed, Feb 7, 2018 at 11:38 AM Jochen Eisinger <joc...@chromium.org> wrote:

What happens if you switch tabs, will the PiP window stay visible?

PiP window will stay visible.

  

What happens if you navigate the tab to another side while a PiP window is open?

Think of the PiP window as another surface for showing video. If user navigates the tab to another side, PiP window will simply close.

If you want to experience a similar PiP browsing session, open Safari, visit a page that contains a <video> with native controls (https://beaufortfrancois.github.io/sandbox/media/plain-video.html for instance) and click the video PiP button.

 

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[Jochen Eisinger]

On Wed, Feb 7, 2018 at 1:19 PM François Beaufort <beaufort...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Feb 7, 2018 at 12:02 PM, Kenneth Rohde Christiansen <kenneth.ch...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hopefully, that would be quite useful, I think. I often want to watch a YouTube video but need to respond to emails and chats in other browser tabs, which forces me to pause and interrupt the video stream. Having PIP as a solution to this, would be quite useful for me

Indeed!

 

Kenneth

On Wed, Feb 7, 2018 at 11:38 AM Jochen Eisinger <joc...@chromium.org> wrote:

What happens if you switch tabs, will the PiP window stay visible?

PiP window will stay visible.

will there be a way for the user to locate the owning tab? 

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[François Beaufort]

On Wed, Feb 7, 2018 at 2:11 PM, Jochen Eisinger <joc...@chromium.org> wrote:

On Wed, Feb 7, 2018 at 1:19 PM François Beaufort <beaufort...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Feb 7, 2018 at 12:02 PM, Kenneth Rohde Christiansen <kenneth.christiansen@gmail.com> wrote:

Hopefully, that would be quite useful, I think. I often want to watch a YouTube video but need to respond to emails and chats in other browser tabs, which forces me to pause and interrupt the video stream. Having PIP as a solution to this, would be quite useful for me

Indeed!

 

Kenneth

On Wed, Feb 7, 2018 at 11:38 AM Jochen Eisinger <joc...@chromium.org> wrote:

What happens if you switch tabs, will the PiP window stay visible?

PiP window will stay visible.

will there be a way for the user to locate the owning tab? 

Yes. We're thinking about a PiP icon in the tabstrip for now.

 

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[Jochen Eisinger]

Cool, thanks! 

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[Kenneth Rohde Christiansen]

Shouldn't clicking on the PIP bring you back to the initiating tab?

[François Beaufort]

It is up to the browser. Safari has a dedicated overlay button for this for instance.

Cool, thanks! 

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