How to Watch HTML5 Videos in Full Screen

By Umar on February 20, 2010
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Many developers believe that at least in the online video streaming arena, HTML5 will replace Flash which has become the industry standard for online videos. Sometimes users have problems with Flash videos and face browser crashes; this will not be a problem with HTML5. Furthermore Flash is Adobe’s; it is a propriety plug-in whereas HTML5 is an Open Web technology. Due to this companies would prefer working with HTML5 rather than Flash.

Browser support for HTML5 videos is currently underway. Only a handful of browsers let users view HTML5 videos. One of these browsers is Chrome.

If you are a Chrome user wanting to view HTML5 videos, then two great websites to do this are YouTube and Dailymotion. Many of the videos on these sites can be viewed in HTML5 however there are still quite a few Flash ones.

If you are watching an HTML5 video and want to view it in full screen, you will not be able to find a button or tool within the browser player to do this. We discovered a Chrome extension that performs this function and is called FullScreen.

FullScreen places its icon in the Chrome address bar which users can click while watching a HTML5 video to maximum it to the entire browser tab. Here is how it looks like

Consider this image of an HTML5 video (on Youtube) being played in Chrome:

After clicking the extension’s icon, the video fills the entire area of the tab as in the image below:

Once the entire area has been filled by the video, users can press the F11 key on their keyboard to view Chrome’s ‘full screen’ feature and view the video in full screen.

This way in just one mouse click and key press, Chrome users are able to enjoy HTML5 video in full screen view.

Posted in | Tagged , , | 4 Responses
Umar

Umar

Umar is a full time blogger who loves discovering and reviewing news and online services that are valuable to his readers. View author profile

  • http://twalet.com rajesh

    Nice to have the full-screen option..

  • JJ

    Lol, HTML5 is a markup language, Flash is a programming script. The reason why HTML5 will not fly is because its not as versatile as flash. Some elements such as full screen require a plugin as HTML5 is not allowed to break out of the browser window (unlike flash). Its just another markup language destined to fail.

  • http://OGGTV.com William Lacy

    F11 is used on OGGTV.com to do the same on Opera, Firefox, SeaMonkey, Chromium, Chrome, Chrome-Frame, etc… (with a pop-up video, or direct full-browser playback, (HTML5 or embed).

    HTML5-TV ready web browsers, will also have built-in full-screen playback for all HTML5 video situations, (such as Firefox 3.6) with a simple right-click or hotkey.

    HTML5-TV is a IPTV situation for 16:9 TV’s, where the browser is the new “TV”, so when I designed the playback of OGGTV, it had to be full-screen ready, so everyone can play it on their big TV sets.

    Since a lot of websites with HTML5 video will vary in design and features, it will be the browser company which will decide to have the full-screen feature playback, on non-fullscreen HTML5 video page designs.

  • Darin

    @JJ… flash is dying a slow death and it’s time we all accept it. HTML5 is taking off and will become the standard as flash fades even more. Just the lack of flash ability of the Apple products is pushing people towards the HTML5 solution and it seems to work pretty well so I see no reason that it won’t continue to grow and flash continue to die. Adobe should’ve left flash alone, they’ve done nothing to help it at all… and I have a published book on flash that I wrote… I barely even use it anymore.

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