Hacksar

If you’re one of the lucky people who have a computer setup with multiple monitors, you probably have realized that any Flash-based video player that has a fullscreen mode essentially prevents you from doing much else. Once you fullscreen, if you click anywhere else, the video goes back to regular size. Often times, this doesn’t fly with people like me (multitasking!) because I have a video on one screen and some other window (like an IM session), and every time you go to type something in the other window, the Flash video leaves its fullscreen mode. Frustrating, isn’t it? Thankfully, there’s a easy one-click fix for that that works across almost all browsers! Keep reading for the guide.

1. Go to the IgnoFlash Patch website and download the latest patch version.
2. Close all open web browsers (and anything else that may use Flash).
3. Unzip this to a folder, and run the supplied .exe file. It will present you with a simple interface.
4. For each option (should be a file) that is given in the browseable filepath, select it, make sure Netscape is selected, and make sure “Ignore Focus Changes” is checked. Hit apply.
5. You’ll see if it was a success or failure in the log, but don’t go by this.
6. Open up your favorite browser, go to a site with a fullscreen flash video player (i.e. Hulu), play a video, click fullscreen, and marvel at your ability to click on your other monitor while still keeping the video full screen!

This has been confirmed to work on Firefox (FF4 beta included!) and Chrome, so sound off if you have any issues. The program itself has a convenient little “restore” button next to apply if you ever feel the need to revert your patches, but why would you?

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