Multiple Monitor Full Screen version 2 released

Today marks the release of version 2 of the Multiple Monitor Full Screen extension for Google Chrome. Multiple Monitor Full Screen allows videos to consume the entire web page so videos will stay in full screen even when interacting with other programs on your computer.

The extension places the commonly seen “full screen” icon in the address bar when it detects a video on the current webpage. Clicking on the icon will bring the video in to full screen mode, and clicking the icon again will exit full screen.

This new release gives instructional text on how to make the full webpage video use the full display. This mode will still not exit if you interact with another program, allowing a user to get the most use out of their pixels.

Since our first release on December 26, 2010, the extension has seen five updates released. We have seen a large demand for the extension coming from Russia and quickly localized the extension for Russian. All changes are now internalization-friendly.

As this new release introduces some instructional text on how to make the video use the full display, I also want to take the opportunity to describe another way to make your video use the full display. There are two ways that you can make the Google Chrome web browser go into full screen mode. The first would be to click on the web page or the address bar, then press F11 on your keyboard. The second would be to click on the wrench menu, then click the full screen button as seen in the screenshot to the right.

When exiting from browser full screen, move the mouse to the top of the display and wait for the “Exit full screen (F11)” text to appear. Clicking on the text will exit browser full screen mode.

Install the extension today and join the over 300 users that have started to go “full screen” the easy way.

My first public Chrome extension – “Multiple Monitor Full Screen”

Yesterday I published “Multiple Monitor Full Screen“, my first public extension to Google Chrome.  I just wrapped up shooting a simple walkthrough video of the extension:

Try it out and let me know what you think of it. Within the first day of the extension being published, there were 7 downloads and over 100 views of the inaugural demo video.

The extension uses JavaScript to resize the Flash player of the video to be the dimensions of the browser window. It uses HTML5 LocalStorage to keep track of the previous dimensions of the player so the user can revert back cleanly.

Right now the extension only works on non-embedded videos hosted by YouTube and Vimeo. I looked in to adding support for Hulu but they appear to be doing some funny things to restrict this. In the near future I would like to add support for embedded YouTube/Vimeo videos.

Contributing to Open Source Software

Last week I attended the Google I/O conference. I went to some great sessions and learned a ton about Chrome, App Engine, and Android.

One of my biggest takeaways wasn’t from the sessions that I attended. I happened to bump in to some other college-aged guys and after some talking learned that they were contributors and committers to the Chromium project (the open source version of Google Chrome).

Now last year (2009) at the beginning of the summer, I wanted to participate in Google Summer of Code, specifically in one of the Google Chrome projects. I followed the steps on their developer setup guide, and kicked off a build on my machine. Hours later I realized that my machine was no match for Chromium.

Too much had to be installed to build the project and the file size of the project was leaps and bounds more than my pesky laptop could handle. I ended up putting away Chromium and focusing on tackling some books I had been wanting to read.

This summer is a whole new ball game. I’ve upgraded my computer and the Chromium project has also shed a lot of dependencies since May 2009. I’m happy to say that I was able to install Visual Studio 2008 Premium, SP1, a few hotfixes, and was off to building. An hour of waiting and I had my own build of Chromium running.

Today I can now say that I am a contributor to Chromium. I am proud that my name now resides on the AUTHORS file of Chromium, and I want to take this opportunity to pass-on some motivation for contributing to open source software.

If you’ve got an open source program that you use daily and get a lot out of, return the favor to the authors and help them out. Most open source software is free, so they’re not making money off of you using the software. It’s just kind of the fair thing to do.

Not to mention that there are tons of benefits that you will gain by contributing to an open source project. Let’s run through a list:

1. Experience working with different code (paradigms, styles, patterns, algorithms)
2. Get to work with developers located all across the world
3. A great opportunity to learn more about a programming language
4. A feeling of ownership of the product that you enjoy
5. and so many more…

So take a second right now and think of the programs that you use and love. Are any of them open source? Do they have a list of bugs that could use some help? You could even take this opportunity to fix anything that you don’t like about the application and make a special build for yourself 🙂

Trials and tribulations of building Google Chrome with Visual Studio 2008

You’ve downloaded the Google Chrome tarball from their website and are all ready to build it and play around with the code. This is what I was ready to do. The IDE that I have installed on my machine is Visual Studio 2008 SP1, which isn’t supported yet for the Chromium solution. Here are the steps that I have taken so far, they may be helpful if you are in my steps:

By the way, my download was revision 10080.

1. In MathExtras.h, you’ll have to comment out the line #include <xmath.h> from the WebKit\WebCore file.
2. Remove all the inline keywords from the Glue project
3. Add the RAW_KEY_DOWN value to the WebInput enumeration.

This is where I sit now. I’ve got about 150 errors when I build. Some of the errors mention missing files. When I get a chance I’m planning on just syncing up my source with the latest and hoping that will fix some of the missing files. When I get it all working, I’ll add a post with steps on how to build Google Chrome with Visual Studio 2008 SP1.

Potential GSoC Projects

From searching through the available projects that are on the GSoC delicious list, I’ve come up with three potential ones that I’m going to look in to. By the end of the week I would like to have a project picked out and an application submitted to work on it.

Here are the three projects that have caught my eye, and why I would like to work on them:

VideoLan VLC: Qt Pimping

Some people that I work with have used Qt previously and I was amazed at the nice animations that were possible within Windows. And don’t forget the fact that the framework is cross-platform. The project says that you should have some Qt knowledge and C++ experience. I don’t have any Qt knowledge, but I do have the willing to learn.

AbiWord: Porting AbiWord from ANSI to Unicode

Internally AbiWord uses Unicode between methods, while the controls are all Microsoft ANSI controls. This project will look at converting the controls from the ANSI ones to Unicode. This doesn’t sound too tough, although when switching character-encodings, there are always bugs that manifest. Also, to make this a true internationalization effort, it should support “international” filenames and dragging and dropping of these files in to the interface. Some of the other benefits that come with switching from ANSI to Unicode will be better integration with the features of the NT platform and better support of the Multilingual UI (MUI) features of Windows 2000/XP/Vista.

Chromium: Extensions

Everyone that sits down at a computer has a different use for the internet and there are many ways to accomplish the same thing. Extensions allow for users to customize their setup and make their user experience better. There are API’s that need to be implemented and also unit-tests to go with it. The code for Chromium is written in C++. Downloading the source and getting it to build in VS2008 has been a learning lesson, but this looks to be a nice project.

What do you think about these projects? Is there one that sticks out to you that you think I should go forward with?