How can we make Min Vid better?

Hey Ivan, I’ve thought about this a bit. I think it would be a nice option, though there would have to be some clever UI to make sure users wanting a single view aren’t overwhelmed. Maybe a switch you can set.

Nathan, Funny you should mention this. We actually had a bug where this would unintentionally happen if you closed all firefox windows. However it was a bug in this case because it would block opening new instances of firefox. Definitely an idea worth exploring.

ncubelicious, I’d really like to explore windowing solutions like this. The reason we haven’t yet is because windowing UI can be really time consuming stuff to hack on. Especially when you wanna support multiple platform. We have limited resources since this is still in the test pilot experiment phase. Hoping we can revisit these types of features sometime.

I would love to add offline video at some point. It’s possible we could even support offline for YouTube Red users, although I haven’t yet explored what is available via their API.

The size option is a thing I’ve been hearing a lot about recently. Part of the reason we moved to the window instead of the initial panel version, is to allow a bit more freedom on different platforms. Some window managers take more control over windows than others allowing this type of customization. I’m hoping that we can get more resources to explore these types of features down the road, I really feel they are crucial to a good experience.

As far as the first bug you mention, that is a weird one. Would you mind filing on our github page? https://github.com/meandavejustice/min-vid/issues
That way we can get exactly the issue you are having including operating system etc…

Thanks!

Hi Dave,

Thanks for considering my opinion.
I think some sort of switch could work just fine.

First of all, thanks for the great job!

Like a lot of the previous statements, I think, easy useable sizeability (fantastic coined word :slight_smile: ) is crucial for good user experience.

I have also seen some points about playlist functionality/usability. As it is probably pretty hard to catch playlists from platforms like youtube, why you simply don’t create your own one? I know it is easier said as done :slight_smile:
What I have in my mind is you could put a little heart (or whatever) into Min Vid gui…

…which allows to save the stream URL directly in a special folder within the firefox bookmarks. And you give the option to start Min Vid from this special folder…
Et voilà you might have even a cross-platform playlist.
I just do a bit of brainstorm :wink: In fact I am already pretty happy with Min Vid as it is :slight_smile:

Have a nice day guys!

I like min vid a lot, though I don’t use it a lot. But it is great for live events and of course music vids. I agree with adding the sizing and opaquing options - that would make a good thing better. But really I wondering if you might be able to come up with a way to turn off the scrollable vids so many sites are now using. They annoying as hell and of course it interferes with your min vid.

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The autoplay and scrollable vids are unanimously hated. I would love to get rid of those at some point, I’m not sure if it makes sense to be a part of min vid, Though it’s definitely related. We’ve talked about it a bit. It’s probably a good time to start another discussion on it.

Hello. When I play on Min Vid and select “Send to Tab” at any time, it will duplicate the movie opened in Firefox before playing with Min Vid, so I chose “Send to Tab” If you want to overwrite.

This is what you can add to mini vid to improve it:

  1. Add a home button back to the YouTube homepage
  2. Allow us to search YouTube videos directly from the mini vid interface, that would be awesome as it will allow users to do a direct search rather then adding multiple videos into the queue and then going back to YouTube and adding more videos. This way its more efficient to just search the videos from the mini vid interface without even going back to YouTube and just browsing the web from Firefox.
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Netflix support may be good. :sunglasses:

Opacity could be really neat! Resizing for sure… awesome to hear that’s coming!

Hi Dave,
This is a remarkable work, I was wondering whether it can adapt more video sites in the future? We have received many feedbacks from Chinese users, and they want it to support some of Chinese video site such as youku, iqiyi and so on. But the problem is, these sites are still gradually migrating from flash to HTML5. I think there may be some problems with this extension in flash vedio support. Anyway, please contact me if there is any difficulty in the support or understanding. Thank you!

For Youtube:

  1. Opening a video in the min player does not transfer the current time. It would be great to have the video continue at the same timecode. Min player back to tab should have the same feature.
  2. Sending a video back to a tab opens a new tab even if the original tab where it has been opened up from still exists. Instead, closing the video, but just keeping the original tab would be a better option.

I don’t know if you can manipulate the current playback position just like that. But it would be great to have a more seamless transition.

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twitch.tv support would be awesome

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Min vid test pilot doesn’t show the videos in a small window, the window shows gray.

Since many users are asking for custom sites such as Twitch and Netflix, is it possible to have a ‘min vid’ type ‘custom’ page Test Pilot for user to be able to enter in custom URLS. There’s a tonne of Video based websites and I am sure if a borderless even transparent/opaque mini window for another URL were allowed, I’m positive it’d get quite a lot of usage.

Really a very useful extension. I’ve been looking for this for some time. Great job!
Sugestions:

  • Resizable window (drag a corner)
  • Adjust opacity of the video window?
  • Show youtube settings button
  • It’s not working with youtube playlists.
  • The current resize window function does not save the settings when closing Firefox.
  • Run with all videos and not only on youtube.
    The return to flip button should continue the video on the same flip (do not open a new tab) and continue playing the video (do not re-start the video).

I’m looking forward to it, I can very much understand the time it would take and am currently undertaking similar tasks on a smaller scale. From what I’ve seen already, I reckon you will do it justice - whatever your path may be.

I would love to support more china based services! That would definitely be something to look for once we have a bit more resources (developers) hacking on this with me. I am however ALWAYS open to review contributions.