8 ms·

Block by default, and not ask by default? That seems unfortunate to me, and will definitely break one of my services for Firefox users. I have a site which coor

by drbawb 8y ago

Block by default, and not ask by default? That seems unfortunate to me, and will definitely break one of my services for Firefox users. I have a site which coordinates watching videos amongst a party of people. To the browser heuristics it looks like "autoplay" (the host starts the video manually, and some scripting on the page kicks it off for everyone else and works w/ the backend to maintain something resembling stream sync.) This is a consensual thing, you click the host's invite only link, you're taken to a landing page that tells you who made the link and briefly describes the service. Presumably you would not have clicked through all that if you didn't want to watch a video w/ the host. I already had to deal w/ increased complaints from users due to scripts no longer being able to start the video in Chrome when the user hasn't interacted with the DOM yet. The only warning was an error in the development console. Users would get incredibly confused because they'd join the room and "lurk", i.e not interact w/ chat or the site, and then they'd be left wondering why everyone is commenting on the video when their's hasn't started playing. I realize autoplay gets a lot of flak due to large corporations using it to further their aggressive marketing campaigns, but there are legitimate use cases out there which you will be breaking w/ a block-by-default policy. I'd urge you to reconsider ask-by-default, or at least allow scripts to have some sort of API whereby they can ask the user for permission ahead of time. This just really sucks, because it's hard to communicate these sorts of things to my userbase which has wildly varying degrees of technical competency. It's also unfortunate to, essentially, need relay the message "some organizations (ab|mis)used this useragent functionality, so now nobody gets to use it."

daleharvey 8y ago
It sucks when you want to use feature that arent available however users wishes always trump site authors, we tested ask by default and it turned out more users wanted them blocked "Click here to play video" is also clear and easy to understand, not sure why you would think your users could not handle that. In future https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Permissions_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Permissions... may help
- drbawb 8y ago
  >We tested ask by default and it turned out more users wanted them blocked. I was one of those users, as I have Nightly installed. I hope you don't seriously think me clicking "no" on the majority of those popups in any way equates to me saying "videos should never autoplay." -- Hell I used my own service and approved one of those dialogs for it. You should be careful how you read into statistics: there is a huge difference between "90+% of users said no to the autoplay prompt" and "90+% of users think autoplay should be off by default." >Not sure why you would think your users could not handle that. I don't think, I know, because I've fielded the numerous reports from users who thought my service was broken when Google[1] decided their "media engagement index" was too low and the videos weren't starting automatically for them. It is objectively a bad experience for my users if they all have to manually click play and their streams are randomly offset from the host and they see people "spoiling" things in chat. The reality is that many of my users would sit on the page, looking at a play button (that wasn't there before), wondering why people are already talking about the video in chat. "Has it started yet?" "When does it start?" "I think I'm buffering", etc. [1]: https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-policy-changes https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-p...
  - mancerayder 8y ago
    You're a benevolent site amidst a maelstrom of websites who eagerly want users to hear and see things that they didn't expect. And very large publishers are perhaps the most guilty. News websites, Facebook ads, and typical websites with some announcer voice yapping away with music in the back, trying to get your attention to Buy something. So why stop at a pop-up for AutoPlay video? "The website has requested permission to have autoplay video. Grant (Y/N)" but also " " " " .. requested permission to display notifications.." Why stop there? " .. requested permission to autoplay media with sound .." and why not " .. requested permission to set/store cookies " Finally, after a drum roll: "Sign up to this mailing list!" - unblockable JavaScript popup when you're a third down the article. How many bloody popups would satisfy every single website publisher? Turn all the damn things off, let the designers figure out if they want to point a big giant arrow GIF to where the "Click Here" button to play the video is.
JohnFen 8y ago
"I realize autoplay gets a lot of flak due to large corporations using it to further their aggressive marketing campaigns" Not just because of that, although that is the most egregious example. Personally, I find any autoplay at all to be objectionable. It doesn't matter if it's an ad, a YouTube video, or anything else.
- drbawb 8y ago
  I respect your opinion but sadly my service just does not work any other way. You don't go to a theater and choose when the projectionist starts the film, or when the actors start playing, or when the musicians start their concert: the venue / director / manager determine that ahead of time. You don't go to a party and choose what music the host plays, though obviously one hopes the host would value your input should you choose to speak for or against a particular set list. -- That is what my service sets out to create: a shared virtual environment where people can experience media, together, in realtime, as opposed to it being a solitary experience. If useragents remove my ability to start playing content on behalf of my users (who have already agreed to that by clicking past the event banner) then my service will have to move to a non-web platform. Though we have a difference of opinion hopefully you can see why I find that prospect to be distressing: I love the web, and I hate to see it effectively sunsetting my application.
  - axiometry 8y ago
    As far as I can tell, you've described livestreaming. Streaming sites seem to do just fine without autoplay.
mancerayder 8y ago
>Block by default, and not ask by default? That seems unfortunate to me, and will definitely break one of my services for Firefox users. Hold on -- do you want a popup every time you visit a new page? It's a nightmare. And break what for whom? You want something to play, you click the Play icon on the video. It doesn't BLOCK video by default, it blocks the autoplaying of the same. Also - and perhaps this was some bug or some setting I had - but when I updated to 'that' Firefox some months back, I'm pretty sure I had autoplay playING things. I had previously used about:config to have autoplay off, and then they changed it (as per the 0 1 2 and property name change). Possibly I hit enter too fast, possibly I didn't notice and just got annoyed at the popups asking me, whatever it was, I wanted it just "off" and I had to Google around until I found comment in some forum someplace which has this option. The point is, instead of being an "about:config" option, it should be an obvious setting in the Menu -> Options section. I'm amazed that someone thinks not forcing things is somehow "breaking" things. If it's the type of breaking you mean (breaking ad-tech), then yes, let's continue the smashathon. Autoplay video, whether on a news site or some yapping garbage on the side as an ad, is a terrible trend for us who don't like such distractions.
- drbawb 8y ago
  >You want something to play when you click the play icon on the video. My users explicitly do not want that, it's why I built my service, to answer a need which was not met: the lack of a virtual space to have a shared theater-like experience. They want the video to play when it starts for everyone else in the room, and they were extremely confused a few months ago when Google broke the same thing.

by drbawb 8y ago

daleharvey 8y ago

It sucks when you want to use feature that arent available however users wishes always trump site authors, we tested ask by default and it turned out more users wanted them blocked "Click here to play video" is also clear and easy to understand, not sure why you would think your users could not handle that. In future https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Permissions_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Permissions... may help

drbawb 8y ago
>We tested ask by default and it turned out more users wanted them blocked. I was one of those users, as I have Nightly installed. I hope you don't seriously think me clicking "no" on the majority of those popups in any way equates to me saying "videos should never autoplay." -- Hell I used my own service and approved one of those dialogs for it. You should be careful how you read into statistics: there is a huge difference between "90+% of users said no to the autoplay prompt" and "90+% of users think autoplay should be off by default." >Not sure why you would think your users could not handle that. I don't think, I know, because I've fielded the numerous reports from users who thought my service was broken when Google[1] decided their "media engagement index" was too low and the videos weren't starting automatically for them. It is objectively a bad experience for my users if they all have to manually click play and their streams are randomly offset from the host and they see people "spoiling" things in chat. The reality is that many of my users would sit on the page, looking at a play button (that wasn't there before), wondering why people are already talking about the video in chat. "Has it started yet?" "When does it start?" "I think I'm buffering", etc. [1]: https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-policy-changes https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-p...
- mancerayder 8y ago
  You're a benevolent site amidst a maelstrom of websites who eagerly want users to hear and see things that they didn't expect. And very large publishers are perhaps the most guilty. News websites, Facebook ads, and typical websites with some announcer voice yapping away with music in the back, trying to get your attention to Buy something. So why stop at a pop-up for AutoPlay video? "The website has requested permission to have autoplay video. Grant (Y/N)" but also " " " " .. requested permission to display notifications.." Why stop there? " .. requested permission to autoplay media with sound .." and why not " .. requested permission to set/store cookies " Finally, after a drum roll: "Sign up to this mailing list!" - unblockable JavaScript popup when you're a third down the article. How many bloody popups would satisfy every single website publisher? Turn all the damn things off, let the designers figure out if they want to point a big giant arrow GIF to where the "Click Here" button to play the video is.

JohnFen 8y ago

"I realize autoplay gets a lot of flak due to large corporations using it to further their aggressive marketing campaigns" Not just because of that, although that is the most egregious example. Personally, I find any autoplay at all to be objectionable. It doesn't matter if it's an ad, a YouTube video, or anything else.

drbawb 8y ago
I respect your opinion but sadly my service just does not work any other way. You don't go to a theater and choose when the projectionist starts the film, or when the actors start playing, or when the musicians start their concert: the venue / director / manager determine that ahead of time. You don't go to a party and choose what music the host plays, though obviously one hopes the host would value your input should you choose to speak for or against a particular set list. -- That is what my service sets out to create: a shared virtual environment where people can experience media, together, in realtime, as opposed to it being a solitary experience. If useragents remove my ability to start playing content on behalf of my users (who have already agreed to that by clicking past the event banner) then my service will have to move to a non-web platform. Though we have a difference of opinion hopefully you can see why I find that prospect to be distressing: I love the web, and I hate to see it effectively sunsetting my application.
- axiometry 8y ago
  As far as I can tell, you've described livestreaming. Streaming sites seem to do just fine without autoplay.

mancerayder 8y ago

>Block by default, and not ask by default? That seems unfortunate to me, and will definitely break one of my services for Firefox users. Hold on -- do you want a popup every time you visit a new page? It's a nightmare. And break what for whom? You want something to play, you click the Play icon on the video. It doesn't BLOCK video by default, it blocks the autoplaying of the same. Also - and perhaps this was some bug or some setting I had - but when I updated to 'that' Firefox some months back, I'm pretty sure I had autoplay playING things. I had previously used about:config to have autoplay off, and then they changed it (as per the 0 1 2 and property name change). Possibly I hit enter too fast, possibly I didn't notice and just got annoyed at the popups asking me, whatever it was, I wanted it just "off" and I had to Google around until I found comment in some forum someplace which has this option. The point is, instead of being an "about:config" option, it should be an obvious setting in the Menu -> Options section. I'm amazed that someone thinks not forcing things is somehow "breaking" things. If it's the type of breaking you mean (breaking ad-tech), then yes, let's continue the smashathon. Autoplay video, whether on a news site or some yapping garbage on the side as an ad, is a terrible trend for us who don't like such distractions.

drbawb 8y ago
>You want something to play when you click the play icon on the video. My users explicitly do not want that, it's why I built my service, to answer a need which was not met: the lack of a virtual space to have a shared theater-like experience. They want the video to play when it starts for everyone else in the room, and they were extremely confused a few months ago when Google broke the same thing.