October 2, 2009
Watch YouTube Videos In Full Screen - Expand the Flash Player to Fit the Browser Window
Watch YouTube Videos In Full Screen - Expand the Flash Player to Fit the Browser WindowThe default full screen button in the YouTube video player expands the video such that it covers your entire desktop area and all existing windows on the screen stay hidden as long as you are watching the video is this "maximized" state.
That’s one way of doing things but what if you want more control over the size of the YouTube video player, here’s a simple hack – just replace the word "watch" in the URL of any YouTube video with "watch_popup" and the video will expand to fit your browser window, not the desktop.
For instance, if the original YouTube video is located at ..
youtube.com/watch?v=2mrRvUNlq50
the same video can be accessed standalone outside the YouTube website at..
youtube.com/watch_popup?v=2mrRvUNlq50
Resizing the browser window will also resize the YouTube player and you can press F11 in Firefox to mimic YouTube’s full screen mode even with this hack.
YouTube & Sticky Windows
You may also use the trick for watching YouTube videos in sticky mode. Just open the YouTube video in a new window (not tab), resize it according to your need and use a program like Always on Top to watch videos while working on other tasks.
Embed YouTube Player
You can use the the watch_popup URL with the IFRAME tag to directly embed any YouTube video on your website without having to calculate the confusing height and width ratios necessary for the EMBED tag. In the case of IFRAME, specify the height or width as 100% and it will auto-expand to fit the entire available space on the site.
Others may use this hack to watch 18+ YouTube videos without logging.
Tip: Watch YouTube videos in full screen mode
Tip: Watch YouTube videos in full screen modeWatch YouTube videos in full screen mode
Here's a quick and easy hack that allows you to watch YouTube videos in full-screen mode... well, not full screen, but so that the video fills the entire browser window that you are watching the YouTube video in.
When you click on a link for a YouTube video, the URL in the address bar looks something like this:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=grCTXGW3sxQ
When you are looking at a video in YouTube, just go up to the address bar and edit the URL. You are going to remove the "watch?" section of the URL and change the "=" to a "/". If you do for the example YouTube URL above, here's what your new URL would look like:
http://youtube.com/v/grCTXGW3sxQ
When you do this, the YouTube video will now play so that it fills the entire browser window.