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In Windows 8, you can "snap" two apps next to each other, and one of those apps can be the legacy Windows desktop environment. A convenient application for this (or so I thought) would be to snap a chat client, small browser, or other app while watching content in full-screen on the desktop.

The problem with this is that full screen desktop applications will take over the entire screen, even if the desktop is snapped to only occupy 3/4th of the display.

What I would like is some way to force "full screen" desktop apps to only cover the snapped desktop area, and to truly go full screen if the desktop is snapped to full-width. Is there some way to configure this?

If that didn't make sense, let me illustrate with pictures:

Desktop in snapped view with SU chat in mini-browser:

snapped

What happens when you click "full screen":

full screen

What I want to happen when I click "full screen" (note this is digitally altered, not a real screenshot)

full screen snapped

Just to clarify, I'm using YouTube as an example, but I'd like to be able to do this for any program that goes full-screen.

Community
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nhinkle
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4 Answers4

2

If all you require is to watch youtube videos, you can follow this recipe:

  1. Enter this URI in your browser and remove as much as possible of the unimportant contents of the window (address bar, bookmarks, etc.): data:text/html;,<iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="800" height="600" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/dfiR1Rde7dI" frameborder="0"> </iframe>
  2. Adjust the width and height attributes to perfect the screen size.
  3. Change the youtube video ID at the end of the src, after /embed/.
  4. Enjoy
Henning Klevjer
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This coresponds to the application's viewstate and they way the browser handles plugins. I would call this is a bug in the software because it doesn't change a parameter called the viewstate as outlined here.

The browser should query Windows for the current viewstate and make the necissary adjustments.

The important implication is that the problem cannot be fixed without source level changes to the programs.

Mikhail
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An alternative solution would be to open the video via the embedded video link.

  1. Replace watch?v= with v/ in the address bar and hit Enter

    To make the embedded player behave the same as the fullscreen mode, add the following parameters at the end of the URL: ?showinfo=0&autoplay=1&autohide=1

  2. Then focus the address bar again and press F11 to hide the browser UI and taskbar
    (not sure if this behaves correctly with the snapped desktop)

You can also save the following as a bookmark, which will then do the job for you:

javascript:location.get=function(a){return(a=RegExp(encodeURIComponent(a)+"=([^&]*)&?").exec(location.search))?a[1]:null};location.get("v")&&(location.href="http://www.youtube.com/v/"+location.get("v")+"?showinfo=0&autoplay=1&autohide=1");

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asdf
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The free WinMaxinumize application is supposed to address this problem, using a hotkey to expand the active window over all unused desktop space.

A descriptive write-up is provided in this ghacks article.

(Not having Windows 8, I cannot test.)

harrymc
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