I’ve spoken with a few customers who were media-multitaskers, not unlike myself, and like to have a few different windows and media applications running while doing other typical computing on their Mac.
The most common grouping of media that they, as well as I, enjoyed was watching videos while performing other tasks on their computer, like reading (or writing!) blogs (or maybe something related to their work). It’s nice to have any type of video playing while doing any other task that could possibly be considered “plain” or “unexciting.” To put it simply, it spices up the experience.
The issue: unless you have a massive screen (read: 30-inch Cinema Display) where you can easily plop multiple applications on different areas of the screen without ever interfering with each other, how do you keep other apps/tasks out of the way of the video? It’s generally impossible, and the user ends up constantly moving and resizing different windows.
I have found what I consider to be a very pleasant solution. It’s an application called Afloat. Install it, and it seamlessly integrates itself into most applications as a plugin. As an example, I can open up a video on YouTube in Safari, click on the “Window” menu option in the menu bar, and I see a few different Afloat options for keeping that window always on top of any other window.
You can now resize the window, so that it’s not covering everything else up on your computer screen. I also like to tweak the transparency settings, making the video slightly transparent.
Afloat is available from Infinite Labs as a free download here.