An experiment in pushing the boundaries with the Browser Picture-In-Picture API; rendering arbitrary content to PiP as a second app window!
Table of Contents
To try all the demos, head to pip-rendering-fun.netlify.app.
Here is a sample of what one of them ("Stats") looks like:
And here is a demo that is running on a real website - showing how PiP could be used as a way to keep on eye on time tracking:
Time Tracker Demo
For those not familiar, the Picture-in-Picture API (aka PiP) is an experimental web API that allows for websites to "pop" a video player on the page out, and have it continue playing as a floating window that will always stay on top of all other windows.
This repo is a loader and set of demos to show how you can render arbitrary content in a PiP, other than just plain video files, using some creative approaches.
I'll be honest; when the PiP feature arrived in my browser(s), it was probably the most excited I had gotten about a new browser feature in... well, a long time. I do a lot of multi-tasking, and I often have videos or other multimedia running while I work; the ability to float that content wherever I want, without all the cruft of a whole other browser window, is something I've wanted (and worked around) for a long time.
💡 Tip: If you are looking for a tool that enables PiP on sites that have tried to explicitly disable it (cough hulu cough), I have a bookmarklet you might be interested in.
However, recently I got to thinking about how, beyond the specifics, the basic idea of letting a website render content outside the primary document / tab is actually pretty revolutionary. In fact, when you think about it, this could be the start of a major shift in web apps. Currently, one of the major advantages of building your application as a native desktop app instead of a web app / PWA, is the ability to spawn multiple windows and tightly control the desktop part of the application. Expanding the PiP API to encapsulate part of this capability would be a massive step forward for web apps (in my opinion).
📃 Note: I haven't forgotten about popups, but I don't view them as being equal in functionality or appearance. And, they cannot be "stickied" on top.
The way PiP is currently implemented, it is not designed to support rendering non-video, arbitrary content, but in my fascination with how PiP could be expanded, I ended up creating this project to show how it is possible to workaround this restriction (within limits) and what the future could look like for PiP.
At the moment (more on this later), the PiP specification and all its implementations across different browsers have it tied to a <video> element. The way it works is that you, or the user, requests that a floating PiP window be connected to the video player and spawned, and the browser handles the entire process from there. The video content that is playing in the <video> element will start playing in the PiP floating window instead, and if the PiP window is closed, it will revert back to the in-page player.
You might think that this limits the content of a PiP window to video, which is mostly true, but as this repo shows, there are some creative ways to get around this. The main way is by using a <canvas> element as the source for a video stream (via captureStream() and video.srcObject), and then drawing whatever you want on the Canvas. Another way would be to use the MediaSource API to dynamically construct a source, and then connect it to the video element with an Object URL.
The PiP API is still evolving and in an experimental stage. Although Chromium browsers have largely shipped full support for the feature (Chrome shipped by default starting with v. 71), there are many browsers that either don't support it, or support it in an unusual way (CanIUse table).
For example, in Firefox the PiP floating window can only be launched by the user, not via JavaScript. Furthermore, there are some config flags that control some interesting defaults - namely that even if the feature is enabled, the "open" button will only show if the video duration is longer than 45 seconds.
Finally, the biggest caveat with current PiP rendering and my workaround is that the content is non-interactive; you cannot capture clicks that happen inside it, so you can only use it as a secondary display space.
📃 For more info on PiP and its quirks, see my reference page in this repo.
Shoehorning support for arbitrary content into PiP via Canvas, as I've done here, is obviously not the ideal solution. However, I am very excited about some proposed future web APIs that could natively support the kind of functionality I have been envisioning.
This is a proposal that would expand the specification and implementation for PiP to include rendering arbitrary content, and possibly supporting interactive content. If this is embraced, in the future you might be able to just pass an entire HTML DOM to requestPictureInPicture() and have it displayed in a floating PiP window, complete with interaction support.
This would likely be a revision to the existing spec, rather than a break from it. The original specification carefully leaves room for this type of addition:
"The API only applies to
HTMLVideoElementat the moment but is meant to be extensible."
- w3.org/TR/picture-in-picture/#intro
In fact, the explainer for the new functionality is even called "V2".
🔗 More Details and Links
- Chromium:
- W3C
- Picture-in-Picture Repo: v2 Branch
- Picture-in-Picture Repo: Issues tagged as v2
- Picture-in-Picture Repo: Main v2 Issue (#113)
It's slightly confusing how this feature exists in the landscape of Browser Vendors, W3C, community groups, and specifications, but it is promising all the same.
Also known as "Cross-Screen Window Placement", at its core, the feature implements and enhances web APIs around popups (spawned via window.open), to allow for precise placement and knowledge of location across multiple displays.
This API actually has a lot of advantages over PiP, because you can pick where windows are placed, and you are not limited to a single window at a time. To that point, the "Use Cases" section of the Explainer discusses the exact kind of web apps I have been thinking of; dashboards, control widgets, financial apps, etc.
I think the ideal solution might be one that combines the two ideas; if perhaps window.open accepted a setting of zIndex or keepOnTop: true, so that a cross-screen window could act like a PiP, with precise placement. If you combined this with the concept of the PWA display type of minimal-ui, you could have a popup that basically looks and behaves like a PiP window.
🔗 More Details and Links
- Chromium
- Second Screen Community Group (W3C community group, not core)
- Window-Placement Repo
- Specification (draft)
Honestly, I hope that in the near future this whole repo becomes pointless due to browsers implementing improvements around floating window controls (as discussed above). It is exciting to think of a future where more applications can be run directly in the browser, no installation necessary, and this would be a step towards that goal.