Google's Chrome to gag noisy tabs until you click on them Soon, Google's Chrome browser will only play media when a tab is in the foreground, even if it is set to play automatically. The idea is that you'll no longer need to worry about a tab you've opened suddenly blabbering away while you're in a meeting because it contained media that was set to auto-play a few minutes after you …
Web designers may largely avoid such annoyances but advertisers feel you need to be assaulted by their nonsense no matter what. Given that many websites may not have full control over exactly which commercial content is served on their sites then I suspect this to be the source of much of this crap.
I often stream to my Chromecast from a Chrome tab. I actually like the fact I can carry on browsing on my PC whilst the rest of the family can watch a film streamed from an otherwise inactive tab onto a TV in another room.
I would like to see this feature optioned in Settings.
The way I understand it, that will still work. As long as the tab is visible when the sound starts, it will keep going on even if you hide it.
I bet a lot of people start a music video on YouTube and keep surfing in a different tab; I'm sure Google thought of them.
You make an excellent point, Tristram Shandy, and I quite agree with you. There is no good reason not to let the new behavior remain optional, and I am sure that is the way Google will choose to go.
However, I'm pretty sure that all you need for what you describe is the ability to allow a tab to continue to play music and video after you have first clicked on it and manually commenced the program the rest of your family wants to watch. Having the program start all by itself, without your permission — quite possibly before the members of your family are even seated and ready to begin watching! — is another thing altogether.
It's not only inconvenient and annoying, but offensive. I'm a control-freak, and I hate it any time anything happens on my computer without my telling it to, or at least giving it permission. (Scheduled activities are fine, of course, provided I am free to alter the schedule.)
Web developers who code things to start playing without first asking permission (are you listening, AOL?) deserve to burn in Hell, but at least this is a start.
(The thumb-up is for the coming new feature. El Reg's gallery of icons currently contains no image of a hand extending the digit I would need to use to show my feelings about auto-play itself.)
While there may be a few instances (I can't think of any) where I want a long-forgotten borg flash/media voice/video to start playing in the background, this seems like the logical path.
I'm one of those poor souls with 100+ tabs open in firefox(palemoon) or chrome, and if I need to restart the system or browser, some long-lost voices from the past rant at me.
Now, if I could convince all browsers to give me a list of all active tabs and what they're doing (media, cpu, memory, network, etc.), and to allow me to kill each one as I wish, I'd feel like I was once again in control.
Am I doing something wrong? It's rare I have more than half a dozen tabs open...
Sound, of course, is off by default. In this case, the tab should not even download it, waiting for focus before it's played: what's the sense in using up bandwidth for what is already accepted is unlikely to be the default case?
It's a good start but needs one more step. Find some way to identify the tiny 30 pixel player located halfway down the page I'm reading that is making noise so I can shoot it in the head efficiently. Maybe change the cursor into a flashing homing beacon that points out the offending page element.
" Find some way to identify the tiny 30 pixel player located halfway down the page I'm reading that is making noise"
According to the intertron you can do the below, which allows you to mute on a tab by tab basis.
"To try Chrome’s Tab Mute feature out for yourself, bearing in mind that it’s still experimental, you need simply to do the following:
Go to chrome://flags in a new tab
Search for the ‘Enable tab audio muting UI control’ flag
Hit the ‘Enable’ link
Relaunch Chrome when prompted (on Chrome OS a full restart is required¹)"
I was impressed with Chrome last week. Don't use it myself but was helping a friend in one of those occasional free tech support moments that we must do from time to time. They'd got a cheap PC off fleabay and hadn't bothered putting AV software on it. I got a 'the computer stutters playing video and tells me I need to update my drivers' call. Sure enough PC full of crapware and other associated nasties. Opening a browser (Firefox or IE) resulted in a screen full of pop-ups and all pages being redirected to shitty scam sites, making the Internet unusable. Chrome (which they also had installed) was similarly afflicted but handled it better to the point where I was able to get onto Eset's online AV tool to continue the process of cleaning up the mess.I was impressed.
Fellow commentards: please don't feel the need to tell me how I should have approached the problem, I'm aware that there are likely other ways to approach this but it's not something I do very often, just a freebie for a friend.
They're the ones who stand to lose the most out of this right?
No wait, protecting your bottom dollar is by far the most important thing, and making sure the most annoying of the most anoying of ads still make it to your desktop with both speakers blaring ensures the cash cow.
Good point, Mike! Even after you click on the tab, auto-play is still evil! And as Eddy Ito pointed out just above, sometimes finding and disabling the embedded item responsible for the disturbance can be surprisingly difficult.
So yes, there's still more to be done!
NO. It's NOT cool. It's essential. It's what many users have been crying out for for years. It's why I don't use Chrome and DO use flashblock
A "cool" feature is something we didn't realise we wanted until we see it and realise how useful it will be. This is something which was wanted for ages.
I'd be damned nice if Mozilla would 'steal' the idea of sound icons on tabs and gate all auto-play too, because I curse /any/ site which auto-plays anything; fracking, arrogant, retard web designers! Auto-play is just as pathetic as the ancient HTML flash tag.
that didn't hurt so much, did it? Then let's try the second step. Go all they way and don't chicken out.
Yes, allow all media to be disabled by default.
As it is, I have my speaker muted all the time to avoid embarrassment. And I guess I am hardly alone.
Unfortunately this also turns off legit audio, like for example the ringing of my SIP phone.
Not before time. But the real question is why haven't the other browsers done this long since instead of slavishly apeing the dumbed down Chrome UI and ignoring the aspects of Chrome which are actually good? (Yes, I'm looking at you Firefox. Stop staring out the window and pay attention like the other children.)
In the mid noughties I worked for a small technology company and shared an office with the office manager. One of her tasks was sorting travel arrangements to various, often rural locations in Ireland amongst other places. A single web designer with a fetish for mid-90's Web design must have gained a lot of independent Irish hotel contracts because there were frequent instances of sudden music emanating from her PC whenever she was looking for hotels in Ireland (only Ireland - nowhere else). Annoying at first but it did become a bit of a joke after a while.
Step 1. )
Build a website that gladly auto-plays 2-10000000000 videos simultaneously
(depending on how many tabs you have open)
Step 2.)
Add a feature to your browser that mutes websites that gladly auto-plays 2-10000000000 videos simultaneously.
(To gauge how people reacts to you fixing problems you created yourself)
Step 3.)
Build self driving cars.
Step 4. )
Sell anti self driving car guns.
Step 5)
PROFIT!
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