Download my Safari Extension: MaxVid

Full-Window Flash Videos for YouTube & Vimeo

I made my first Safari browser extension to maximize YouTube and Vimeo Flash videos to the size of the window. Now you have a window you can position anywhere on the screen to watch videos while you do other things. After using it for a week, I don’t know how I ever lived without it.

To get started simply click the toolbar button and the Flash player will take up 100% of the height and width of the browser window. To interact with the website again, simply click the toolbar icon again to toggle the extension.

Prerequisites for this extension:

• You must have Adobe Flash. (I did not have Flash installed until I made this extension!)
• Visit this page and click “Leave the HTML5 Trial” if you are in the YouTube HTML5 trial.
• Visit a Vimeo video page and select “Switch to Flash video”.

The inspiration for this extension came in the form of a tweet by David Cole. Immediately I realized this was very simple with CSS, and wanted a quick project to challenge myself.

In hindsight, this would’ve been much easier to code as a strict JavaScript bookmarklet, and I may tackle that eventually. Either way, it was interesting to play around with the Safari Extension Builder. And many thanks to Robert Dougan for helping me with debugging.

I’ve submitted it to the Apple Safari Extensions Gallery, but there is no way to know if or when they approve it. Download the Safari Extension and it will be included with all other extension updates as normal.

Hope you enjoy it!

Pro-Tip: Hold down Option+Shift when resizing the window to maintain aspect ratio perfection!