Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 330 posts

Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers

#141

Post by bunderbunder »

inian wrote: post #137

It is not as simple as that. Even if videos are prevented from being auto-playing, people resort to much much worse techniques. For example, GIFs - which are much bigger that the corresponding video, worse for battery life etc. To combat this, Chrome recently enabled autoplaying of videos if the video is muted on mobile browser. Hopefully this gets the number of people using GIFs down. Or who knows, people might star…

Heck, I'll happily accept not auto-displaying GIFs, too. For non-animated content everyone is using PNG or SVG nowadays, so I doubt there'd be much collateral damage.

Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers

#142

Post by [deleted] »

Symbiote wrote: post #116
DanBC wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that maybe the submitters are running a variety of ad-etc-blocking software, and so they're not seeing it.

Looking at Google Analytics for a website we were about to launch, I was surprised to see hits from others in the development team, tracked by Google. I block Google Analytics (and many other things), and was surprised that none of my colleagues do the same.

[deleted]

Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers

#143

Post by tastythrowaway2 »

Symbiote wrote: post #116
DanBC wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that maybe the submitters are running a variety of ad-etc-blocking software, and so they're not seeing it.

Looking at Google Analytics for a website we were about to launch, I was surprised to see hits from others in the development team, tracked by Google. I block Google Analytics (and many other things), and was surprised that none of my colleagues do the same.

you mean you block collection of Google analytics as an end-user? how does one go about that?

Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers

#144

Post by [deleted] »

Symbiote wrote: post #116
DanBC wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that maybe the submitters are running a variety of ad-etc-blocking software, and so they're not seeing it.

Looking at Google Analytics for a website we were about to launch, I was surprised to see hits from others in the development team, tracked by Google. I block Google Analytics (and many other things), and was surprised that none of my colleagues do the same.

[deleted]

Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers

#145

Post by rebootit »

I found most addons for chrome were broken so I made a less broken userscript for Tampermonkey: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/24811-html5-stop-autoplay/...

Here's Tampermonkey: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tampermonkey/dhdgf...

Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers

#148

Post by pdkl95 »

lucaspiller wrote: post #102
thomasdd wrote: post #89

There are situations when you need to play video on load. (for example, you want a nicely designed content or DIVs.) But Maybe a browser option to enable/disable video playback would solve this. Maybe disabling audio would be as an option, so as webdesigner you can show the relevant visual content but without sound.

> There are situations when you need to play video on load No there really aren't, not on page load [0]. Show a nice still with a big play button on it - people know what that means. It's probably going to load faster too, so people won't be stuck staring at a blank section for 15 seconds. Or even worse, start reading and scrolling the first two paragraphs, then wonder why some audio started playing. And as others ha…

> [0]

That could be handled by allowing the media tag to be changed and restarted with a new URL during (and only during) the "ended" event[1]. That would allow continuing an already playing video with minimal side effects. E.g. only alow something like this:

    var video = document.getElementsById("current_video_tag");
    var play_next_video = function () {
        video.src = "https://exmple.com/next_video_url";
        video.currentTime = 0;
        video.play();
    });

    /* this should work */
    video.addEventListener("ended", play_next_video);

    /* but these shouldn't */
    video.addEventListener("progress", play_next_video);
    setTimeout(play_next_video, 1000);
[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/Events/Me...

Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers

#149

Post by tastythrowaway2 »

Exuma wrote: post #125
ynak wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm taking a more drastic way; turning media.{mp4, webm, ...}.enabled into False never let YouTube and other media autoplay(even play nomally) without any addons. When I want to watch videos, download them by youtube-dl and watch locally.

You download YT videos before watching them? Seriously? Sometimes the suggestions on HN are literally insane in the amount of effort people go through to avoid things that wouldn't be a problem in the first place if you did something simple like use adblock software. I saw some other post where a guy hand edits tens of thousands of entries in his hosts file... yeah dude what an amazing use of time.

the change to the hosts file is actually a really good idea. it is reliable and doesn't trip up ad blocking detectors. perhaps its greatest benefit is that it's a change that only has to happen once and everyone else who also wants to can benefit from it [0]. so your assertion is valid, even though it was sarcastic, that it is an amazing use of one's time.

[0] https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers

#150

Post by matt_morgan »

t64wdrk wrote: post #118
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your know there are HN readers who write this crap. I wonder if they'll chime in on why they do.

At my last job at a web agency, I was told to make a newsletter popup that opened on first page load. I said to my project manager (he was a web developer before) that it was bad design and everyone finds it annoying. He said that the client wanted it, and I should just do it. I asked him, what if the client wanted a pink unicorn gif in the corner, should we just do that as well? Without telling the client that it do…

Don't tell them yes or tell them no. Test, monitor, and promote the path that leads to the best success rates, acknowledging that user growth may drive success in the longer term. Take the long view, basically.
Post reply on HN