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Google Chrome to stop autoplaying content with sound

venturebeat.com

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Re: Google Chrome to stop autoplaying content with sound

#11

Post by outsidetheparty »

msla wrote: post #8
outsidetheparty wrote: post #4

It's a start. Allowing users to disable autoplay altogether would be better, but shutting down the audio is better than nothing. It's a shame that browsers increasingly have to actively defend against website behavior, instead of just being tools for displaying those websites; but, well, here we are.

Autoplay music was in for a while, went out, then came back in, from what I recall: Back in the 1990s, it was MIDI files on the stereotypical Geocities page, or completely hand-made pages, and that went out in a massive design backlash against those kinds of sites. Now, it's coming back in the form of autoplay video on news sites, for example, which would have been impossible in the dial-up era. So this isn't a new t…

Yeah, I guess you're right. Seems like back in the day it wasn't nearly as pervasive, you'd know to expect a terrible MIDI track if you hit somebody's MySpace page but generally didn't need to worry about it elsewhere -- but maybe that's rose-colored nostalgia speaking.

(I've never used the phrases "rose-colored nostalgia" and "MySpace" in such close proximity before)

Re: Google Chrome to stop autoplaying content with sound

#12

Post by camus2 »

I'm not sure why all these websites decided that auto-playing video is a good thing. It's annoying as hell. I click on an article for reading, I'm not clicking on a youtube playlist.

The latest craze among web designers being videos that follow the reader even when they are scrolling down the page! Enough!

Can we have a designer here explaining why they do this? If it's about engagement, i'm not going back to your website if you do that to me once.

Re: Google Chrome to stop autoplaying content with sound

#16

Post by aclelland »

outsidetheparty wrote: post #4

It's a start. Allowing users to disable autoplay altogether would be better, but shutting down the audio is better than nothing. It's a shame that browsers increasingly have to actively defend against website behavior, instead of just being tools for displaying those websites; but, well, here we are.

It appears that there is already a feature in Chrome for Android which allows this. It will be removed around the same time as this patch to make things more 'consistent'

>Removing the block autoplay setting that is currently available on Chrome for Android

Re: Google Chrome to stop autoplaying content with sound

#17

Post by amelius »

As much as I like this idea, I'm sure that this will also cause problems in certain cases.

Therefore, I'd like to see per-website "capability settings", just like you can allow smartphone-apps to access your microphone, camera, et cetera. And an API for websites to determine which capabilities they have, and an API to request the browser to ask the user to add a capability.

Re: Google Chrome to stop autoplaying content with sound

#18

Post by izzydata »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #15

>Chrome will only autoplay a given piece of content when the media won’t play sound or the user has indicated an interest in the media. I wonder if a certain "Tube" site will have "indicated interest" on by default, hmm...

Probably. I can't imagine the point of going to a youtube page that is solely dedicated to a video and having no intention of watching or listening to it.

I wouldn't be opposed to being required to click play though.

Re: Google Chrome to stop autoplaying content with sound

#19

Post by danso »

artursapek wrote: post #14

Doesn't YouTube technically autoplay videos? Is this going to disable that?

The design document talks about applying a heuristic to determine which sites are expected by users to play video:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_278v_plodvgtXSgnEJ0yjZJ...

> The Media Engagement Index (MEI) aims to provide a metric reflecting the engagement of a given user with regards to media playback on a given origin. The intent of this metric is to allow websites scoring high enough to be able to bypass the new unified autoplay policy, thus reducing the cost on the ecosystem.

Re: Google Chrome to stop autoplaying content with sound

#20

Post by danso »

camus2 wrote: post #12

I'm not sure why all these websites decided that auto-playing video is a good thing. It's annoying as hell. I click on an article for reading, I'm not clicking on a youtube playlist. The latest craze among web designers being videos that follow the reader even when they are scrolling down the page! Enough! Can we have a designer here explaining why they do this? If it's about engagement, i'm not going back to your we…

That scrolly-video you refer to, I wonder if it was an evolutionary response to ad blockers basically shutting down pup-up ad video. So the justification would probably be "the bottom line"
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