WHY IS THIS SO HARD?! This Month: Playing Full-Screen YouTube Videos From An Internal WebView

Wednesday, September 18, 13

Image credit: https://plus.google.com/+JRRaphael/posts/Wty5TvXYZhp

Where I’m Coming From: iOS UIWebViews • In iOS, for HTML5 video, playback is handled entirely by the UIWebView.

• User hits play, system takes over and shows video in fullscreen on phones automatically and on tablets on-demand, developer doesn’t have to do diddly squat.

Wednesday, September 18, 13

The Trouble With Android WebViews • On Ice Cream Sandwich+, inline playback is handled automatically.

• Gingerbread? LOLOLOLOLOL no. • ICS does not automatically handle transitioning to fullscreen playback

Wednesday, September 18, 13

The Buried Solution • When something from a WebView goes to

full-screen, the WebChromeClient hands you a new custom view, which you are responsible for adding to the view hierarchy.

• On Gingerbread, all calls to play HTML5 video do this. On ICS+, only hitting the button to expand to fullscreen does.

• Best place to do this is in the Activity, where you can swap out the ContentView.

Wednesday, September 18, 13

This solution is extremely poorly documented - it’s mostly cobbled together from StackOverflow posts.

Show me teh codez! Also available at: https://github.com/designatednerd/ AndroidListenerExamples

Wednesday, September 18, 13

Note: Assuming we have a Fragment with a WebView as one of its subviews (in this case, its only subview).