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>>Firefox will also allow muted video to play back automatically. Good lord, they didn't go far enough with this. IME, muted video is almost always a waste of

>>Firefox will also allow muted video to play back automatically. Good lord, they didn't go far enough with this. IME, muted video is almost always a waste of bandwidth that I don't care to see anyway. Local news sites seem to be the worst with this, where they will autoplay the video muted on the same page as the article. As someone who occasionally operates off of a limited-bandwith connection, I get more-and-more frustrated with the modern web every day. If I'm clicking on a local news site's article, I expect to just read the article. 9 times out of 10, I scroll past a muted video that has tried to play advertisements, and I will be finished reading the article where the video is 30% finished. I'm sure this option is changeable in about:config (which, besides preventing chrome monopoly is why I use FireFox), but most users will never adjust any of those settings. How much power globally is wasted burning CPU cycles to render this garbage content?

rocky1138 8y ago
http://lite.cnn.com/en http://lite.cnn.com/en
the8472 8y ago
> I'm sure this option is changeable in about:config media.autoplay.allow-muted = false and most users probably like their not-gifs to stay animated. webm playback is also more energy-efficient than gif playback, especially when hardware-acelerated.
- zrobotics 8y ago
  On mobile, I'd much rather save my data and have to click before a "GIF" starts playing than waste data. At least on Verizon, data is expensive AF.
- nhebb 8y ago
  > media.autoplay.allow-muted = false Which doesn't seem to work on many sites I visit. ESPN's NBA scoreboard, for example, will now automatically play videos in the sidebar. Firefox changed media.autoplay.default from a bool to an integer several versions ago, and ever since, I can't figure out how to get videos not to autoplay. I wish there were a simple, "Don't play videos until I click on them" setting so I didn't have to guess at what config settings to toggle.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
darkpuma 8y ago
9 times out of 10, news websites don't require javascript enabled at all to read the text of the article. I strongly recommend blocking all javascript (including first party) by default then building up a whitelist over time. uMatrix is what I use for this. Not only does this approach kill auto-play videos, but it eliminates ads as well as "disable your adblocker" nagging.
roca 8y ago
The problem is, there is no way to block silent video without disabling JS completely. Block the <video> element? Sites will use GIFs. Block GIF animation? Sites will present a slideshow of still images. Alternatively sites can implement video decoding in JS and render to a <canvas>. This isn't just theoretical, these have all been observed in practice. And these are all worse for users in every way than letting sites use <video> with a decent video codec.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  Then start from a blacklist-fucking-eveything-approach, and hand off elements to sites (or frameworks, or individual pages) based by what they can and will use responsibly, starting with charactersets and linefeeds. Emphasis, lists, links, colours, headings (pages all in <h4>, yes, I'm looking at you), asides, headers, footers, graphics, audio, video, fonts, sticky elements, scripts, cookies, notifications? Earn that shit. And lose it fast. If this sounds like a paranoid defensive stance from being under persistent attack, it is and we are.
  - gpm 8y ago
    And that's how you make a browser which gets no users. The no users part means it gets no funding. The no users part means it gets no influence over how websites work. The no influence over how websites work part means nothing renders properly in it - which loops back to 1. The no funding part means you can't have a team of developers working full time to make it. The not having a team of developers working full time to make it means it doesn't exist in any form that resembles a modern browser - which loops back to 1. It's like a vicious feedback cycle but the feedback isn't even necessary to make the idea a non starter. You might be interested in gopher though, at least with the lobste.rs community it's been having a small resurgence, just don't expect it to catch on with the general public.
  - roca 8y ago
    It's not worth putting effort into creating a browser that a negligible number of people will ever use.
asark 8y ago
Web developer: "Oh man I'm glad Flash finally died, what an annoying, standard-behavior-defying, resource- and bandwidth-hogging piece of terrible technology that was. So user-hostile!" Also web developer: makes the entire Web at least as bad as Flash was, using Javascript and CSS
- wavefunction 8y ago
  You have a choice about what sites you visit. It sounds like you expect everything to conform to your vision of how things should be. That's contrary to a voluntary web.
  - asark 8y ago
    Same with Flash. Or popups. Or popunders. Or loud auto-playing banner ads. We complained about those anyway, and mostly ended them. Then proceeded to bring it all back, but worse. I'm making a statement of the general mood regarding those old, abused technologies. The modern web is at least as bad as the barbaric old web of pops both over and under, of Flash, of auto-playing loud banner ads, annoying redirects, and so on. Somehow we collectively mustered enough outrage to get rid of those things, but now the only way to stop it is to get rid of or neuter Javascript and probably CSS, too, so oh well, guess we just have to live with it forever. [Leaving so soon? Sign up for my newsletter and never miss an article!]
joe_the_user 8y ago
Yes, I've use Firefox for years and disabled autoplay for years. I don't even block adds otherwise. This Firefox cycle actually seems to be about enabling autoplay in a multitude of fashions. Where once I had to toggle one variable, now I have to research and change a dozen poorly documented variables in about:config. The latest change was: Setting media.autoplay.enabled.user-gestures-needed to false. How much sense does that make? But it disabled wordpress' video where the six other tweaks didn't. At least you can find all this stuff searching for "autoplay". Still, who know how deep this will wind-up going.

rocky1138 8y ago

http://lite.cnn.com/en http://lite.cnn.com/en

the8472 8y ago

> I'm sure this option is changeable in about:config media.autoplay.allow-muted = false and most users probably like their not-gifs to stay animated. webm playback is also more energy-efficient than gif playback, especially when hardware-acelerated.

zrobotics 8y ago
On mobile, I'd much rather save my data and have to click before a "GIF" starts playing than waste data. At least on Verizon, data is expensive AF.
nhebb 8y ago
> media.autoplay.allow-muted = false Which doesn't seem to work on many sites I visit. ESPN's NBA scoreboard, for example, will now automatically play videos in the sidebar. Firefox changed media.autoplay.default from a bool to an integer several versions ago, and ever since, I can't figure out how to get videos not to autoplay. I wish there were a simple, "Don't play videos until I click on them" setting so I didn't have to guess at what config settings to toggle.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

darkpuma 8y ago

9 times out of 10, news websites don't require javascript enabled at all to read the text of the article. I strongly recommend blocking all javascript (including first party) by default then building up a whitelist over time. uMatrix is what I use for this. Not only does this approach kill auto-play videos, but it eliminates ads as well as "disable your adblocker" nagging.

roca 8y ago

The problem is, there is no way to block silent video without disabling JS completely. Block the <video> element? Sites will use GIFs. Block GIF animation? Sites will present a slideshow of still images. Alternatively sites can implement video decoding in JS and render to a <canvas>. This isn't just theoretical, these have all been observed in practice. And these are all worse for users in every way than letting sites use <video> with a decent video codec.

dredmorbius 8y ago
Then start from a blacklist-fucking-eveything-approach, and hand off elements to sites (or frameworks, or individual pages) based by what they can and will use responsibly, starting with charactersets and linefeeds. Emphasis, lists, links, colours, headings (pages all in <h4>, yes, I'm looking at you), asides, headers, footers, graphics, audio, video, fonts, sticky elements, scripts, cookies, notifications? Earn that shit. And lose it fast. If this sounds like a paranoid defensive stance from being under persistent attack, it is and we are.
- gpm 8y ago
  And that's how you make a browser which gets no users. The no users part means it gets no funding. The no users part means it gets no influence over how websites work. The no influence over how websites work part means nothing renders properly in it - which loops back to 1. The no funding part means you can't have a team of developers working full time to make it. The not having a team of developers working full time to make it means it doesn't exist in any form that resembles a modern browser - which loops back to 1. It's like a vicious feedback cycle but the feedback isn't even necessary to make the idea a non starter. You might be interested in gopher though, at least with the lobste.rs community it's been having a small resurgence, just don't expect it to catch on with the general public.
- roca 8y ago
  It's not worth putting effort into creating a browser that a negligible number of people will ever use.

asark 8y ago

Web developer: "Oh man I'm glad Flash finally died, what an annoying, standard-behavior-defying, resource- and bandwidth-hogging piece of terrible technology that was. So user-hostile!" Also web developer: makes the entire Web at least as bad as Flash was, using Javascript and CSS

wavefunction 8y ago
You have a choice about what sites you visit. It sounds like you expect everything to conform to your vision of how things should be. That's contrary to a voluntary web.
- asark 8y ago
  Same with Flash. Or popups. Or popunders. Or loud auto-playing banner ads. We complained about those anyway, and mostly ended them. Then proceeded to bring it all back, but worse. I'm making a statement of the general mood regarding those old, abused technologies. The modern web is at least as bad as the barbaric old web of pops both over and under, of Flash, of auto-playing loud banner ads, annoying redirects, and so on. Somehow we collectively mustered enough outrage to get rid of those things, but now the only way to stop it is to get rid of or neuter Javascript and probably CSS, too, so oh well, guess we just have to live with it forever. [Leaving so soon? Sign up for my newsletter and never miss an article!]

joe_the_user 8y ago

Yes, I've use Firefox for years and disabled autoplay for years. I don't even block adds otherwise. This Firefox cycle actually seems to be about enabling autoplay in a multitude of fashions. Where once I had to toggle one variable, now I have to research and change a dozen poorly documented variables in about:config. The latest change was: Setting media.autoplay.enabled.user-gestures-needed to false. How much sense does that make? But it disabled wordpress' video where the six other tweaks didn't. At least you can find all this stuff searching for "autoplay". Still, who know how deep this will wind-up going.