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Muted autoplay is still allowed. WTH Mozilla. Just stop. Stop the stupid auto-playing video. Nobody wants it. This announcement almost made my morning. It's fr
by jonahhorowitz 8y ago
Muted autoplay is still allowed. WTH Mozilla. Just stop. Stop the stupid auto-playing video. Nobody wants it.
This announcement almost made my morning. It's frustrating seeing video everywhere when you're just trying to read an article. If I wanted video, I'd turn on my TV.
- helb 8y agoYou can disallow it in about:config: media.autoplay.allow-muted false …and even disable GIF animations: image.animation_mode normal …but if these became the default, people would come with arcane ways to bypass it.
- LinuxBender 8y agoOn a side note, I set image.animation_mode to "once" which keeps Slack memory and CPU usage down, as the animated emojis only get one pass at my CPU.
- jancsika 8y agoWhy once? Why not none?
- LinuxBender 8y agoSo I can view tihngs like noaa once. [1] I need to walk my out-of-shape self around the parking lot and that will tell me how long I have to not get wet. [1] - https://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/west/weus/vis-animated.gif https://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/west/weus/vis-animated.gif
- jancsika 8y agoOh man. Seems like the side-effect would be that you have to refresh the site to let your eyes have another pass through the animation. Either that or it's forced you to develop a razor sharp visual memory of short weather animations. :)
- LinuxBender 8y agoOne pass is usually good enough for me to know how many minutes I have before I might get soaked. :-)
- joveian 8y agoThe problem is most of the time I want them to not animate, but occationally I do want them to at the time of my choosing and poentially multiple times (most or all of the ones I want are explaining something that I want to learn). A play button next to the animated image with autoplay disabled would be best for me. Meanwhile "annoyance" blocklists remove some of the worst.
- jillesvangurp 8y agoThe problem with that approach is that it is all or nothing. What people want is only allowing whitelisted sites to be able to play video. I've been using the mute sites by default extension in firefox for a while. That pretty much does what Mozilla is promising now. Works great for sound and I occasionally whitelist a website when I actually want some sound. I'd love the same extension to be able to block video elements from playing as well. I find it highly distracting and I tend to have no patience for videos about news items. As I understand it, that is actually not possible in Firefox. All of the extensions I've encountered that claim to be able to do that are a combination of either completely broken or merely turning off the ability to auto play video on every website without the ability to white list. Muting sound by default is progress. Having the ability to black/whitelist sites from playing any media would be what I want. I don't need it to be default. I'm happy to do this via an add on, even. But right now there seem to be no good options for this.
- partiallypro 8y agoActually, tons of people want it. I'd prefer not to have to explain to all of my customers why their "hero" videos aren't working anymore only for them to get pissed off when I tell them there is nothing I can do about it.
- flanbiscuit 8y ago> Nobody wants it. While I agree with this for 99% of sites, there are some sites like dubtrack.fm (successor to turntable.fm and plug.dj) where you expect to hear music right away. But I understand these music sites are in the very small minority.
- saagarjha 8y agoSafari has this feature and keeps a list of websites where autoplay is "whitelisted".
- tomp 8y agoExactly. I don't understand why even download the content in the first place... Why not just include some config so that users can decide themselves exactly the behaviour they want?!
- jimmy1 8y agoBecause ultimately the user still can decide the behaviour they want -- you can choose to not visit that web page. You decide where your browser goes and what sites you visit.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoSo, you think browsers should pre-load, analyse for media and provide info with every link to allow a user to avoid following links with autoplay? I reckon just allowing autoplay to be turned off is easier and makes for better UX.
- tomp 8y agoYeah and it should also post all the porn you watch on your Facebook - you can still choose not to watch porn!
- grawprog 8y agoNah I think if it came down to a choice between facebook or porn that might actually be the thing that killed facebook.
- chrisseaton 8y ago'Video' is a bit misleading. It doesn't necessarily mean a YouTube show or something. It can also just mean an animated diagram or spinner.
- bunderbunder 8y agoI'd be pretty happy to manually decide which animated diagrams to enable, too. A lot of those animated diagrams chew up resources on my computer, and may or may not be interesting to me. There've got to be a zillion ways to do a spinner that wouldn't fall afoul of this blocking.
- chrisseaton 8y agoRight some people want to disable animated GIFs, but this is no different so it's not really a new conversation, and 'If I wanted video, I'd turn on my TV' shows confusion because it's a silent animated diagram in the middle of a document is not like turning on the TV is it.
- bunderbunder 8y agoI guess. TBH, the way that it's so hard to even say, "All this moving stuff annoys me" without being reminded that it's impossible to opt out of the more annoying bits of the modern web without also making front-end developers cry blood kind of makes me want to opt out of the whole steaming compost heap and go back to using Gopher. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if, 5 years from now, someone is telling me I can't disable WebAssembly to keep people from mining Bitcoin on my phone because that would also disable clicking on hyperlinks on modern websites. edit: And the way that I'm getting downvoted for expressing a legitimate frustration kind of speaks to the extent to which the original vision that hypermedia should give the user-agent control over how the content is to be consumed is just straight-up dead. 25 years ago, we had alt strings for in case people couldn't or didn't want to view images. Now we have pages that won't even render if you try to disable extraneous animations that some people can't even see, and apparent hostility toward someone pointing out that this doesn't work for them.
- whatshisface 8y agoMuted autoplay is unblockable because I can write a script that flips through frames. It's also equivalent to GIFs which have been around since time immemorial.
- llukas 8y agoFine as long you'll be able to cover extra bandwidth cost - and it would be easier to distinguish this from valid parts of page and block it.
- knowsmorsecode 8y agoI wouldn't say unblockable.
- JohnFen 8y ago> Muted autoplay is unblockable because I can write a script that flips through frames. Since I don't allow scripts to execute in my browser by default, I've already blocked your autoplay workaraound.
- eridius 8y agoMuted autoplay is unblockable because it's equivalent to using an image that specifies `Content-Type: multipart/x-mixed-replace` and constantly streams new image frames to the client.
- coryfklein 8y agoGIFs are blockable with image.animation_mode in about:config
- untog 8y agoThis is because of animated GIFs. If you disable muted video people will just use GIFs instead and it'll chew up way more of your bandwidth than a video file would. If you disable animated GIFs someone will make a JS library that recreates it, using (probably) even more bandwidth and CPU cycles. This was the case on mobile until recently (maybe a couple of years?) and the benefit to users after the change is obvious. I get the frustration but it's very much a real-world compromise with good reason. I do think that they could make this a configurable option though, much like disabling JS. EDIT: looks like they did: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19077887 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19077887
- simion314 8y agoSome browsers have an option to disable GIF animations, I use this option in Falkon browser
- helb 8y agoFirefox has it, too. The UI is missing, but you can toggle it in about:config. image.animation_mode none
- UI_at_80x24 8y agoThanks for this!
- simion314 8y agoThanks, I set it up now, does anyone know if you can do the same in Chrome/Chromium without extensions?
- kirion25 8y agoChrome was one of the last to actually implement this feature. It took 8 years (!), and Animation Policy (part of the accessibilityFeatures api) still doesn't work that great, and is only available via extensions. https://developer.chrome.com/apps/accessibilityFeatures#property-animationPolicy https://developer.chrome.com/apps/accessibilityFeatures#prop...
- jimmy1 8y agoIf you want only text, open a text-only e-reader. The web is consisted of not only hypertext, but also hypermedia.
- nitrogen 8y agoThe web was also meant to be consumed by varying User Agents that conformed to the needs of each user, so I think it's fair if someone wants a text-only user agent.
- adtac 8y ago"I don't want autoplaying video" -> "I only want text" Quite the jump in logic
- jimmy1 8y ago"I don't want x y or z" -> "I can choose to not have x y or z and not force my desire to not have x y and z on everyone else" -- It applies to every scenario you can dream of It's this concept called liberty that people have seem to have forgotten.
- cptskippy 8y agoSo we should accept malicious javascript , ad tracking and other unsavory hypermedia as well?
- TheCoreh 8y agoI personally want it, and I'm sure a lot of people want it too. There are a lot of interesting experiences that can be enabled by autoplay. If a site ends up being too annoying it will simply lose visitors, and extensions can perform more aggressive blocking for those that don't like it. IMO this is a fine compromise solution.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoSo, it shouldn't be optional? I like cheese, everyone has to have cheese on all meals!?
- untog 8y agoI think that comparison is backwards. It's more like "I don't like cheese, so no one should be allowed it"
- llukas 8y agoAre you still talking about browser option that everybody can set as desired?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sixstringtheory 8y agoI don’t see it as backwards. Autoplay video is like if the waiter just starts shaving parmesan on your salad. If you didn’t want it, you now have to pick the shavings off. Annoying. Nonautoplay video is like the waiter asking “would you like cheese?” “Yes” “Ok” and they commence shaving it. I don’t see why we should all have to pick cheese out of our salads because some people are too lazy to have a 3 second interaction to get what they want.
- jefftk 8y agoTo extend the analogy, I would like to have the option to go to a restaurant (site) order a salad (visit a page) and have that come the way the chef (developer) intended, with cheese (autoplay video). If I don't like this developer or restaurant's judgement I can eat somewhere else. (Or, in the web case, install an extension that blocks autoplay video.)
- IvanK_net 8y agoI believe you should consume (read / watch / hear) information exactly the way as the author wanted you to consume it. Why don't you complain to the authors of such sites? Or stop visiting them? You want a higher institution to forbid something for everybody (even though it can be appropriate in many cases), but why do you keep visiting it and don't look for a better website?
- skybrian 8y agoThis assumes you know what you're getting into when you click a link. That's not how the web works. Many sites are unfamiliar and we shouldn't have to keep track of them all. If we want people to be happy visiting sites unfamiliar to them and encourage diversity in their reading, we need to make sure the defaults are good. You can always adjust them on sites you know well.
- IvanK_net 8y agoI believe the only way for the author to succeed is to provide exactly what the visitors want. If there is an automatic video / audio, it is probably there because the majority of visitors like it. So probably, you are in the minority, but want to forbid something for the majority. Honestly, I am quite scared by people, who so easily agree to ban or restrict things for the whole population, just to avoid those 3 seconds of a day, during which they may feel uncomfortable.
- grenolin 8y agoI believe I should consume information exactly the way I want to consume it. The author made it, but so what? Browsers represent the users' interests first and foremost.
- JohnFen 8y ago> I believe you should consume (read / watch / hear) information exactly the way as the author wanted you to consume it And I believe the exact opposite.
- mancerayder 8y ago
- mc32 8y agoI’ve almost stopped using Amazon due to this insistence on playing video ads on their retail site—it is extremely grating. I almost feel like jumping ship to Jet/Walmart.
- mjaniczek 8y agoThere are usecases for autoplaying muted video. For example, my SaaS-in-progress (LyricSlides.com) UX is better if users don't have to click on stuff to make background video loops play.
- UI_at_80x24 8y agoBetter for you, or better for your clients? Perhaps what you think is a better UX really isn't.
- wtetzner 8y agoCan autoplay at least be turned off in about:config? They should at. least give the option, even if it's not the default.
- WhyNotHugo 8y agoHaving background video headers, and small videos (instead of GIFs) on websites is super common. There's also simple animations between text, and alike. There's no point in breaking those, since they don't emit any sound when they're on a background tab anyway.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Shivetya 8y agogoing to be interesting how quickly sites adapt and prevent viewing the content when the streaming content is blocked/muted. there are more than enough that detect any form of ad blocking or script blocking
- phkahler 8y ago>> there are more than enough that detect any form of ad blocking or script blocking There are also more than enough that I don't have to use ones that refuse to accept my preferences.
- bad_user 8y agoI very much like muted auto-play, so speak for yourself.
- zbobet2012 8y agoThis is great until netflix can't autoplay the asset you just clicked on to play. All net video uses the same APIs.
- bhandziuk 8y agoYou mean that you'd have to actually click a play button on Netflix and the UI then goes from terrible to workable? I would love this.
- dageshi 8y agoWhen I go to youtube... I want it to autoplay.
- brewdad 8y agoWhy not a whitelist? We've had that option with Flash for years. It works fine.
- SpaceManNabs 8y agoDepending on the site, I have a slight hack that I am sure most people know. Once I know the text has rendered, which is almost immediate, I stop loading the page (hit the stop hotkey or click on the actual X), and then I switch to Firefox reader mode.
- duxup 8y agoI was on a sports site a while ago reading an article. After a bit over the top of the article played an entirely unrelated video from that site because man they wanted me to watch their video content. There was no way you could have read all the article, you were guaranteed to be interrupted. Out of curiosity I went to an article on their site that was just a video and started that video. After a bit over the top of that video played an entirely unrelated video from that site.... on top of the video I chose to watch. It was just mind boggling.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoFirefox has has the ability to disable all autoplay via about:config for years. Recent versions have made the settings more complicated in preparation for this new feature but you can still kill it all with a minimum of effort.
- nubslayer 8y agojust make it a site-wide or page-wide option? seriously, if you just want video on your tv, just filter all video elements out of your browser and let those who want video to have that why would I want to click to watch a video if I put in a link to a video/video-site?
- Tsubasachan 8y agoThere is already a setting in options for that. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/block-autoplay https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/block-autoplay
- 3xblah 8y agoThis sounds like case of bad default settings. AFAICT users were previously able to turn off autoplay in the settings. For Firefox, about:config then media.autoplay.default and set to 1. For Chrome, chrome://flags#autoplay-policy and select "Document user activation required". But there is an even simpler way "... when you're just trying to read an article." If reading is all you are trying to do, then there is probably no need for Javascript to be enabled for that particular website. (Nor do you need images enabled, if all you are doing is reading.) Firefox "reader mode" might be one alternative. Another is to disable Javascript for that particular website in the Firefox settings. Aside from Adobe Macromedia Flash, are there any examples of autoplay video that do not rely on Javascript being enabled? If you turn off Javascript (and Flash), then you also turn off autoplay. That has been my experience.
- Nadya 8y agoThe HTML5 video element has an `autoplay` attribute that does not require Javascript to my knowledge. Also, a depressingly large and increasing number of websites are actually not readable if you disable Javascript. [0] There are also some sites where users usually want the video to autoplay, where the primary purpose of the site is watching videos (eg. Youtube, Niconico Douga, Vimeo) so disabling it as a default is more annoying than beneficial because it would also break it for those sites. [0] Source: I browse with JS disabled.
- 3xblah 8y agoIn my experience disbaling Javascript and Flash will stop autoplay. If you have examples, please share as I would like to test. Can you point me toward me some of the depressingly large examples of websites that require Javascript in order to read text? I would like to test. On the contrary, I have found a very large number of websites that do not require Javascript to read text. Of course our browsing habits are probably different. What I sometimes see is small amounts of text that are "hidden" by Javascript, perhaps to conserve screen space. For example, a click event "unhides" the text. One can view easily view the "hidden", plain text in the source of the page. I have not seen entire articles hidden this way. As for YouTube, it can be whitelisted in browser settings if the user wants autoplay. Does YouTube rely on Javascript or HTML5 for autoplay? Can one test reliably (not simply by user-agent string) whether a user's browser supports HTML5 autoplay without using Javascript to perform the test? It seems like using Javascript for autoplay would be the safer bet for a website that wants to be sure videos will autoplay. One thing I notice is that although disabling Javascript might stop autoplay, HTML5 can still force autoload, downloading the entire video even if the user has no intention of ever playing it. That could be a problem for a user wanting to minimise her data usage.
- jasonlotito 8y ago> Stop the stupid auto-playing video. Nobody wants it. I want it on specific sites. For example, if I'm watching a video tutorial, I want the option to proceed to the next video and automatically start playing. Saying, "nobody wants it" is simply not true, and there are incredibly valid uses for it.