Nowadays I find I can't use the WWW without JS blocked except on a select whitelist of websites. I can't stand downloading 10-15 megabytes for <=1KiB of actual substance. I can't stand the amount of amateurish design decisions I need to fight using websites, some unfortunately unavoidable like my university's web services, or the stupid Edmodo app imposed to us by our professors, etc. And I detest icons, because each and every app / website have different opinions on icons and a different set of cryptic icons which I fear clicking. Also webfonts in many cases are an abomination as many times they are used where a simple stupid half-a-meg PNG would do the job. "Share" buttons that come with some kilobytes of JS, floating headers that leave me five pixels to see the text I'm reading, well, this is an endless list. I'll spare a separate sentence for history-fiddling, I am disgusted when when I hit back unexpected things happen. Google, Youtube, Github, these fiddle with history and replicate browser's things (page loading, history keeping ...) in JS. And as the user I don't have the chance to affect the actual website makers, so blocking JS / cookies / media is the only option.
Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers
301–310 of 330 posts
Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers
#302media.autoplay.enabled=false does the trick in Firefox about:config.
Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers
#303I've disabled all media players in my browsers. Problem solved.
Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers
#304Things that make me just close tabs straight away: 1) Autoplaying videos, especially ads. 2) Pop-ups / overlays. 3) Loading lots of extra elements causing text to jump around. Especially true if I'm just browsing around and click on something that looks interesting, the above will take that thing from "this might be worth 30 seconds" to "not worth it". Why kill that little dopamine boost someone just got from clickin…
Regarding 1 media.autoplay.enabled=false does the trick in Firefox about:config.
Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers
#305Things that make me just close tabs straight away: 1) Autoplaying videos, especially ads. 2) Pop-ups / overlays. 3) Loading lots of extra elements causing text to jump around. Especially true if I'm just browsing around and click on something that looks interesting, the above will take that thing from "this might be worth 30 seconds" to "not worth it". Why kill that little dopamine boost someone just got from clickin…
4) Forbes "Quote of the day". Seriously Forbes, that is irritating as hell.
Still, my number 1 is loading the extra content and making elements jump around. A lot of times I: 1) see a link that interests me; 2) hover my finger over a link, ready to tap; 3) wait 1-2 secs, to be sure it's done loading; 4) Ok, it's ready; 5) tap the liContent jumps and I click somewhere else.
Both Facebook's and Twitter's search act like this. It displays recent search for enough time for you to move your finger/mouse to click it, then loads general results, like trending and suggestions. Waiting for the AJAX response to come back before displaying anything should be the norm.
Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your Starbucks example is flawed. Starbucks employees don't barge into your office with a boombox playing at full volume and screaming at you about their latest drinks, then make you pay for the taxi that brought them there, simply because you opened an article about their new store in your area. That's what autoplaying ads and videos on the web do: They catch you off guard with loud, annoying audio that you can't al…
"barge into your office"? Seems to me when you visit someone's website, you're in their office, not the other way around. I'm no fan of the auto-everything web, but I don't think your analogy here is sound.
Only if "their office" is out on the street in full view of the public, just like the rest of the web.
Since we're ripping this analogy to shreds anyway, let's take a different view: You call up Starbucks on the phone (i.e. visit their website) and request that they read you their new menu and describe to you their new store location (read: you click on the link with the info you wanted). Before they do as you asked, without warning they turn on a megaphone, point it to the receiver, and start playing a looping advertisement for a new Harry Potter line of toys. You didn't ask for that Potter nonsense, you're now deaf in that ear, everyone around you is looking at you funny, and you hang up the phone in disgust rather than wait through three iterations of toy pimping just to find out some simple information they claimed to have on their info line (website). Then, on your next phone bill you see a per-minute charge for that call (as in, they used your metered data to spam you).
Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers
#307Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> 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 So you are OK with making Google track your users but you don't want to be tracked yourself?
More likely than not, their employer is ok with making google track their users. I doubt it's the decision of this particular developer.
Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers
#309What you are really asking is for Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS to make a better web _for you_. Because you don't want media to autoplay does not mean it is a good solution to just block it outright for everyone. Some websites have legitimate use for autoplaying media. Some users (believe it or not) actually _like_ their videos autoplaying when they scroll through their Facebook feed or whatever media site they visi…
I agree that doing away with the autoplay attribute on the video tag is probably not the right thing to do. It definitely has use cases. However, I think it is completely reasonable to allow users to configure their browsers to not allow this behavior if they so desire. This may exist in some form in some browsers already, but it's definitely not accessible to the average user.
I think the ideal solution, for me at least, would be to treat autoplay the same way browsers treat the location API. When a website tries to use it, present a little notification that asks if it's alright. If a user is clearly visiting a video-centric website (youtube, vimeo, etc), they will probably click 'yes' to let that website autoplay in the future. The possible downside is that some users may not "understand" it, and get upset at the website for not autoplaying like they expect it to.
The core of the issue is that autoplay was on by default in the first place. Turning it off cannot be clean, no matter how it's done.
Re: Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers
#310Copy