Google has removed the option to disable autoplay from Mobile Chrome • Hacker News Board

Re: Google has removed the option to disable autoplay from Mobile Chrome

#221

Post by wang_li » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 1:59 PM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #39

spankalee wrote: post #31

(disclaimer: I work at Google, not on Chrome) The rationale here seems to be that by blocking video autoplay, Chrome incentivized sites shipping huge animated GIFs, or decoding video in JS and painting to canvas, both of which are very suboptimal for users. Another comment points to this issue: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=106364... quote: Unfortunately, full autoplay blocking is counter prod…

Then maybe the solution is to also have the option turn off animated GIFs and perhaps frequent canvas repaints too; and not simply give up completely ! In any case, just leaving the option alone so at least it has some effect like it did before, would still be better than essentially a full surrender.

> perhaps frequent canvas repaints too;

Which touches on something that drives me insane. Browsers are reinventing the OS and they are leaving out all the tools useful for managing one's computer. I should be able to identify which tab is using tons of CPU. Which tabs are using lots of RAM. I should be able to stop a particular bit of script (aka process.) WTF do I get a pop up telling me a script may be causing a page to be slow, but nothing identifying which of the five to six tabs in my eight to ten browser windows it is?

Another thing that would be nice is if I had a setting in the browser that allowed me to specify how many ms/sec a script is allowed to run. It would be pleasant to be able to limit scripts to 1 ms per second of run time.

Re: Google has removed the option to disable autoplay from Mobile Chrome

#222

Post by reportgunner » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 2:14 PM UTC

freyr wrote: post #203

Termious wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Techies don't like to think about it, but it's obvious. The only reason why Chrome has come to dominate the market is because Google leveraged their monopoly in search. And even beyond Google Search, if you used Google Mail or anything else by Google, they'd repeatedly put notifications telling you that Chrome is great and why don't you download it? Then there's using all those billions of dollars to pay everybody to…

Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer with Windows and made it impossible for users to remove it. That's not at all "pretty much the same thing."

But Chrome is the new Internet Explorer.

Re: Google has removed the option to disable autoplay from Mobile Chrome

#223

Post by YetAnotherNick » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 2:17 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #163

I don't get why Firefox's market share is still so low when compared to Chrome's. I get why FF fell behind over the last decade, but since Firefox Quantum those reasons have largely disappeared.

> but since Firefox Quantum those reasons have largely disappeared.

I don't think so. I switched to firefox as my main browser. Firstly there are few sites that only work in chrome so I kept chrome installed. Secondly at least to me, it is noticeably reduced battery life with firefox.

Why did I switch then? Mostly for privacy and control, and the tab management which is much better in firefox.

Re: Google has removed the option to disable autoplay from Mobile Chrome

#224

Post by YetAnotherNick » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 2:20 PM UTC

Termious wrote: post #182

kelnos wrote: post #163

I don't get why Firefox's market share is still so low when compared to Chrome's. I get why FF fell behind over the last decade, but since Firefox Quantum those reasons have largely disappeared.

Techies don't like to think about it, but it's obvious. The only reason why Chrome has come to dominate the market is because Google leveraged their monopoly in search. And even beyond Google Search, if you used Google Mail or anything else by Google, they'd repeatedly put notifications telling you that Chrome is great and why don't you download it? Then there's using all those billions of dollars to pay everybody to…

Then IE should be number one browser on windows, right? I haven't seen any nagging for chrome in past few years but seen lot for IE. Have you seen the notifications now or just guessing that they would be sending notifications. Any screenshots would be helpful.

Re: Google has removed the option to disable autoplay from Mobile Chrome

#225

Post by pb7 » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 2:21 PM UTC

josefx wrote: post #180

pb7 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is going to pay them?

Firefox did well enough until chrome came along. It even managed to keep up until the recent downsizing. In other words your comment only makes sense if you just woke up from a thirty year long coma.

It did well enough until there was real competition? Firefox is only alive from fat Google Search checks. It’s a great example of a massive failure in this charity business model.

Re: Google has removed the option to disable autoplay from Mobile Chrome

#226

Post by josefx » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 2:51 PM UTC

sabana wrote: post #193

dredmorbius wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Nobody" would be a better situation than we have now. (Microsoft and Brave both depend on Chrome, however.)

*Chromium

Identical code, different name. I think chromium will even side load the closed source DRM module the first chance it gets.

Re: Google has removed the option to disable autoplay from Mobile Chrome

#227

Post by 9HZZRfNlpR » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 3:14 PM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #158

varenc wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just block all tags with a `##canvas` rule for uBlock Origin. It of course breaks some real sites, but not on anything I use regularly. A canvas repaint rate limit could be nice, though I have been surprised at how little I notice all canvas tags just being blocked. Gifs are trickier. I'll often see non-animated images in gif format. Because of extension API limitations, uBO can't block gifs based on file siz…

Gifs are trickier. I'll often see non-animated images in gif format. uBO doesn't have the power to block images based on file size. (The file size isn't even known until the start of the fetch) Browsers' native functionality (if not deliberately crippled) and filtering proxies can definitely block animated GIFs while leaving static ones alone, by simply terminating the connection after the first frame.

IE6 or even lower had the option to show and load only the first frame.

Re: Google has removed the option to disable autoplay from Mobile Chrome

#228

Post by josefx » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 3:59 PM UTC

pb7 wrote: post #225

josefx wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox did well enough until chrome came along. It even managed to keep up until the recent downsizing. In other words your comment only makes sense if you just woke up from a thirty year long coma.

It did well enough until there was real competition? Firefox is only alive from fat Google Search checks. It’s a great example of a massive failure in this charity business model.

Given that Microsoft almost killed the entire browser industry just by releasing IE it is quite a success to be around decades later.

> It did well enough until there was real competition

"Real" competition doesn't have to artificially cripple high profile sites to compete. The chrome style of competition gave us ShadowDom v0 on youtube, disappearing features in maps and gmail, empty html elements that only seemed to be there to prevent Edge from accelerating video playback and constant popups reminding users to "upgrade" to Chrome.

Re: Google has removed the option to disable autoplay from Mobile Chrome

#229

Post by smoe » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

airstrike wrote: post #219

smoe wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. But I think the early adoptors mattered back in 2008.I reckon, with the dominance they now have, they are fine with some developers moving to firefox while still having time to react if they pull too many "normal" users with them. Especially since Mozilla isnt exactly peak popularity in terms of vision either.

IE was also absurdly dominant back then. I appreciate the fact that we now live in a world where everything is integrated, so the costs of switching are higher, but it's not impossible

Sure but IE back then was also severely lacking in pretty much every regard and stopped any tangible development. At least every developer I know back then switched away from it primarly because of developer tooling available in other browsers secondarly because of lack of other features.

With todays major browsers landscape the differences are much more subtle. From a developer productivity perspectice I don't think it matters that much anymore, none is really a 10x or even a 3x browser over the others.

So I don't see a huge developer exodus happing for Chrome as long as they don't completely cripple their web dev experience.

Re: Google has removed the option to disable autoplay from Mobile Chrome

#230

Post by snoshy » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 6:37 PM UTC

pteraspidomorph wrote: post #88

snoshy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there's an option in Settings to close open tabs on quit.

Thank you for trying to help, but I think you missed a part of the question.

Ah, you're right. No, there isn't an option to do this without explicitly Quitting. I find it a glaring omission myself, along with the fact that deleting Browsing History and Site Data are combined into a single option.