FlashHacker: Full-Screen Flash Video on Multiple Monitors

One of the great pains of using multiple screens is if you choose to watch a full-screen video on one monitor and merely click on an application on another monitor, the full-screen video defaults immediately to a smaller view – as if you had requested the change to take place or hit the Escape button. I have never looked into what technical reason there is for this weird behavior but I did open with interest a recent email from Tom Keating which introduced me to a program called FlashHacker – thanks to a post from LifeHacker.

Hack this, hack that – can you trust this thing to work properly I thought? Well when you run the program you get a screen telling you there is absolutely no warranty in upper-case letters. Let’s just say my confidence level was not increasing as I proceeded.

flashhacker.jpg

You are then presented with two options – either you Hack or Unhack your Flash. I read that sometimes you need to unhack before hacking to get things working.

flashhacker1.jpgWell for me when I tried running the program, both options gave me an error. At first I thought it was because I have the 64-bit version of Flash which has caused other problems in the past or perhaps because I am running a Beta version of FireFox.

But I then decided to close all browsers and try again and then it worked flawlessly.

That was yesterday. This morning I got an error trying to open Flash videos on one of my browsers. The program suggested I reinstall Flash and I did so. A few seconds later Flash was working fine but not with the full-screen hack.

I tried running FlashHack again and it stopped allowing me to run Flash in full-screen while working on another monitor. So instead, I took Tom’s advice and rebooted. Since the reboot, things have been working great.

I have successfully tested FlashHacker with FireFox and Internet Explorer but Chrome didn’t seem amenable to the hack.

One particular benefit for me is I have three large monitors on my desk and a 55 inch flat screen TV hanging in my office which is connected to cable television as well as my computer. I can now watch full-screen TV on the large monitor via my computer while working on my other monitors.

Another thing you can now do is watch full-screen video on multiple monitors.

To quote our Vice President (video) – or maybe I shouldn’t – let’s just say this is a big deal.

For those of you who want to be able to work while watching a movie or the news in full-screen on one of your monitors, FlashHacker is a godsend. Enjoy.

The software which is free can be downloaded here.

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