You plan to watch a lengthy video clip on YouTube but the problem is that you have lot of other stuff to do and therefore can’t focus all the attention on just one video. You need to browse web pages, check emails in Outlook and maybe complete that presentation while the video plays on your screen.
Fortunately, this is possible with a simple hack – just decide where that video should be placed.
You can either watch the YouTube video from the Firefox sidebar or, if you are working with other application or don’t use Firefox, create a standalone YouTube player window and move it anywhere on the desktop in Always on Top mode. See screenshots.
Case 1. YouTube Player inside the Firefox Sidebar
Case 2. YouTube Player on top of other Windows
Here are the steps involved for either of the methods discussed above.
1. Get the full screen mode address of the YouTube video clip. It is something like www.youtube.com/v/ABC where ABC is the YouTube video ID.
For instance, if the YouTube video is located at www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bZ9z6BBMVY, the full screen player will be available at www.youtube.com/v/8bZ9z6BBMVY
2a. To watch the video in Firefox sidebar, bookmark that new YouTube address and check the "Load in Sidebar" property of the bookmark as shown in the screenshot.
2b: To watch the video in a standalone player, open a new browser window and copy-paste the YouTube address THAT you generated in step 1. Now resize the browser window to fit the player, activate the Always on Top program (download link) and press Ctrl + Spacebar to make sure that YouTube player stays in the foreground. That’s it.
Notes: While you may also use the regular YouTube video URL in either of these cases, the experience won’t be so great.
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/software/watch-youtube-videos-while-multi-tasking/5791/
Tags: Archives, firefox, hacks, Most Popular, sidebar, youtube, Software
Reader Comments
Cool, its a great idea because at present, specially the blogger and webmaster wants to do multiple things simultaneous. Watch Youtube videos, chat, blog and doing everything else…..
Written by Royal Blogger on 12.03.08
Wow!. Wonderful hack. Can this be extendod to videos provided by other sites like Veoh,hulu ?.
Written by Rohit on 12.03.08
Neat trick !
But i don’t like distarction while I’m working ;)
Written by Arun Shivaram on 12.03.08
I think YouPlayer is better for playing videos from youtube in sidebar.
Just drag the link into the player and watch it or download the video.
Written by Amirul Ashraff on 12.03.08
Why not open youtube in google chrome and create a desktop shortcut? I use BBC iplayer in this way.
Written by kip on 12.04.08
Here’s a better way for Firefox users.
Create a new bookmark, name it something useful like Youtube Popout, then for Location paste this:
javascript:var%20a%20=%20document.getElementById(“embed_code”).value;%20newWindow=%20window.open(“”,%20″myWindow”,%20″status%20=%201,%20height%20=%20354,%20width%20=%20435,%20resizable%20=%200″%20);%20newWindow.document.write(a);
When you have the youtube page with the video you want to watch open, just click on this bookmark and the youtube video will popout, no need to fiddle with window settings.
Written by dianoga on 12.05.08
How come my computer stops/pauses every two or three seconds while watching youtube videos?
Written by Geoffrey on 02.13.09