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I’ve never once found autoplay video to enhance a web experience. I’ve never once found a single example to be “interesting”. I don’t care if audio is muted. I
by king_magic 8y ago
I’ve never once found autoplay video to enhance a web experience. I’ve never once found a single example to be “interesting”. I don’t care if audio is muted. I don’t want it, full stop.
It’s atrocious UX. It’s hostile to users. It’s presumptive and frankly rude. There’s no excuse for autoplay. Even on YouTube, it’s more often infuriating than not.
Edit: clarified “autoplay video”, not animated GIFs
- javagram 8y agoAnimated gifs (which are being replaced with gifv autoplay movies) are great IMO. I think the majority of web users don’t mind them.
- nitrogen 8y agoI've seen some very subtle moving backgrounds that were quite appropriate for the sites they were on. It's probably too difficult for software to tell the difference between something like a high brow long form interactive article, a tasteful hero banner background, and an annoying popover or sidebar ad. My least favorite auto-playing videos in a site I use regularly are in the Netflix UI.
- falcolas 8y agoReddit, Giphy, Imgur, Youtube. Those would be the big four which would negatively impact my daily web usage.
- bunderbunder 8y agoGiving other people a to default disable a thing does not force you to do it, too. Giving different people options about how they want to experience the Web would be the entire point.
- falcolas 8y agoThe media.autoplay flags in about:config provide that option for anyone who wants it (and even more granular controls than those being exposed in the UI here).
- hendersoon 8y agoThey don't work. I have all of those flags enabled and sites like CNN still autoplay videos. With sound, too, as a matter of fact.
- ubercow13 8y agoIf it's already not possible to implement perfectly, what is being argued for in this thread exactly?
- munk-a 8y agoSome big browsers need to disable auto-play by default to force websites to actually support commencing and pausing video in terrible tiny javascript video players.
- webmobdev 8y agoHow would it negatively impact you to click / tap on a video to play it?
- dharmab 8y agoLook at GoPro's website. They sell video cameras, and their landing page has a muted video showing video taken with their cameras.
- driverdan 8y agoWhy does it need to autoplay? If I want to watch it I'll click play.
- munk-a 8y agoYea, even on sites that specifically cater to serving video (like YouTube) I prefer non-autoplay video, it's an extra click - who cares... it will save me the occasional wall of sound when re-opening a browser with way too many random things open.
- tzs 8y agoPeople apparently can get very annoyed by an extra click between them and content that they have already indicated they want to see. Look at the number of complaints people post about EU cookie warning banners, which usually don't even block you from consuming the content on the page, even though they usually can be dismissed in one click. Or the number of complaints if a site puts a sign-up or logic request, dismissable in one click, that obscures any of the content. Sure, with an extra click to play video, as opposed to an extra click to read an article, it will save annoyance on sites where the person is not there specifically because they clicked a link to see the video. There are probably more sites where the auto-playing video is an annoyance than where it is the thing you came to the site for, and so blocking auto play is probably a net win for most people--but will they perceive it that way? You are more likely to notice that something has annoyed you than to notice that something has not annoyed you. With blocking auto play I think a lot of people will only notice it, therefore, when it makes them do an extra click to see something they came to see. They aren't going to notice that it saved them from having to click to mute or pause some ancillary video on a page. That doesn't mean it should not be added. It just means some care should be taken into how it is presented and configured.
- shawnz 8y ago> There are probably more sites where the auto-playing video is an annoyance than where it is the thing you came to the site for, and so blocking auto play is probably a net win for most people--but will they perceive it that way? I don't know about that. I would think YouTube alone easily accounts for the majority of autoplaying videos that users encounter.
- tfha 8y agoI care. When I'm scrolling through dozens or hundreds of videos in a stream an extra click per video is a big ux problem. Wall of sound I agree with. Disable that. But don't force me to click a video or gif to get it to play.
- Lewton 8y ago“Animated gifs” are dead (ish), most likely whenever you see something that you think is a gif, it’s an auto playing video
- tfha 8y agosex.com If autoplay videos and gifs were disabled the whole value of that site would disappear. I wish 4chan and Reddit would do it as well. It's great for feed content. There are plenty of other examples of auto-playing videos being a good thing. Please don't take those away.