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Bug 722743 - fullscreen broken for many applications including flash videos
fullscreen broken for many applications including flash videos
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: mutter
Classification: Core
Component: general
3.10.x
Other Linux
: Normal normal
: ---
Assigned To: mutter-maint
mutter-maint
: 643740 700288 722207 722833 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2014-01-21 23:57 UTC by Asif Ali Rizvan
Modified: 2017-11-04 13:34 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---


Attachments
humblebundle embedded video when switched to fullscreen (twice) will show plugin-container in dash but won't switch to fullscreen (125.06 KB, image/jpeg)
2014-01-22 01:27 UTC, Asif Ali Rizvan
  Details
Proposed patch (512 bytes, patch)
2014-01-26 17:03 UTC, Igor Gnatenko
rejected Details | Review
wine fullscreen take no focus.reg import with wine regedit (78 bytes, text/x-ms-regedit)
2014-04-15 07:33 UTC, Asif Ali Rizvan
  Details

Description Asif Ali Rizvan 2014-01-21 23:57:31 UTC
like with many wine apps, flash videos when switched to fullscreen are not working as expected in gnome 3.

Gnome flash plugin-container fullscreen bug
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JfLIW_pbN0&feature=youtu.be

Expected Behavior: like in other window managers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQMKIT9RSWg&feature=youtu.be
Comment 1 Asif Ali Rizvan 2014-01-22 00:04:29 UTC
Like metacity, mutter also inherits its fullscreen bug for fullscreen wine applications and games. 

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=721688

Really, no gnome developers play wine games or watch tv online in fullscreen?
Comment 2 Jasper St. Pierre (not reading bugmail) 2014-01-22 00:14:50 UTC
Flash full-screening usually works fine on my system. I've only seen this full-screen bug happen twice, and both times I tried to investigate, only to have it work fine when I tried to reproduce it.

If you have a standalone test case that reproduces it perfectly (ideally, that doesn't involve running games that we don't have under wine), that would be excellent for us.
Comment 3 Asif Ali Rizvan 2014-01-22 00:50:35 UTC
embedded humble bundle video also exhibiting this bug but not on youtube page. 
e.g. porntube and tube8 also has this bug.

ok, please test with this free game with wine:
http://www.gametop.com/download-free-games/city-racing/

WINEARCH=win32 winecfg;
wine ~/Download/City_Racing.exe

run the game from actitivies, super key, type city, run city racing.

thanks.
Comment 4 Asif Ali Rizvan 2014-01-22 00:51:39 UTC
please try fullscren with the embedded video at https://www.humblebundle.com/

thanks.
Comment 5 Asif Ali Rizvan 2014-01-22 01:27:23 UTC
Created attachment 266938 [details]
humblebundle embedded video when switched to fullscreen (twice) will show plugin-container in dash but won't switch to fullscreen
Comment 6 Asif Ali Rizvan 2014-01-22 01:29:08 UTC
screenshot in comment #5 is from fedora 21 livecd x86_64, gnome 3.11.2.

Installed flash-plugin in the livecd and tested it! and bug is there. nouveau driver.
Comment 7 Jasper St. Pierre (not reading bugmail) 2014-01-22 01:33:34 UTC
OK, so I managed to reliably reproduce with the embedded Flash video at http://www.archive.org/

It seems that somehow, the Flash plugin window it uses for full screening has a *very* stale _NET_WM_USER_TIME when it's mapped, meaning that we won't focus it when it pops up as full-screen.

Since we minimize full-screen windows that aren't focused, this has the effect that the window pops up briefly, then gets minimized.

I'm not exactly sure how to solve this. There's a chance that this is a Firefox bug, in which case the Firefox team can fix this. Otherwise, it's going to remain broken, unless Flash's implementation of _NET_WM_USER_TIME is fixed. Which isn't likely, considering Flash is unsupported on all platforms now, outside of security releases.
Comment 8 Asif Ali Rizvan 2014-01-22 01:56:22 UTC
Have you noticed http://youtube.com, http://screen.yahoo.com/, and most popular video sites' flash videos go fullscreen properly in gnome? The same youtube embedded video at humblebundle is not going full-screen...  this could means gnome has a whitelist for flash fullscreen windows per website.

What about fullscreen wine apps; they are also badly affected because of "we minimize fullscreen windows that aren't focused"; which other desktops and window managers don't seems to have a problem with.

I believe that it's not a firefox nor a wine bug. All other desktops and window managers (except gnome/cinnamon with mutter or metacity) work fine with full-screen videos and games. englihtenment which is a 3d desktop, has no problem either.

All Windows users, and Linux Desktop users use flash plugin for their youtube, mediafire, online games, etc.; so, flash plugin is not going anywhere anytime soon, unless videos sites stop using it, which is very very unlikely currently.

why not, 'not minimize full-screen windows'?
Comment 9 Jasper St. Pierre (not reading bugmail) 2014-01-22 02:05:30 UTC
YouTube and Yahoo! Screen seem to use HTML5 methods to fullscreen videos, even with a Flash Player (Firefox gives me an Allow/Deny prompt for full-screen along with a checkbox to remember the setting, which means it's using the HTML5 fullscreen API). This works correctly since the _NET_WM_USER_TIME property is properly set.

GNOME does not have a whitelist for Flash fullscreen windows per website. I am a gnome-shell and mutter developer. We don't even have that information when we display the window.

I haven't investigated the wine issue yet. wine is a big download and is still installing on my machine. If it's the same issue, I'll look into fixing it in wine.

Other window managers may not implement the same focus-stealing policies which means that they work fine. I'll investigate Compiz and Enlightenment to figure out why they work.
Comment 10 Jasper St. Pierre (not reading bugmail) 2014-01-26 16:57:53 UTC
*** Bug 700288 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 11 Jasper St. Pierre (not reading bugmail) 2014-01-26 16:58:40 UTC
*** Bug 643740 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 12 Jasper St. Pierre (not reading bugmail) 2014-01-26 16:59:06 UTC
*** Bug 722207 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 13 Igor Gnatenko 2014-01-26 17:03:34 UTC
Created attachment 267241 [details] [review]
Proposed patch

There really many bugreports and i couldn't find right. Thank you.

This patch fixes problem (wrote by http://www.rosalab.com/ engineers, then used in Russian Fedora Remix).
Comment 14 Asif Ali Rizvan 2014-01-26 23:32:39 UTC
Thanks, 

The patch works and flash videos are properly maximizing and restoring.

RPM and SRPM (with patch) can be downloaded from http://koji.russianfedora.ru/koji/packageinfo?packageID=315
Comment 15 Asif Ali Rizvan 2014-01-26 23:35:30 UTC
but wine fullscreen windows are still minimized and switching to them is difficult as the focus is not transferred to them even when clicking on the dash icon or with using alt+tab or super+tab. thanks.
Comment 16 Jasper St. Pierre (not reading bugmail) 2014-01-27 20:58:56 UTC
OK, I tested with several Steam games and the wine "City Racing" game you linked before. They all work fine in the latest GNOME. City Racing had a full-screen issue, but only with GNOME 3.10. So that should be fixed when GNOME 3.12 comes out/
Comment 17 Tobias Getzner 2014-01-27 22:12:08 UTC
Comment 18 Asif Ali Rizvan 2014-01-28 05:29:06 UTC
Thank YOU, I appreciate it! I'm glad.
Comment 19 Jan Alexander Steffens (heftig) 2014-01-28 19:44:46 UTC
Can this patch be backported to 3.10, at least in git, even if there won't be any release anymore?
Comment 20 Luis Henrique Mello 2014-02-06 03:11:09 UTC
Thanks Igor for the patch! I took the liberty to pass it in the Arch bug tracker - https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/35270
Comment 21 Jasper St. Pierre (not reading bugmail) 2014-02-09 22:28:10 UTC
Review of attachment 267241 [details] [review]:

So, no. We want focus-stealing prevention to work for these sorts of windows. I am not going to apply this patch.

We need to investigate why _NET_WM_USER_TIME isn't working for Flash.
Comment 22 shawnbon206 2014-02-10 22:36:45 UTC
I noticed it only happens in chrome when there is a pop-up style extension open, e.g hangouts or Google keep. More than one browser window, no problem as long as no popup extensions are open.

In Firefox I noticed it only happens when there two or more Firefox windows open, popup or not doesn't matter. If there's two windows open then the flash video will get minimized upon full screening.
Comment 23 Luis Henrique Mello 2014-02-11 00:01:25 UTC
Does anybody know the difference between sites that go fullscreen properly (like youtube.com and vimeo.com) and those that don't (like blip.tv)?
Comment 24 shawnbon206 2014-02-11 00:16:18 UTC
(In reply to comment #23)
> Does anybody know the difference between sites that go fullscreen properly
> (like youtube.com and vimeo.com) and those that don't (like blip.tv)?

Html5 vs flash. Html5 is working. Someone else please chime in if there's a more technical answer than that :)
Comment 25 Jasper St. Pierre (not reading bugmail) 2014-02-11 00:18:51 UTC
It might also depend on the WMODE of the plugin. I'm in talks with the Firefox engineers to see if there's anything that would cause a stale _NET_WM_USER_TIME for plugin windows.
Comment 26 Asif Ali Rizvan 2014-02-15 08:51:44 UTC
many live tv flash vidoes don't go fullscreen, e.g.,

http://www.time4tv.com/2013/08/cbs.php
Comment 27 Asif Ali Rizvan 2014-02-15 08:55:14 UTC
also:

http://www.time4tv.com/2011/06/bbc-one.php 

on Gnome 3.11.5
Comment 28 Ray Strode [halfline] 2014-02-17 18:37:11 UTC
Jasper, do you know why the problem happens in gnome-shell but not in metacity?
Comment 29 Jasper St. Pierre (not reading bugmail) 2014-02-17 18:40:20 UTC
No. Does it happen in mutter?
Comment 30 Ray Strode [halfline] 2014-02-17 18:52:26 UTC
yup.
Comment 31 Adrián 2014-03-08 12:01:00 UTC
This is has gotten worse recently. Now I can't even change focus to the video window from the launcher because the generic window icon doesn't appear like it used to. I can't go into full screen at all.

Any temporary fix at least?
Comment 32 Deve 2014-03-08 12:55:25 UTC
You can always workaround it using script in devilspie:

(if
(is (application_name) "plugin-container")
(begin
(focus)
)
)

I use it since gnome 3.8 without any problems.
Comment 33 Jonathan Strander 2014-03-13 04:26:26 UTC
Another quick fix is (assuming wmctrl is installed):

ALT+F2
wmctrl -a plugin

This will bring the window that contains the name "plugin" to the front (in this case plugin-container). This is of course assuming no other windows have that in their title. Not a real solution of course.
Comment 34 Asif Ali Rizvan 2014-03-13 04:32:18 UTC
Thanks Jonathan,

fullscreen flash plugin window were disappearing
http://live.indiatimes.com/

wmctrl -a plugin helped in fedora 20.
Comment 35 Kamil Páral 2014-03-13 07:34:53 UTC
(In reply to comment #33)
> Another quick fix is (assuming wmctrl is installed):
> 
> ALT+F2
> wmctrl -a plugin

Brilliant, I can finally watch flash videos fullscreen. Thanks a million, Jonathan.

An example site to test:
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/media/videos/?view=reaper-of-souls-blizzcon
Comment 36 Deve 2014-03-13 07:43:31 UTC
It's IMO much better to make it work automatically rather than manually use "wmctrl -a plugin" every time. So I think devilspie is better solution ;-)

Steps which you need to do:

1. Install devilspie:

sudo apt-get install devilspie

2. Write config for firefox in file:
~/.devilspie/flash-fullscreen-firefox.ds

(if
(is (application_name) "plugin-container")
(begin
(focus)
)
)

3. Make devilspie autostart
Comment 37 Adrián 2014-03-13 11:24:42 UTC
^ I didn't want to pollute the thread with thanks buy.. yeah I recommend the devilspie solution. The bug is not even noticeable with it.
Comment 38 Luis Henrique Mello 2014-03-13 16:18:17 UTC
> 3. Make devilspie autostart

How can it be done in the new gnome-tweak-tool autostart thingy?
Comment 39 Asif Ali Rizvan 2014-03-14 06:26:44 UTC
on fedora 20 x86_64 and wine 1.7.13; wine application, example Azardi 27; 

http://azardi.infogridpacific.com/azardi-download.html

WINEARCH=win32 wine ~/Downloads/AZARDI_27.0_20140219.exe

Can't go fullscreen when any other gnome application is running; but the window goes to fullscreen if no other application is running or minimized.

in this video I minimized epiphany and that allowed wine app to go fullscreen!

Please see the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ezaD4dR2j4
Comment 40 Asif Ali Rizvan 2014-03-14 06:59:34 UTC
(In reply to comment #38)
> > 3. Make devilspie autostart
> 
> How can it be done in the new gnome-tweak-tool autostart thingy?

Here's How did it in fedora 20 x86_64:

sudo yum install devilspie
mkdir -p ~/.devilspie

echo '(if
(is (application_name) "plugin-container")
(begin
(focus)
)
)
' > ~/.devilspie/flash-fullscreen-firefox.ds


echo '[Desktop Entry]
Name=devilspie
Exec=devilspie
Type=Application
StartupNotify=no
Icon=gtk-fullscreen
' > ~/.config/autostart/devilspie.desktop 

logout and login!
Comment 41 Kamil Páral 2014-03-14 07:53:34 UTC
(In reply to comment #39)
> on fedora 20 x86_64 and wine 1.7.13; wine application, example Azardi 27; 
> 
> http://azardi.infogridpacific.com/azardi-download.html
> 
> WINEARCH=win32 wine ~/Downloads/AZARDI_27.0_20140219.exe
> 
> Can't go fullscreen when any other gnome application is running; but the window
> goes to fullscreen if no other application is running or minimized.

Asif, this is a different problem. I've seen it with some applications as well, and it's a side effect of a new "feature" criticized in bug 705177. Please use that bug to report your problems.
Comment 42 Asif Ali Rizvan 2014-03-14 08:56:24 UTC
(In reply to comment #41)
> (In reply to comment #39)
> > on fedora 20 x86_64 and wine 1.7.13; wine application, example Azardi 27; 
> > 
> > http://azardi.infogridpacific.com/azardi-download.html
> > 
> > WINEARCH=win32 wine ~/Downloads/AZARDI_27.0_20140219.exe
> > 
> > Can't go fullscreen when any other gnome application is running; but the window
> > goes to fullscreen if no other application is running or minimized.
> 
> Asif, this is a different problem. I've seen it with some applications as well,
> and it's a side effect of a new "feature" criticized in bug 705177. Please use
> that bug to report your problems.

This bug is about wine and flash videos/games/apps not going fullscreen when switched to fullscreen.

705177 is about fullscreen app disappearing when a child dialog appears.

I can see your frustration. Unfortunately, (metacity which is now) mutter which is the real culprit is tied to gnome-shell; other window managers like openbox/kwin/xfwm/compiz etc. are good at going and staying fullscreen. 

And mutter is the bad tyre of the race car gnome-shell. Unless it is fixed or changed with something, we can't get rid of the bumpy, slow ride.

Gnome3 devs has so many tasks at hand, the biggest is the wayland port, new features, redesign interface, and blocker bugs, etc... Usability or "fit for a particular purpose" is not really a priority, now.
Comment 43 Luis Henrique Mello 2014-03-14 13:05:00 UTC
> Gnome3 devs has so many tasks at hand, the biggest is the wayland port, new
> features, redesign interface, and blocker bugs, etc... Usability or "fit for a
> particular purpose" is not really a priority, now.

I really wish I could share some thoughts on this, but here isn't the right place to do it... right?
Comment 44 Owen Taylor 2014-03-14 14:01:59 UTC
(In reply to comment #43)
> > Gnome3 devs has so many tasks at hand, the biggest is the wayland port, new
> > features, redesign interface, and blocker bugs, etc... Usability or "fit for a
> > particular purpose" is not really a priority, now.
> 
> I really wish I could share some thoughts on this, but here isn't the right
> place to do it... right?

Yes, I'd appreciate it if debates about the direction of GNOME did not occur on bug reports - it makes it much harder to use those bug reports for positive work. For this reason, I'm not going to respond to Asif.
Comment 45 Deve 2014-04-15 07:04:20 UTC
If you have problems with Wine, which creates minimized fullscreen windows, there is simple workaround:

- Open Regedit
- Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\X11 Driver
- Create a new entry named "UseTakeFocus" with value "N"

Works fine with Gnome 3.10.
Comment 46 Asif Ali Rizvan 2014-04-15 07:33:55 UTC
Created attachment 274331 [details]
wine fullscreen take no focus.reg import with wine regedit

(In reply to comment #45)
> - Open Regedit
> - Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\X11 Driver
> - Create a new entry named "UseTakeFocus" with value "N"
> 
> Works fine with Gnome 3.10.

Thanks, there was no "X11 Driver" key, so I created the key and value.
Comment 47 Jarek 2014-05-28 07:48:43 UTC
So bug still exist, albo in Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 ...ekhm LTS release.
Why fix was rejected ?? This bug is annoyin and is known for more than a year.
Comment 48 Deve 2014-05-28 08:04:35 UTC
I agree that it is annoying.

You can use this patch if you want. It should be easy to apply it in any version of mutter. But it's not true fix and it breaks "non-stealing focus policy". And it probably doesn't fix wine issues.
Comment 49 Deve 2014-10-23 10:10:51 UTC
Flash videos work for me on Ubuntu 14.10 with Gnome 3.12 (with Gnome ppa, not sure if it matters).

But wine fullscreen applications still need workaround.
Comment 50 Jasper St. Pierre (not reading bugmail) 2014-12-29 04:58:13 UTC
Both Flash and Wine fullscreen applications work fine now.
Comment 51 Alexandre Franke 2017-11-04 13:34:12 UTC
*** Bug 722833 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***