[whatwg] api for fullscreen()

[Ian Fette (イアンフェッティ)]

I think what I've heard from application developers over and over again is
that, while the UA may provide some way to go into full screen from in the
browser chrome, it is much more discoverable when that capability exists
from within the content area (e.g. people are used to clicking on the full
screen button in YouTube, and when you take that away users can no longer
figure out how to go full screen).

Obviously there are security considerations re: UI spoofing, but I'm
beginning to wonder how much we should beat ourselves over this. If there
are simple things that we can do to improve upon the model Flash uses (e.g.
don't have a translucent overlay but instead use an opaque overlay, or use
an overlay that doesn't go away until the user dismisses it, etc) without
totally killing current use cases and discoverability, then let's consider
that. Overall though, it feels like we are burying our head in the sand a
bit by saying "Well, as long as HTML doesn't provide a way to go full
screen, the users are safe and it's not *our* fault if anything bad
happens," when the reality is that Flash is installed on 98-99% of all
machines out there and anyone who is really trying to phish people using
this method could easily use flash instead of whatever we provide. (And yes
I'm aware people can turn off flash, but those users sophisticated enough to
use noflash can probably figure out if they are in full-screen mode or not.)

-Ian

2009/12/16 Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch>

> On Wed, 16 Dec 2009, Michael Dale wrote:
> >
> > It would be really nice if the html5 spec supported a javascript call to
> > set a target window to fullscreen. The browser would then issue a
> > security warning at the top of the page (similar to pop-ups) and then
> > the user could grant that domain permission to go full-screen.
>
> Why would that be better than the user just telling the UA to make the
> page full-screen directly?
>
> --
> Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
> http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
> Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
>
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