Show HN: Fenêtre – Picture-in-picture for your mac

Show HN: Fenêtre – Picture-in-picture for your mac(xn--fent-ipa.re)

70 points by NeekGerd 8 years ago | 45 comments

scrumper 8 years ago |

I'm being a bit stupid, sorry. I don't get it. What is it? A remote desktop thing? Or does it pretend to be a second monitor in a window (which is pretty clever so nice work).

EDIT: or I can plug another Mac in?

I'm confused by that bit about not alt-tabbing between video of a tutorial and your editor. I can do that now, using, you know, the window manager that's built into the OS. That's why I'm a bit lost, sorry.

YoannMoinet 8 years ago | |

It lets you load a webpage/picture/video/file in a floating window that will always stay on top.

So if you're working in your editor full screen, you can keep this floating window on top. And keep most of your screen's real estate.

I hope this answer your questions.

[HIJACKING COMMENT]

HN has blocked me from commenting too much, but I wanted to share some promo codes !

--- My initial message that I can't post anymore ---

I'm Yoann Moinet, I've developed Fenêtre.

Thank you so much for all your valuable feedbacks, I love it.

I've worked on it with my friend Max William Neilson, who took care of the designs.

We also are on Product Hunt https://www.producthunt.com/posts/fenetre

To repeat what I answered to other questions.

- Windows is coming.

- I'll have a look for *nix.

- Will fix mobile as soon as I have some time.

- I choose the domain name, and I love it. But it gave us a hard time in multiple places, because special chars are not handle well everywhere!

- Similar to Helium indeed (I love it too) but with a different feature set.

Here are some promo codes for you.

H774F7MYTMTY

97PL69RMMX47

FF9WTPXK7KKJ

7H6Y69F4FJNN

HRHFM9LJF4X6

HLTYRXX3MLFE

P64ERPPTRYWY

PPMKWHR99KAF

47ET7J94WLWP

L9TY7K339LHK

scrumper 8 years ago | | |

Thank you for answering my question. I understand what it is now.

Congrats on the launch and good luck!

OkGoDoIt 8 years ago | | |

Thank you. Looks like all the codes have been redeemed as of 4:50pm PDT

2-m3m3n70 8 years ago | | |

What are the codes for?

Bromskloss 8 years ago | | |

So, a window?

iambatman 8 years ago | | |

all codes are gone btw...

hhsnopek 8 years ago |

I currently use http://heliumfloats.com which appears to be exactly this, albeit Helium is free. What are the benefits to this over Helium?

YoannMoinet 8 years ago | |

I was actually using Helium for a long time. It is a awesome app as well, offering a different set of features IMHO.

A sneak peak of features offered by Fenêtre.

- Browser extension

- Code highlight

- Markdown Viewer

- Click-through and See-through as well as opacity control (Helium has opacity too)

- Lots of settings to control defaults behaviors.

- Mute window

- Clipboard access

- Customizable hotkeys

- Polished experience for some website (Youtube, Vimeo, Twitch, Github to name a few...)

- Access to recent opened items

- Local files support (video, image, text files...)

- Collapsed view

Hope you'll give it a shot !

j_s 8 years ago | | |

It's worth at least the "on sale" $5 (compared to Helium's 125 open issues) if that encourages you to slog along with customer support and to fix the inevitable OS-level breaking changes.

stefco_ 8 years ago |

Just bought it and am trying it out. Where are the instructions, though? I have no idea how to move the window around or activate the pass-through feature, and it is unclear where the settings are. I had to kill the window by bringing up activity monitor!

If you do have an instructional page, please put it somewhere highly visible on your website! I couldn't find it after a bit of scrolling. It might be there, but it should be obvious!

Waterluvian 8 years ago |

Please just load the whole damn page. I hate scrolling down, watching stuff appear much too late for me to realise I've reached where content is.

This page really didn't work at all on mobile.

YoannMoinet 8 years ago | |

Thanks for the heads up on mobile, I will update it ASAP!

xelxebar 8 years ago | | |

FWIW, the page (slowly) loads a few pictures and no content with JavaScript disabled. I just immediately close pages that do this.

rosstex 8 years ago | | |

Same on Desktop tbh, loads way slower than my scrolling!

kossmoboleat 8 years ago |

Although I see the appeal I feel that any more distraction is exactly the opposite of what I want. Maybe I see this way to serious but I would be tempted to use this all the time and I'd assume I'd work much worse.

borne0 8 years ago |

While somewhat on the subject of window utilities: Is there a program that lets you make say a virtual desktop, then draw a box around a section that you can then take to your real desktop?

It would be handy to have for programs that are overly buttony and ribbony that you know well enough to navigate keyboard only (or that you use only for a specific subset of commands) which take up far too much screen real estate.

memco 8 years ago | |

Have you looked into the zoom feature in System Preferences > Accessibility > Zoom? You can't draw a box, but you can zoom in and cut down on the clutter you see to an area the same shape as your monitor. I use it all the time because of my vision, but it has the side effect of enabling a distraction free mode of sorts in lots of programs.

borne0 8 years ago | | |

I just checked it out, not really what I'm looking for. but thanks

apk-d 8 years ago |

Windows user here - looks pretty neat. I googled around and it appears MS is working on something similar for Windows 10, but I'm not sure if it's going to land as a feature available to power users or rather app developers. For now I'm sticking to my ghetto AutoHotkey make-always-on-top script.

Also, that Unicode domain name looks sweet.

j_s 8 years ago | |

https://github.com/LorenzCK/OnTopReplica

OnTopReplica comes close, copying apps (or sub-regions) into an always-on-top window.

You have to leave the source app up on the desktop (behind whatever else) and the experimental mouse pass-through is sketchy; I use it mostly for read-only stuff (video).

YoannMoinet 8 years ago | |

Thanks mate !

I'm actually working on the windows version. It's not that far, but it needs way more infrastructure, especially for the licence system. As the Mac AppStore has all this built in.

apk-d 8 years ago | | |

Great to hear - I'll be checking it out.

blaze33 8 years ago |

On Ubuntu there's an "always on top" option for all windows (right click the window's top bar), granted you don't get the click/see through features and other niceties but it served me well when I had the TV on my desktop.

Bromskloss 8 years ago | |

I don't know if it's a default setting or if I have set it up in Compiz Config, but I can adjust the opacity of any window by holding Alt and scrolling.

mlevental 8 years ago | |

just today I was wondering if that feature exists in high Sierra after recently being forced to migrate to Mac

jtnegrotto 8 years ago |

I'm really enjoying this so far. Using it to keep our app's dashboard floating in the corner to keep an eye on it. My biggest want right now is support for right clicking / keyboard shortcuts in the opened browser pages. Had to manually type out my randomly-generated, 26-character password since I couldn't just copy and paste from 1password. That said, this is great. Well worth the purchase.

simlevesque 8 years ago |

I sent the link to my whole team. Bien joué ! J'aimerais bien l'utiliser mais je suis sur Ubuntu.

Bromskloss 8 years ago | |

Can't you already do this in Ubuntu, or have I missed something it does?

YoannMoinet 8 years ago | |

Thank you very much !

I'll have a look for the *nix version, promise!

madavidj 8 years ago |

Nice product! It might be a bit of a hard brand-word to pronounce and communicate... But who knows, maybe you'll do as well as LaCroix did for pamplemousse ;)

Tankenstein 8 years ago |

Quite a cool product, and i'd like to commend you on your landing page. Looks cool and conveys all the information i'm looking for.

wingerlang 8 years ago | |

To balance feedback out, I've got no idea what it supports after reading the website. It can load websites, sure. But it also mentions e.g. games, does it mean it can play web-games or can I add any kind of app as a floating window? It's not clear at all IMO.

tmwed 8 years ago |

this is already available for free through safari. nevertheless, good luck with your product. :)

kossmoboleat 8 years ago | |

Yeah, that's what I thought. What's the difference between these?

peternicky 8 years ago | |

can you explain? I wasn't aware of these features in Safari.

rokhayakebe 8 years ago |

Bought. Nice.

Issue: Not allowing to resize window on YT link.

Edit: Actually it works now. Apologies.

undershirt 8 years ago |

play.hbonow.com does not load in it because I think it's using a mobile user agent, which hbonow seems to not want to support

YoannMoinet 8 years ago | |

It is indeed using a mobile user agent.

I have plans to rework this, and let the user switch between the two modes.

Right now, it's possible to deactivate it in the settings of the Pro app.

led 8 years ago | | |

Can't seem to find anywhere to report bugs other than Twitter or here. Have you got a support email address/form/issue tracker users can access?

nikivi 8 years ago |

Is it possible to increase playback speed?

0xbear 8 years ago |

I wish I knew how to “watch Netflix while working”.

Cenk 8 years ago |

Love the slogan

stevage 8 years ago |

Am I missing something, or is all of this marketing and fanciness entirely about an "always on top" feature?