# Comments on fullscreen **URL:** \ **Category:** Uncategorized\ **Created:** [May 19, 2018, 7:05pm UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/comments-on-fullscreen/775 "2018-05-19T19:05:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![jrus](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/talk.observablehq.com/jrus/32/586_2.png) [@jrus](https://talk.observablehq.com/u/jrus)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2018, 7:05pm UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/comments-on-fullscreen/775/1 "2018-05-19T19:05:42Z")
I like the idea of a fullscreen feature, but I’m not quite sure what the Observable team’s plans/goals are with it. Right now it hides the ability to toggle code visibility, and hides the names of cells, similar to a view in a window narrower than ~1000 px (e.g. when browsing via phone). Is the goal for this to only be a kind of theater mode, not intended for editing? [You might want to add a special case where the editor features to the left stay visible even in fullscreen when in “safe mode”; then someone with 2 computer displays (or a split-screen feature in their OS) could [open two views](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/side-by-side/469/6?u=jrus) of the notebook, each full screen on one display, one of the two in safe mode. _Edit: on the other hand, maybe the browser/OS already has the ability to make a regular browser view fullscreen, and that’s unnecessary; in that case, might it make sense for the new fullscreen “theater” mode to be available even when the view is inside a window?_] Is there a way to detect fullscreen and change the view, other than just watching for a very wide width? It seems like in some cases someone might almost want a completely different notebook style for fullscreen viewing vs. in a standard window. If I wanted to take full advantage of a desktop display I would probably put the body copy in columns and scroll horizontally ([Tofu](http://amarsagoo.info/tofu/) is IMO the best environment for reading long texts on a computer screen). Or maybe put body copy and diagrams/data side by side. Someone else might want to make a single cell at a time take the whole screen, e.g. use the fullscreen view more like a slide presentation vs. a scroll. The way that the current styling works, the body copy stays in a nice compact column, but the gray background on the code listings and the little object inspector when output of a cell is a javascript object make ridiculous long lines across the (generally otherwise blank) display. ---
**Author:** ![mbostock](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/talk.observablehq.com/mbostock/32/9_2.png) [@mbostock](https://talk.observablehq.com/u/mbostock)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2018, 10:14pm UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/comments-on-fullscreen/775/2 "2018-05-19T22:14:25Z")
The new fullscreen feature uses the [Fullscreen API](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Fullscreen_API) to make the _content_ of your notebook fill the screen, rather than just the window, and is primarily intended for presentations. For example: > **[Slide](https://observablehq.com/@mbostock/slide)** > > An Observable notebook by Mike Bostock. As you mention, most browsers already have a way to make a window fullscreen, such as ⌃⌘F for View \> Enter Full Screen in macOS Chrome, which is nice for editing. ---
**Author:** ![jrus](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/talk.observablehq.com/jrus/32/586_2.png) [@jrus](https://talk.observablehq.com/u/jrus)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2018, 11:02pm UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/comments-on-fullscreen/775/3 "2018-05-19T23:02:05Z")
Is your goal to have someone able to flip through the slideshow slide by slide using the keyboard or similar? Right now it’s still just a big scrollview. ---
**Author:** ![mbostock](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/talk.observablehq.com/mbostock/32/9_2.png) [@mbostock](https://talk.observablehq.com/u/mbostock)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2018, 11:53pm UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/comments-on-fullscreen/775/4 "2018-05-19T23:53:21Z")
By scrolling. (Here are a few additional characters to satisfy Discourse’s arbitrary character limit.) ---
**Author:** ![kelleyvanevert](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/talk.observablehq.com/kelleyvanevert/32/169_2.png) [@kelleyvanevert](https://talk.observablehq.com/u/kelleyvanevert)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2018, 8:50pm UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/comments-on-fullscreen/775/5 "2018-05-20T20:50:02Z")
For some reason, scrolling while fullscreen doesn’t seem to work in my desktop Firefox (61.0b4 on Ubuntu) and neither on my Firefox mobile on Android — Chrome does work, desktop + mobile. (Something to do with scrolling iframes maybe?) ---
**Author:** ![mbostock](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/talk.observablehq.com/mbostock/32/9_2.png) [@mbostock](https://talk.observablehq.com/u/mbostock)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2018, 9:20pm UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/comments-on-fullscreen/775/6 "2018-05-20T21:20:58Z")
We’ll have a fix for non-WebKit browsers shortly. Sorry about that. ---
**Author:** ![shaunlebron](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/talk.observablehq.com/shaunlebron/32/81_2.png) [@shaunlebron](https://talk.observablehq.com/u/shaunlebron)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2018, 1:24am UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/comments-on-fullscreen/775/7 "2018-05-29T01:24:04Z")
just a heads-up—wolfiex added key controls to the slide show below, it’s really nice! > **[A simple presentation medium built on a observablehq notebook](https://observablehq.com/@wolfiex/a-presentation-framework-built-on-a-observablehq-notebook)** > > An Observable notebook by wolfiex. ---
**Author:** ![jrus](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/talk.observablehq.com/jrus/32/586_2.png) [@jrus](https://talk.observablehq.com/u/jrus)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2018, 3:20am UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/comments-on-fullscreen/775/8 "2018-05-29T03:20:13Z")
Neat! Though it doesn’t seem to work in my Safari. (Works in Firefox/Chrome.) Also doesn’t make use of the native observable “fullscreen” menu action, and should work the same whether or not that feature existed. ---
**Author:** ![lbovet](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/talk.observablehq.com/lbovet/32/3996_2.png) [@lbovet](https://talk.observablehq.com/u/lbovet)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2020, 8:11am UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/comments-on-fullscreen/775/9 "2020-12-10T08:11:46Z")
I would like to use the Fullscreen mode to demonstrate and edit notebooks live. Unfortunately the ESC key is trapped by the browser to exist fullscreen mode, so I cannot use the keyboard navigation. This is annoying. Any thought on adding another shortcut doing the same job as ESC?