You can never have enough screen space, especially when you are a multi-tasking addict like me. I have been using dual screen setups for years now and i’m not alone. A lot of  people use two, three or even more monitors  at work and at home. Thing is, in all those years using multiple screens I  find support for it in all kinds of software is minimal. I don’t know of any games that take real advantage of multiple screens, most software doesn’t have genuine supprt for multiple screens and what bothers me most, no video player has decent dual screen features.

I like to ‘watch’ video will i’m working or surfing the internet. My major problem is when I start a video and enable full screen as soon as I click in the other monitor the video player resizes to default resolution. All web video players do this. It doesn´t matter if it´s Silverlight, Flash, Windows Media Player or even Youtube´s new HTML5 player they all refuse to stay fullscreen when using the other screen. So, since all web video players show this behavior one might think the root of the problem isn’t in the web players but probably browser or operating system related. I’m a Windows user (Win7 at the moment), so that will be the start of my research. First test: Windows’ default player Windows Media Player.

A small success, with full screen enabled I’m able to use my other screen as I like. But my main focus is on web video players so this will prove it’s not the operating system being the problem. But let’s do a another quick test to rule out the OS. I’ll use the free open source player VLC Media Player. It works, again I’m able to use my main monitor while full screen is enabled in the VLC Media Player. I think it’s fair to say it’s not Windows preventing the player to stay full screen when using another monitor. This is good to know because this will come in handy when you have the deeplink of the video or livestream you’d like to watch full screen at that moment. Next up, browser testing.

For some, it might be obvious that the browser is the problem. This because your browser is continuously ‘listening’ for click actions. Once you click somewhere in your main screen you browser window playing the video will lose focus and exit full screen mode. I don’t think this is something developers can enable using their own build players because of this. Aobde and Microsoft claim it is because of security issues and it is not possible by design. The tests as shown below kind of explain this theory:

Firefox Chrome Internet Explorer
Flash X X X
Silverlight X X X
Windows Media Player X X X

X – Video does not stay maximized when losing focus

Solution

According to a reply to a bug report on Adobe there’s nothing that can be done when using Flash Players:  ”We understand that many users would like fullscreen on one monitor and to be able to interact with your OS on another monitor. However, due to security requirements, we require that Flash and Browser must be the current focus of your OS. Apologies if this causes any workflow or usability issues. We will continue to review our security policy and consider changes in the future.”

No matter what Adobe might be saying there is a solution regarding Flash it’s players. You can replace npswf32.dll file for a modified version which allow you to have a Flash video player stay maximized while you are using the other monitor. Of course you can also hex edit a flash binary youself. (More info) (Download modified npswf32.dll) Apparently unchecking “Hardware Accelerating” also fixes it but I don’t want to disable my hardware accelartion. (Right click on the video, Settings…..)

Now how about Silverlight and Windows Media Player? In a podcast from december, which a can’t find no more, I heard that the Silverlight team is currently fixing this. Searching some more on this topic brings us the news this feature will not be released untill Silverlight 4. According to Mike Taulty “A Silverlight 4 application can go full-screen without those security limitations if that application marks itself as requiring elevation at installation time ( i.e. it’s a trusted application ) and in that case the security sandbox is relaxed and one of the things that enables is full-screen apps without those security restrictions.”

So i’ll guess we have to wait for Silverlight 4 for this functionality. On the other hand  Windows Media Player will play all video that a Silverlight player could show. So searching for the deeplink and copy/pasting it into Windows Media Player will also work. This because Windows Media Player will stay full screen when losing focus as said earlier in this article. Finding the source or deeplink can be done by looking at the embed code of the object in the source code of the webpage it is embedded in or look for it using Firefox web developer plugin Firebug.

It seems the solution stopped working in Google Chrome after the latest updates. Thanks to Henrik there’s a solution:

“Hey, i use chrome, and they recently applied an update, which invalides this operation to flash.

The solution is simple though:

In your chrome install folder (which usually is):
C:\Users\Heknu\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\5.0.375.86

Replace the gcswf32.dll with the file downloaded modified file (npswf32.dll) and ur good to go :)

U might want to keep your original chrome file, just in case. And if chrome release another update, the solution might just be the same :) “