Mozilla full-screen API progress update

Update 10 November 2011: the full-screen API has been changed slightly and enabled in Firefox Nightly builds, see http://blog.pearce.org.nz/2011/11/firefoxs-html-full-screen-api-enabled.html for details.

I've been working on implementing Robert O'Callahan's HTML full-screen API proposal in Firefox (bug 545812). Support for the base API has landed, disabled by default, in Firefox nightly builds. To enable the full-screen API, set the pref full-screen-api.enabled to true.

We have implemented a general purpose full-screen API which can make any HTML element the full-screen element (it seems WebKit based browsers' full-screen API allow only making <video> elements full-screen).

This feature makes the following API changes to HTML Element:

1. void mozRequestFullScreen() : makes an HTML element the full-screen element. Causes browser chrome to hide, and expands the element to encompass the entire screen. Upon success, this dispatches a "mozfullscreenchange" event to the requesting full-screen element, or the element's owner document if the element is not in a document. We only grant requests for full-screen when running in user-generated event handlers, e.g. a mouse click handler.

This feature makes the following API changes to HTML Document:

1. void mozCancelFullScreen() : exits the document from full-screen mode.
2. readonly attribute mozFullScreen : true when the document is in full-screen mode.
3. readonly attribute mozFullScreenElement : reference to the current full-screen element, if it's in the current document.

This feature adds the :-moz-full-screen css pseudo class, which applies to the full-screen element while in full-screen mode.

For a request for full-screen to be granted in content inside an iframe, the containing iframe needs to have the mozallowfullscreen attribute present. This is a boolean attribute, so the attribute only needs to be present, it doesn't matter what value it's set to.

Keyboard input is restricted in full-screen mode. When alpha-numeric key input occurs in full-screen mode, full-screen mode immediately exits. This is to help protect against phishing attacks.

We also plan to deny requests for full-screen mode when windowed plugins are present (since we can't easily monitor key events to windowed plugins on non-MacOSX platforms). We will exit full-screen mode when a windowed plugin is added to a document as well. I have a patch for this, but its dependencies haven't landed yet.

Work remaining to be done before this can be enabled:

1. Adding a warning message when we enter DOM full-screen mode (on desktop Firefox, and on Fennec too).
2. Making the full-screen API work in multi-process Firefox/Fennec (bug 684620). This requires a way of getting the PBrowserParent from C++ in the chrome process to be implemented, there's not a way to do that yet unfortunately.
3. Make change/open tab cause full-screen mode to exit (bug 685402).
4. A security review must be completed, and concerns raised there must be addressed. This could involve changing the API.

We also want a clearer transition effect when entering full-screen, to somehow show the full-screen element "stretching out" to encompass the screen.

You can test out our work-in-progress full-screen implementation, by grabbing the latest Firefox nightly build, setting the pref full-screen-api.enabled to true, and pointing your browser at my not-very-exciting full-screen API demo page.