Resizing YouTube Videos with a simple URL hack

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Chris Coyier on (Updated on )

Someone over at Digital Inspiration asked the question:

“How can I send a YouTube Video so that when the person receives it there will not be any other videos in the sidebars that can be opened.”

There is an awesome solution to this problem. You can link to YouTube videos in such a way that the video will take up the entire browser window with nothing else on it. This is also a nice alternative to the viewing videos in the traditional fullscreen way, which blacks out your entire screen.

Here is how it’s done.

  • The normal way: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GUBQs6SgTE
  • The fullscreenway: http://www.youtube.com/v/9GUBQs6SgTE

In other words, you replace “watch?v=” with “v/”

(That link is my old band The Groggers. I’m the guy in suspenders)

Remember this is just for linking to YouTube videos, not actually embedding them. I’ve talked about spicing up your YouTube embeds previously.