Blocking Picture in Picture

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21

@jputting,
I’m going to have to end this conversation because we keep going in circles here. I will loop around one more time for the sake of clarity.

There are two different functions being discussed here that you seem to be conflating. Here is a breakdown of the behavior using FireFox, since you believe:

Picture-in-Picture (PIP) is a function of the media player on a website. Enabling it allows that media player to “pop-out” and continue playing video content while you continue to browse/scroll the webpage. Here is an example of me using the PIP feature on YouTube in FireFox. Notice that I had to manually click on the PIP option in order to initiate it:

What you appear to be concerned about is the type of behavior we see on (for example) CNN.com. This is where video content is playing somewhere on the page and as you scroll, that video content plays and follows you. This behavior is typically controlled by the website using a script (which is why disabling scripts for the site blocks the behavior).

This can be very annoying, especially if gets initiated automatically. Below there are two more examples – one where I visit a CNN article in FireFox (using default settings) and simply scroll down the page and another where I disable PIP controls in FireFox settings:

This CNN article using default FF settings

That same article in FF with Enable Picture-in-Picture video controls disabled:

As you can see, the option FF provides has no effect here, because PIP has nothing to do with this type of site behavior. I invite you to test this yourself as well. I also tried to see if I could find a different way to “disable PIP in Firefox”, which landed me on these Mozilla support questions which echo what is being discussed here:

Additionally, here is some of the official FF documentation on PIP:

There is also nothing in about:config for Firefox that completely disables PIP:

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One thing that may help you avoid the type of behavior shown on the CNN page is to ensure that Autoplay is disabled for [the site you’re on], as the video will not start playing automatically and subsequently will not follow you as you scroll the webpage.

Again, I invite you to test this behavior yourself and prove me wrong here. Additionally, if you have found a website where an advertisement is showing this behavior (as opposed to an embedded media player, like in the CNN article example), please let us know the exact URL of this website so that we can improve Shields such that that ad is blocked. However, do not expect changing anything related to PIP to stop an advertisement like that from displaying/behaving the way it does – because PIP has absolutely nothing to do with it.

22

Wouldn’t come from Brave but via Chromium, if there is a feature like disable PiP. It would come from upstream Chromium @jputting

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/list

23

Hi,

I was not complaining about the ad behaviour seen on the examples shown for the website cnn.com.
With a good adblocker they are not hard to defeat as with ublock origin you can see at a glance what scripts are being loaded by simply clicking the ublock origin toolbar button, if you are using it in advanced mode

You also have the option to take a look at the logger to further scrutinise what is happening.

In regards to your first example I have visited websites where there is a media player embedded in the page and it has indeed popped out and followed me down the page WITHOUT ME INTERACTING WITH THE PLAYER.

In regards to @fanboynz Google has quite a very bad reputation for being extremely stubborn and intractable in regards to changes they make.

No matter how loud and strong the protests are you WILL NOT see a solution to this mess coming from Google.

This is why I have been looking for solutions from Brave and its developers or anyone else whom might have advice for stopping this behaviour.

Once again this type of behaviour NEVER EVER was a problem before Picture in Picture was introduced.

24

Can you please share an example of a website where this occurs?

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25

Hi,

The fact still remains that with many Android based mobile phones there is that option to disable Picture In Picture.

Once you disable Picture in Picture IT CAN NOT BE ACTIVATED no matter what how you interact with the player.

The solution to this will NEVER EVER COME FROM GOOGLE.

Brave has in the past made many changes to counter or reverse bad changes to the Chrome browser which Brave is based upon.

We are just asking for the option to completely and totally disable Picture in Picture so it NEVER EVER GETS ACTIVATED no matter what a user does.

28

Given that you’ve ignored my request for a real example that can be tested I’m assuming you don’t have one. Going to close this topic as it is going in circles.

If you want to open a feature request for this, please do so but it is highly unlikely that it will ever be implemented. Mainly because PIP functionally does not work without user interaction.

If you’re seeing PIP appear, then you’ve done something to activate it. Figure out what it is that you did to activate it, then stop doing it and your problem is solved. Again, switching to FF (or any other browser) will not solve the issue you’re trying to describe.