Handy YouTube Viewer

Posted by Matt at 20 January 2009

Category: utils, web

YouTubeLogo

Use this technique to easily "pop up" a YouTube video and keep it on top of other windows so you can watch it while you continue to browse . . . uh . . . work.

The first tool is a bookmarklet. In Firefox, for example, you can right-click on the Bookmarks toolbar and select "New Bookmark". Other browsers are similar.

image

For the location, use this bit of javascript. Make sure it’s all on one line!

javascript:e=document.forms.embedForm.embed_code.value;
w=window.open(’about:blank’,'_blank’,'height=360,width=450,menubar=no,
toolbar=no,location=no,status=no,resizable=yes,scrollbars=no’);
d=w.document;d.open();d.write(e);d.close();
 
Or, drag this like to your toolbar to do the same thing:
 
 
Now when you are viewing a video on YouTube, you can click the bookmark and it will pop up a window with just the video.
 
But how do you get the window to stay on top, so you can do other things while watching it?
 
Install PowerMenu. This program puts a few useful items in the context menu when you right-click on the title bar of a window or the item in the start bar. Just choose "Always On Top" and it will stay visible.

And there you go, a handy YouTube viewer that lets you continue working while you watch the latest viral video of the week!

1 Comment

  1. JamesMoberg says

    Check out DM2… it does a lot more than PowerMenu and it’s portable.
    http://dm2.sourceforge.net/

    One of the other things I’ve down with YouTube is download the video and convert it to a different format for offline viewing using VDownloader (portable):
    http://www.vdownloader.es/

    And to save time, I speed up videos by up to 500% using the Enounce MySpeed Plugin:
    http://www.enounce.com/en/prd/myspd/MySpeed.php