[whatwg] api for fullscreen()

[Robert O'Callahan]

2009/12/17 Maciej Stachowiak <mjs at apple.com>

> 1) It handles some very common use cases (including likely one of the
> *most* common, video) in a way that's much simpler for the content author.
> 2) The browser will have the option to animate the transition to fullscreen
> starting from the target element, in a clean way. If content has to make
> layout changes by hand to limit itself to the specific fullscreen target,
> then it's extremely difficult, perhaps impossible, for the browser to do a
> single smooth animated transition without any unwanted flickering or layout
> thrash.
>
> We don't have a specific API proposal to make right now, but I'll try to
> get the people working on this to put forward a concrete proposal soon.
>

Did that happen?

The idea of making a particular element (ideally, any HTML element)
fullscreen is intriguing, because as you say it's convenient for authors and
it lets the browser provide useful UI cues for the transition to fullscreen
mode. It's not completely clear to me what the actual behavior is, though.
Does it mean you just scale up the bounding-box of the element to cover the
screen? What if all or part of the element is scrolled out of view,
display:none, etc? Are you drawing the element, or actually the contents of
the whole window? (I.e., do effects imposed by container elements like
'opacity' take effect?)

As for security, apparently Flash makes alphanumeric key input exit
fullscreen mode, which seems adequate to avoid password spoofing, and still
leaves a few keys usable for games. Perhaps the method to active fullscreen
mode could have a parameter to request arbitrary key input, and that could
require more explicit opt-in from the user. Although it just occurred to me
that for devices without keyboards, disabling keyboard input isn't
necessarily a useful anti-spoofing measure.

Rob
-- 
"He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are
healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his
own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all." [Isaiah
53:5-6]
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