Thanks to a suggestion from Member Old Griz, I’m testing a feature that will let you play a video, and then scroll down the page to the comments without missing a single smirk or eye-roll from Bill Whittle, Stephen Green or Scott Ott.
While every innovation comes with unintended consequences, in my testing, this one works fairly well. I have noticed two small glitches.
- The first time you click the play button, it seems to load the video, and may require a second click to get it to play.
- If you resize the browser window after scrolling down, it may louse up the framing of the video.
I have also tested this on mobile, and noticed that I can scroll the page behind the video to access the comment posting box, and post buttons.
You can see how it works on the two latest videos: American Pride and Neuralink.
Barring catastrophe, I’ll do this with new videos going forward, but the previously-posted ones will stay as they are for now.
Let me know — either here or via private message — if you notice any weird behavior…not from Bill, Steve and I, but from the video player.
14 replies on “New Sticky Video Feature Lets You Scroll without Missing a Smirk”
I have disabled the “sticky video” feature, and returned to the way things were before my effort at “improvement.” Thanks to those who liked the new way, and to those who let me know about unintended consequences. As always, we’re constantly working to improve the Member experience. There’s a Help | Bugs | Ideas form under the FAQ link above when you need it.
I don’t know what you did, but now I am down to just listening to the Audio or going to Youtube. The videos never play for me anymore.
I just wanted to be able to finish the comments after watching you guys before autoplay loaded up the next video.
This is on my PC. I’ll have to try on my Android.
Do you have a different setting for autoplay on your system. I watch on either a Mac, windows laptop, Android tablet, Android Phone. No videos autoplay on any device. The new feature means I have to actually press play twice. The first time loads the video, the second time plays it. If I scroll down the video stays visible in the lower right hand corner of whichever device I am on. Works the same for all 4.
Never mind, it was my HTML5 Autoplay Disabler extension. It reported “zero” attempts disabled, but when I disabled it, the video played correctly. (Too many uses of the word “disabled” in this paragraph.)
(Previously posted content follows.)
I’m sorry to say that the video won’t play for me at all. It just shows that wobbly circle until I click it again, when the Play button reappears. I can play it on Youtube though.
I wouldn’t care very much except for the videos that are only available here.
It is a good thing you put in this qualifier:
Let me know — either here or via private message — if you notice any weird behavior…not from Bill, Steve and I, but from the video player.
We could fill gigabytes commenting on Steve’s weirdness alone.
Scott. Love this feature. On a PC, running Win 10. Works on my Samsung Galaxy Note 9 too. Samsung TabA wont’ show it in portrait mode, but in landscape, it tries to work, but the video paints in the bottom half of the little frame, with a black bar in the upper half.
Scott, simple is better. As you complicate software, unintended consequences increase exponentially with complexity. Attempting to correct for the unintended consequences usually adds more unintended consequences. Attempting to correct them only makes matters worse.
It just works is always better than, “Gee, I added this new feature and it would be fantastic if I could get it to work.”
SIMPLIFY ALWAYS SIMPLIFY until the next thing you remove will make it not work. THEN STOP!!!!!!
It’s a little janky on my Samsung tablet, in the sense that if I scroll down and then back up the image size in the main window shrinks. I don’t know if that’s a deal-breaker for anyone, but I kind of like being able to see the video as I scroll the page.
Android has a built-in picture-in-picture faculty that you might be able to take advantage of. Same for the Windows version of Firefox. Can’t speak for iPhone or other systems or browsers.
Thanks, Michael. I’m not sure how I would take advantage of it, since I don’t code anything on this site, but merely use pre-packaged plugins.
Ah, OK. My whole career was software design & implementation, so I always go straight to that mode of thinking. 🙂
I use Firefox as well and like its PnP feature because I can move the window around. I prefer it on the left side instead of the right where your new feature puts it. Looks like the FF PnP feature is disabled by whatever you’re doing.
Not sure if you can disable that new module just for Firefox browsers or let us do so as a user feature?
Thanks for the tip, Karl. I’ll look into it. Cross-browser compatibility and device responsiveness are the bane of developers.