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The two main things for me are:

- Put cause and effect close to eachother - Don't block my view based on mouse position. I hate video players that ofverlay the pause button when the mouse is over the video, or images that get obscured by some overlay when hovered. My zoom follows the mouse, so I can't move what I'm looking at and where my mouse is pointing independently.




> I hate video players that overlay the pause button when the mouse is over the video, or images that get obscured by some overlay when hovered.

This shit is super annoying for everyone. Even people who do not use magnifiers. Who decided that this was a thing to do and why? I would like this pattern to meet sudden death.


Oh yeah those video players are awful for anyone on mobile too, always ends up somehow getting stuck active and the only way to dismiss it is tap the video, which of course is usually bound to some other disruptive action like pausing or exiting full-screen mode.


Adding to your examples, I hate when video players (both mobile or desktop) don't let me hide the video player controls when the player is paused! I also dislike having to wait a few seconds upon starting/resuming a video for the controls to fade away.


> I hate when video players (both mobile or desktop) don't let me hide the video player controls when the player is paused!

Agreed. This is exceptionally annoying! Who thought this was a good idea? Why don't people copy proven video interface behavior from Google. Why go out of your way to annoy your users?


> I also dislike having to wait a few seconds upon starting/resuming a video for the controls to fade away.

I get the annoyance, but especially on mobile, it conversely helps if you want to advance the video by as few frames as possible to catch a freeze-frame gag or something like that. If the UI immediately disappeared upon resume, you'd have to triple tap to immediately pause the video again. (On desktop you can just mash the keyboard or even use a dedicated "advance one frame" key, but on mobile that's not available.)


I sometimes use a Bluetooth speaker on mobile just so I have a pause button handy. Playing a video full screen requires me to tap once to bring up the controls, and then again to pause.


Yeah. Put the controls in a corner.




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