While watching “Google Wave Developer Preview at Google I/O 2009” on YouTube, I saw two new buttons to the top right of the video. They allow you to dim the lights on the page and to open the video in a separate window.

The result is that all the noise is either turned off by the light dimmer or not shown when you open the video in a new window.

Having the lights dimmed around online videos is nothing new. A lot of services do that. On Reddit I read that this feature has been around for some months. I did check a few other videos, but did not see the features there. I got the impression, that only Google videos had these added possibilities.

Sure, there is a light bulb beneath all videos with which you can turn the entire screen either darker or completely dark. However, the video is darkened as well which the dimming feature does not do. It only blocks out the noise.

I like to dim the background because if the quality of the video is not sufficient to blow it up to fill the screen, I can still focus on the video only and not be distracted by all the other things around it.

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