Question for people who really know how to operate YouTube!

Cafe Society
1

I’m unsure whether this is more appropriate here or in GQ, since it is sort of a technical question with (I hope) a factual answer. However, the main reason I end up watching YouTube is by following links that you guys in CS post. So in a sense my problem is all your fault, I hope you realize that.*

Anyway. Sometime in the last couple days I did something, or something was done, that affected the way that my machine views YouTube. You know when you go to a clip, that little box in the lower right-hand corner of the viewing screen that enlarges the view when you click on it? That thing is messed up, or at least is working differently than it used to, and I want it to go back to the way it was before, but I can’t figure out how.

WHAT USED TO HAPPEN: When I clicked that button, the ‘smaller’ playback would freeze, a larger browser window would open up, and the video would load into that window instead. I could move that window aside or minimize it to do other stuff online, while still watching/listening to the clip. When I closed that window, the ‘smaller’ screen on the original page was still frozen at the point where I opened the larger screen.

WHAT HAPPENS NOW: The entire computer screen is filled with the enlarged version, even obscuring the Windows toolbar. There is also a caption that reads “Press ESC to exit full screen mode,” but this is a lie, because pressing the ESC key does jack-all. Pressing ESC + CTRL seems to work though. (There’s a teeny “close” box in the corner of the fullscreen that does the exact same thing, so I don’t even know why they bothered to lie to me about the ESC key in the first place.) The small screen doesn’t freeze anymore when the fullscreen version plays either.

I hope the above makes some sense. Clarifications upon request, if possible with my limited vocabulary. Now, it may be that this ‘new glitch’ is the way that YouTube is actually supposed to work in the first place, and I accidentally fixed it rather than messed it up. But I don’t care, I’m used to the other way now, dangit. Plus I can’t move the fullscreen version around anymore! I’m irked.

*Actually it was a tossup between CS and MPSIMS, but as you can see, this post has nothing to do with cats. Although I wouldn’t put it past the ferrets to have somehow caused this with their damnable keyboard-hopping…

2

It’s behaving like that for me as well, and wasn’t just a day or two ago. I wonder if YouTube did something and that’s just the way it works now.

3

Do you mind giving your operating system (Windows XP, Vista, Mac OSX) and which web browser you are using (Firefox, IE, Safari)? This didn’t happen to me just earlier today when I was using YouTube, but I was in Firefox, so I wonder if that makes a difference.

4

For me, Windows XP and IE.

5

I noticed this too, but I like the change, and it works well for me. I assumed that it had something to do with the JAVA update I insalled. I don’t know what JAVA is. I understand it has something to do with webpages and video. But I may be way off there too.

I have no idea if these two events (updating JAVA and the YouTube changes) had anything to do with one another. They happend to manifest at the same time and I may have falsely attributed a correlation. Can anyone tell me that these two events had nothing to do with one another?

6

Ah well. At least if other people noticed it as well, then it isn’t something I did to my own machine by accident… I suppose it must be some sort of update, either to YouTube itself or to a relevant program, as **Patty O’Furniture ** and DJ Motorbike have suggested. Thanks, guys.

Phooey. How is this an improvement, YouTube? Don’t you folks realize that there are people who like to view your site while simultaneously doing other things? If I can’t work on other stuff at the same time, how am I supposed to fool myself that I’m still being productive?

7

I just tried it with my Mac and Safari, and it behaved normally.

8

I can report also that the entire computer screen is filled with the enlarged version, I really like that now the file continues playing from the position you are in the small screen rather that starting all over again as it did before.

Until that change, I thought that Dailymotion.com had the best way to zoom in or out, still Daily motion gets the edge from me because now there is no window to move around or resize like before, I also find the capacity of pausing with the mouse by clicking on the screen to be very convenient at DM.