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Helium
p/helium-3A floating browser window for your Mac
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Georg Kitz

Helium - A floating browser window for your Mac

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Multitask with ease. Helium is a floating browser window that allows you to watch media while you work. Your content will never fall behind your other windows even as you switch tasks.

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Jaden Geller
Maker
Hi, the maker of Helium here! I'm glad you all like it! I've spent so many hours trying to watch Hulu while I code, always getting frustrated when the video gets lost behind my work. A few days ago, I spent the night hacking this together to fix that, and I'm pretty pleased by the results! A really neat use case that I hadn't even considered is using Helium to watch programming tutorials while coding, which is a really awesome prospect! I'm very passionate about education, so I think it's really great that a "productivity" product of this sort can be repurposed to provide that kind of value. I've got some interesting new features planned, such as automatic fill-window mode for Hulu and Youtube videos. Also, I want to look into a way to get a 1-click "Open in Helium" button in Safari. Further, multi-window support is coming for all you crazies who want to watch Hulu and Netflix simultaneously! Thanks for trying Helium out! Feel free to check out the source code too—you'd be surprised how simple this was to implement on OS X!
Greg Barbosa
@jadengeller You mentioned exactly why I can't wait to use it: Programming tutorials while coding. Switching windows back and forth on a small screen is not ideal, Helium makes that problem disappear.
Jaden Geller
Maker
@thomasmeagher I'm absolutely in love with Swift! If you want to see more cool Swift stuff, check out my Gists! https://gist.github.com/JadenGeller
Jaden Geller
Maker
@citizenfatimah Thanks! Just turned on auto-renew.
Bram Kanstein (@bramk)
I was trying to figure out how to watch the new Silicon Valley HBO, and then I just dragged the file in there, WHAAAT This is amazing
Georg Kitz
Hunter
A floating browser window for OS X. I really like the first sentence on their website. "Multitask with ease. Helium is a floating browser window that allows you to watch media while you work. Your content will never fall behind your other windows even as you switch tasks." It's great when you like watching things next to work.
Milan vd Bovenkamp ♠
@gekitz very cool! Thanks for hunting!
Samuel Beek
@gekitz Thanks for making my development work 2 times faster man :)
Melvin Salas
This is great! When I opened a youtube video it blocked the plug-in. Any way around that yet?
Greg Barbosa
@melvinssalas From the FAQ section on the site now: "Make sure you update to the newest version of flash, and it should go away."
Ryan Gum
@melvinssalas and if you're on a Mac, make sure you check for the latest version using Safari, Chrome has it's own custom flash that isn't systemwide.
Jesse Leimgruber
This is great, I love that it's open source too. I'm soon going to be very distracted.
Corey Stone
Cool idea! I wish it'd been ready by the NCAA tournament. 😄
Omar
Awesome work! I have been looking for something like this for so long 😍 Only request is for full-screen videos to be contained within Helium (i.e. not actually go full-screen); don't know if this is technically possible though.
Jaden Geller
Maker
@omaridau I'm fairly certain that this isn't possible, at least not without a ridiculous amount of hackery. I am however improving the experience when you paste a common video streaming URL like YouTube or Vimeo by automatically redirecting to the pop-out version of the video. That feature should be out later today :D
PM
How about the Slack app open in Helium? UPDATE: it actually works fine! No more missed messages because of a window tsunami!
Jaden Geller
Maker
@m_patrik Wow, that's a fantastic use case! (:
Amit Agarwal
Awesome. Wrote something similar for Windows using Autohotkey. http://www.labnol.org/?p=5213
Jaden Geller
Maker
@labnol Nice!
Aaron McKeehan
@labnol I will have to try this out, even with 6 monitors, I often lose track of my more important tabs.
Samuel Beek
It'd be amazing if I could set a certain resolution. So I can view a downscaled 1900 x 1080 window on a laptop.
Bram Kanstein (@bramk)
@samuelbeek you can drag to adjust size ;)
Eric Posen
@samuelbeek @bramk I think he wants to downscale a high resolution to a smaller size, not actually look at a lower resolution window. For example: to avoid seeing mobile versions of sites.
Mike Holford
Love love love love love. Thanks @Jaden for being awesome and making this. Very cool for coding tutorials!
Marc Anthony Rosa
Game of Thrones new season began yesterday with HBO Now a real product, AND THEN this video player hits PH? "Oh, Sherlock, what do we say about coincidence?" "The Universe is rarely so lazy" Nice work @jadengeller and/or the HBO gods who commissioned you to do this genius product ;)
Jason Marmon
This is awesome :D going to use it when i'm working with documentation for new libraries. definitely a PITA to alt-tab every five seconds
Jaden Geller
Maker
@jtmarmon That's a fantastic use case, I would never have considered that! Thanks for the idea :)
Helen Crozier
Is it more efficient to code while 'watching' GOT (or anything else while coding? I've been brainwashed into thinking multi tasking means all output quality takes a hit. I'm dying to know the secret to how this works :-)
Benjamin Earl Evans
Awesome product - I can't wait to watch GOT today... whilst working :)
Ruben Martinez Jr.
This is great! Who needs multiple monitors now?!
Shruti Gandhi
I won't be falling behind on Silicon Valley, GoT, MadMen, Veep, and HoC anymore because of things like work!
Arthur Swiniarski
So cool and useful, thanks !
Zain Abiddin
Awesome for Tutorials!
Aaron Gibralter
I've been looking for a new/supported AFloat forever! This looks great. Has anyone seen an app that allows you to make arbitrary OS X windows float/translucent?