YouTube Adds Play Icon To Page Titles To Show Which Tabs Are Making Noise

An anonymous reader writes "YouTube has added a new play icon to its video pages that only appears when content is playing. The icon disappears when you hit pause, allowing you to quickly see which tabs are making noise. The new feature is a very minor tweak that will be very useful for YouTube users. Because the service auto-plays content when you open a video, if you have multiple YouTube tabs it is often tedious to figure out which ones need to be paused or closed."

Comments

Plug

[Anonymous Coward]

See also: You Tube Options for chrome (and possibly other borswers?) It allows you to totally stop autoplay, and has those tab icons already in there - one for videos which are playing, another showing which are paused.

There's a bunch of other options in there in addition, just wanted to call those two out in particular.

Re:Plug

[taiwanjohn]

Are they "located" in Chromium or in YouTube?

Re:Plug

[kayditty]

In Mozilla/Firebox-based browsers, Flashblock has been doing this for years. I've always used a combination of flashblock+noscript for this purpose.

Re:Plug

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care what You Tube adds, how about they f-ing fix whats wrong with it lately. I can't get the site to work half of the time anymore, and have been looking for an alternative.

Belong in the browser, maybe?

[grasshoppa]

Seems to me that the browser should offer visual alert as to which tab is makin' noise, and should give you tweakin' options ( such as mute all tabs but currently focused tab, allow unmuting of tab via right click on tab, ect... ).

It's great that youtube is doing this, don't misunderstand me. But it seems to be making up for the lack of options in the browser.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe because the browser doesn't know? Atleast not with flash.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[taiwanjohn]

Yes. Actually, given how log this has been a PITA, it's rather amazing that no browser has such a function yet. Maybe there's a 3rd party add-on?

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[Mr Thinly Sliced]

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

If the Redhat guys have taught me anything it's that it belongs in systemd.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[wonkey_monkey]

I was under the impression that the browser couldn't know whether a plugin (i.e., Flash) is making noise.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep the browser should do it, because I don't only have one browser window with multiple tabs open. I always have multiple browser windows open, each with multiple tabs open. This new tab indicator won't help much if I don't know which browser window the sound is coming from.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[casab1anca]

I'm sure the browser plugin API can be extended to provide generic activate/deactivate operations (that would map to play/pause for Flash), then the browser (and in turn, the user) can be in total control of which tab/plugin is active.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[OhANameWhatName]

the browser should offer visual alert as to which tab is makin' noise

Or better still .. just mute any sound in the background. Of course you'd need an option to turn it off, because there are almost certainly some people who youtube songs in tabs and run them while working in other tabs, but my gut tells me that these people would be in a minority.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Chrome has it in the browser..the favicon is animated with a equalizer overlay. The article says it too...

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did your "g" key break, or are you channeling a frontiersman?

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[Darinbob]

It would be even smarter if youtube just disabled the auto play feature.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[icebraining]

Yes, but that would need Adobe to implement such a feature, and why would they?

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[Anonymous Coward]

That makes playlists a pain to use, but I suppose an exception could be made for them.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely now is the time to implement it though as more and more moves to instead of flash for playing?

Re: Belong in the browser, maybe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your gut is way off. People put music on YouTube in the background all the time.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[mysidia]

Seems to me that the browser should offer visual alert as to which tab is makin' noise, and should give you tweakin' options

Not only that... but unless it's a trusted site or 'safe site' set by me; I want all sites muted by default.

The problem is that plenty of the time, some random site i'm visiting will bring up some 'ad video' and start playing things on my speakers without my consent. Also some webmasters with questionable design aesthetics will create annoying background music.

Background music on some random site starting at some random time unexpectedly on some background tab is no good, when I have 20 tabs open.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[mysidia]

Yes, but that would need Adobe to implement such a feature, and why would they?

Because support became mandatory under the plugin developer agreements for the latest version of the browser, and on the new version of Xyz Browser; the flash plugin will be deprecated/unsupported, until updated support compatible with the latest plugin API is available, and eventually blacklisted plugin after support for the old revision is phased out.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Maybe because the browser doesn't know? Atleast not with flash.

Then add code to the browser so it knows:
- for browser-generated content that's simple
- for external code loaded into the browser process, ask the OS's sound API about the process's settings
- for code running in other processes, ask the sound API which processes are currently playing sound. Might need Chrome's parent process for forwarding because such access might need too high privileges for Chrome's per-tab sandboxing. Other browsers won't even have that problem.

Problem solved.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[Anonymous Coward]

they don't care enough.

Firefox already doesn't support flash.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[ThePhilips]

Maybe there's a 3rd party add-on?

Yes.

There are more than one. Search for FlashBlock or AdBlock.

Works for me.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[Opportunist]

You are aware that this would allow you to open a few dozen windows, let them play their annoying ad while you go to the bathroom and then return to your ad-free YouTube experience, yes?

Won't happen.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[Rich0]

As opposed to just using youtube-dl...

I almost never watch youtube videos in the browser. On my ISP at least they buffer all the time (on a 30Mbps connection). So I just queue a bunch up for downloading and watch them when they're done.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[mrclisdue]

Thank you for my morning smirk.

cheers,

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[CronoCloud]

And another thanks for a morning smirk from a Fedora user.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about? Flash works in Firefox, unless you mean Firefox mobile in which case that's more a fault of Flash not supporting Android.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[tepples]

for external code loaded into the browser process, ask the OS's sound API about the process's settings

That'd depend on there being functionality in the operating system to 1. enumerate open audio streams, and 2. track an audio stream back to something associated with the plugin's assigned drawing surface.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[The MAZZTer]

Chrome had a feature to do this briefly in Dev, now that you mention it I haven't seen it in a while. The tab icon is supposed to have faked volume bars animating over it.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[Rob the Bold]

Yes, but that would need Adobe to implement such a feature, and why would they?

Because if something becomes sufficiently annoying, the cost of co-workers/spouses/roommates/bosses/etc. getting annoyed with you and your flash-web-ads blaring will exceed the benefit of using it for the purposes you want it for.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[BitZtream]

Chrome uses its own flash player developed by Google, it can interact however they want it to.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's great that youtube is doing this, don't misunderstand me. But it seems to be making up for the lack of options in the browser.

Absolutely: it illustrates a failure on the part of the browser programmers. Ideally, the browser should treat every web page as potentially malicious, not trusting it to fix the user interface.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[louic]

It's great that youtube is doing this, don't misunderstand me. But it seems to be making up for the lack of options in the browser.

Are you kidding (or trolling?) It would be even easier for Youtube to let you turn off autoplay. That would prevent this problem in the first place. It is not up to the browser to fix the broken functionality of a website (althouh it is great that many browsers make this is possible).

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[torsmo]

I think Bandcamp has this, something rudimentary.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[Anonymous Coward]

> 1. enumerate open audio streams, and

Possible for every OS which is significant to Google.

> 2. track an audio stream back to something associated with the plugin's assigned drawing surface.

This is either a process (the process that controls the tab in question for browsers like Chrome), or an object handled by the sound API in case the noise is generated from within the calling process.

Re: Belong in the browser, maybe?

[quacking duck]

It would've been easier for sites not to invoke multiple popup and pop-under windows with ads in each of them. But that's what many sites did, it got so annoying that popup blocking plugins were made to prevent this, and then blocking functionality was built into the browsers themselves.

So there's definitely precedent.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[kasperd]

It is not up to the browser to fix the broken functionality of a website

No, but it is the browser's responsibility to ensure that a broken website cannot break anything but that website. The browser should not trust websites to be doing things right. Any functionality that can be used incorrectly by websites will be used maliciously.

If I am playing a video on YouTube it should not be possible for another website, which I have open in another tab to disturb that playback. In most browsers this can currently be violated by either playing sounds overlapping the sound I intended to hear as well as running some heavy javascript causing the playback to freeze shortly.

Any such behaviour is a browser bug, and it is only made worse by lack of indication of which site is responsible. Other bugs such as javascript breaking parts of the browser UI is often easier to pinpoint to a specific site. For example it is surprisingly easy to break the "Copy Link Location" feature in Firefox and equally easy to break the equivalent feature in Chrome.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[kasperd]

I agree with everything you said, except from the maybe in the subject. To me there is no question, this belongs in the browser.

mute all tabs but currently focused tab

That's not the only restriction I would put on tabs not currently in focus. I'd also like to see limits on the amount of CPU time they can spend on executing javascript. I'd like to set a limit saying all unfocused tabs cannot use more than 10% of one CPU in total for executing javascript. Yes, even if there is idle CPU time I don't want unfocused tabs to use more CPU time than that, such that my computer doesn't heat up unnecessarily.

But it seems to be making up for the lack of options in the browser.

Absolutely. They should add such a feature to Chrome. It is even the same company. Why have one part of the company making up for lack of options in products from another part of the company? Wasn't the point of Chrome that Google wanted to be able to make websites without having to always work around bad browsers?

Re: Belong in the browser, maybe?

[louic]

You've got a point there but blaming this on the browser having a "lack of options" is unreasonable. Especially since most of the functionality that grashoppa mentions is already available as firefox plugins (as noted by many commenters). That is not +5: insightful, it is -2: did not do any research before posting. That play icon is a "patch" for something that could have been really fixed by stopping autoplay. It is like first breaking all the windows, turning the heating up because it is too cold and then complaining to the company that installed the heating because it does not heat the house sufficiently.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[kwbauer]

You, the user, ask the browser to load a web-page and you complain that the browser following the instructions of said page is a browser bug? Maybe in a billion years, the AI will be able to read your mind and discern what parts of what page you want the browser to ignore but until then, you'll have to tell the browser manually. And you may have to resort to not visiting pages that don't respond to your liking. Make sure you let the site author's know of your likes and dislikes but don't get your panties in a wad when they don't care about, you, the individual who isn't actually paying them in the first place.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[kasperd]

You, the user, ask the browser to load a web-page and you complain that the browser following the instructions of said page is a browser bug?

If the instructions causes anything to happen which has an effect beyond the scope of that webpage, then it is a bug. Let's for a moment consider the consequences, if your reasoning was valid. A user follows a link to a webpage on a compromised server, the webpage instructs the browser to install a keylogger on the user's computer. Since the user decided to follow the link and since the webpage contained instructions to install a keylogger, then installing that keylogger is expected behaviour, and it is not a bug that the browser allowed this to happen. In what world is a browser supposed to prioritize the interests of a random webpage above the interests of the user?

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[Gallomimia]

Agreed. I was going to suggest a feature such as C2F and similar plugins raining from firefox's plugins manager. That way the stupid youtube won't start immediately, blare your speakers off with an advert that's 3x louder than the video, or even begin downloading, until you can fetch the video to a more useful form with the site known as keep-vid. Honestly, I hate everything about youtube, so this feature doesn't impress me. But I see how less.... thoughtful, users might really need it. In which case, I say, 3 years too late!

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. I listen to the "radio" in one tab while reading the newspaper in another. I don't want the radio to stop, I want the newspaper to shut the fuck up. No web site should make noise unless I tell it to.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[Darinbob]

Ads? I guess I don't watch enough youtube I've never seen ads there. Maybe it's adblock.

Re:Belong in the browser, maybe?

[tlhIngan]

It would be even smarter if youtube just disabled the auto play feature.

Yeah, I hate opening a bunch of Youtube tabs and having them autoplay is the most annoying thing.

It makes flashblock have an essential utility beyond just the practical.

Security hole?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a security hole waiting to happen.

Re:Security hole?

[ShadowRangerRIT]

How? Seriously. What could possibly be insecure about this feature?

Re:Security hole?

[Anonymous Coward]

Somehow, Youtube has to slurp up your info on what tabs you have open. See http://it.slashdot.org/story/13/08/04/1257249/new-javascript-based-timing-attack-steals-all-browser-source-data for an example of how that's bad.

Re:Security hole?

[Anonymous Coward]

It only needs to know whether a given tab is active or inactive and whether that tab itself is making noise. Since these are both properties of the YouTube tab itself, this shouldn't be a problem, right?

Re: Security hole?

[vux984]

So now Google is sending over code to my computer saying in addition to playing a video, my tabs should blink

This ability to change the title is something that any javascript enabled page has been able to do since the dawn of javascript.

How is that code being sent?

OMG, your right, and I just noticed that when you use gmail and go from your inbox to a message it puts the subject of the selected message into the page title, and it does this without loading a whole new page... OMG OMG ...how is this done its keylogging when i click on a message and code from a server something something... MITM vulnerability just waiting to happen... oh noes my bank infos...

Stupid troll.

Re: Security hole?

[OhANameWhatName]

This ability to change the title is something that any javascript enabled page has been able to do since the dawn of javascript.

I just got a 2001 visual of apes shattering bones with big chunks of wood..

Re:Security hole?

[flimflammer]

...er, no. Each page is in charge of itself, setting the icon when that page has playing content. There is nothing about iterating over what tabs you have open or other nonsense.

Re: Security hole?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a great indication that javascript, as it is implemented, was a bad idea. It's fine for an internal network, where you can trust the server, but it should never have become a standard on the internet.

Why not just fix the autoplay?

[dbIII]

Why not just fix the autoplay?

Re:Why not just fix the autoplay?

[imess]

Firefox: plugins.click_to_play = true

This also seems to mess up Youtube's play "icon" detection before you activate the video.

Re:Why not just fix the autoplay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for everyone's information, Opera has the same option: Settings -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Content -> Enable plugins only on demand.

Or then, in opera:config, enable "Enable On Demand Plugin".

Re:Why not just fix the autoplay?

[OhANameWhatName]

Why not just fix the autoplay?

Fixing things is ssoooo Google 1.0

Re:Why not just fix the autoplay?

[MrL0G1C]

Because less Adverts shown = less money for google.

Someonr needs to write a plugin that stops auto-redirects based on a site blacklist, I hate when I watch a video and then want to read the comments and find the page redirecting to some other video.

Re:Why not just fix the autoplay?

[mwvdlee]

Fixing things is ssoooo Google 1.0

You mean Google is finally out of Beta?

Re:Why not just fix the autoplay?

[squiggleslash]

That would have been way too easy and that's what everyone asked for. No, for Google, the convoluted cheesy hack that doesn't solve the underlying problem is a much better idea.

Re:Why not just fix the autoplay?

[NJRoadfan]

If I recall, the autoplay crap was stopped with the channel design before the crappy "YouTube One" design they released a few months ago. Maybe just move back to the old channel designs since the new ones keep breaking stuff and remove personalization options. Meanwhile, YouTube's site interface continues to have bugs that have gone years without being fixed.... but we have a play icon on a browser tab.

Re:Why not just fix the autoplay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile, YouTube's site interface continues to have bugs that have gone years without being fixed.... but we have a play icon on a browser tab.

Don't worry this new feature has bugs too. If I open a yt page with flashblock on, the script still adds the play icon to the title.

Sometimes I wonder if Google didn't look at YouTube back in 2006 and said "aha, this is a great product, we must buy it and riddle it with bugs and change its user interface frequently and randomly, just because we can."

Re:Why not just fix the autoplay?

[roger6106]

My browser handles autoplay fine. If I open a new tab it doesn't start playing it until I activate that tab. Although when I use Firefox instead of Safari everything starts playing at once and drives me crazy.

Re:Why not just fix the autoplay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Reading youtube comments? There's your problem.

Re:Why not just fix the autoplay?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm so glad you posted this in case the other guy still browses /.

Re:Why not just fix the autoplay?

[kwbauer]

Sometimes they are every bit as interesting and informative as slashdot comments.

not the right way to handle this

[Anonymous Coward]

it should be a function of the browser

Noscript

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

= no autoplay

Focus on the Video

[tuppe666]

Ignoring the whole Google+ war on facebook which is a larger topic in itself, and maybe a more interesting one(Google+ si growing vs The numbers are a lie). I would have hoped for real support for VP9 already, wasn't that the point already, Google own the codec and the largest browser share (paying firefox a few dollers too), and right now VP9 is the best quality codec. I would love a purge of low quality duplicate content with a merge of comments, and lyrics videos should become .kar files. The feature mentioned is a a welcome touch...but its simply that a touch. How about focus ion the higher quality video.

Re:Focus on the Video

[OhANameWhatName]

Ignoring the whole Google+ war on facebook

Way ahead of you...

Re:Focus on the Video

[93 Escort Wagon]

Ignoring the whole Google+ war on facebook

Isn't that like Luxembourg deciding its at war with Germany? Or Polish knights on horseback charging the Panzers?

Re:Focus on the Video

[Lennie]

Let's see:
- Google transcoded a large part of the YouTube videos to VP8, they'll need time to transcode them to VP9.
- Firefox doesn't even support VP9 yet.
- VLC doesn't even support VP9 yet, 2.1.0 will have it, it's the current development release.

I think you you need to have a bit of patience.

Re:Focus on the Video

[mspohr]

Someone here uses Facebook?
What war?
Do I get a vote?
Are there drones involved?

Firefox Extention

[tuppe666]

= no autoplay

I use a Firefox Extension "Youtube AutoPlay Stopper" https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-autoplay-stopper/?src=search

Itws one of the many reasons why its my browser of choice.

Re:Firefox Extention

[Anonymous Coward]

Flashblock is a more universal extension. It flash crap on all sites until you explicitly click what you want to play.

You're in for a rude shock

[Anonymous Coward]

The plugins.click_to_play pref was removed as Firefox switched to per-domain and per-plugin prefs.
To get per-element click-to-play back you need this extension in Firefox 24 and above. Ironically it re-uses the original pref.

old problem

[Black Parrot]

I haven't had that problem, with youtube or a great number of other sites, for quite a while. For two reasons:

1) disallow scripting by default, stops a lot of autoplay.

2) sometime in the last couple of years Firefox quit trying to load every tab when you reload a saved session. For each window, it only loads the "active" tab, and leaves the other tabbed pages blank unless/until you select their tab.

The second also stopped the internet choke you used to get when you restarted a session and it tried to load several hundred pages at the same time. Hurray for progress!

Re:old problem

[BitZtream]

The second also stopped the internet choke you used to get when you restarted a session and it tried to load several hundred pages at the same time. Hurray for progress!

Seriously ... several hundred pages open in different tabs?

I can say, without any doubt in my mind, that is the most retarded thing I've heard in a while.

The browser isn't the problem there bud, its you. Hurray for progress indeed. You've proven that advanced technology just makes a more advanced idiot, not smarter browser.

You've heard of bookmarks, right?

Re:old problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that I agree with the practice, but this is a pretty common use-case. I have a friend that can't use Chrome (happily) because of that habit.

Re:old problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that I agree with the practice, but this is a pretty common use-case. I have a friend that can't use Chrome (happily) because of that habit.

Yeah, it's pretty extensive, at least if you work for a media company and have to monitor several sites without blocking flash, ads and JS. Flash tends to be the powder keg here, and the 3GB memory limitations in Windows' 32 bit edition common at workplaces. Since FF / Flash is so terrible under low mem conditions, it will just crash about twice a day.

It doesn't matter that the next FF startup works around loading background tabs on the next session. Sooner or later you have to Control-Tab through a large amount of tabs looking for a specific URL because there's no decent tab sorting* in any browser. This causes FF to use up all the RAM again, going up to 600MB or 900MB. I dislike Chrome but haven't really seen it quit.

TabKit 2nd ed offers some sorting based on domain, or title, but can't be set up to auto-sort as you open more tabs

Re:old problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Methinks he made use of an exaggeration to shine light on the problem.

It can feel like hundreds are loading; it is bad enough when a dozen instances and their embedded tabs all spring to life upon restarting Firefox after a reboot or unclean shutdown--the recover page lists it all out very nicely, as compared to everything trying to pull all of their ads and videos.

Since I do not even have flash installed in Firefox, I don't get much traction out of youtube (hardly anything anyone sends me is in htlm5). However... I fear the day that ads and htlm5 are merged and the default.

booo!

[Anonymous Coward]

ala grooveshark..

News?

[PerformanceDude]

And this minor usability improvement on Youtube made the Slashdot front page why?????

Is this really "News that matters"?

Seriously?????

Re:News?

[OhANameWhatName]

No????? not????? seriously????? but????? outrageously!!!!!

Re:News?

[Anonymous Coward]

It highlights novel ways in that the website owner can do little things like this in the browser when the browser vendors can't or won't do so.

Re:News?

[jones_supa]

And this minor usability improvement on Youtube made the Slashdot front page why?????

Many have expressed here their desire to have some information on which tab is making noise.

Re:News?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop violating punctuation. It makes it harder to read and it gives an unprofessional impression, making the points bear less meaning to the reader.

If you want to accentuate something, try doing it with words instead.

Re:News?

[Anonymous Coward]

My thoughts exactly.

Re:News?

[lxs]

Summertime. Not much real news going on. It's almost like a real paper.

Re:News?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind." -- Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

Pretty sure it applies to question marks as well.

Re:News?

[physicsphairy]

I know, right? Now, a usability improvement facebook, that would be worth reporting, if only to keep the public alert as to the dangers of being struck by airborne swine.

Re:News?

[Thanshin]

Aquiesce!!!

Re:News?

[squiggleslash]

Because it's not a minor story, it's a major story.

Let me put it like this: Remember the old joke about NASA spending a billion dollars developing a "space pen" that can write in zero gravity, and then finding the soviets were just using pencils?

Now, that'd have been newsworthy if it were true, right? And here's Google doing the same thing. "I just opened seven Youtube videos in new background tabs", says Sergey Brin, "and I can't tell which one is making noise! I need to know, fast, pronto, double quick!" he says to his chief engineer, "Find a solution that's as Google like as possible, smart, simple, and brilliant!"

So a team of engineers at Youtube has sat there, seriously, for whatever time it takes figuring out options to this, and they've decided, and Google's management have endorsed, a system of Animated page icons, with presumably everyone from graphic designers to their smartest CSS guy involved to make sure that everything is just right. And they have, without shame, announced this to the world.

Cueing an international round of headslaps as the rest of us point and say "The problem is that the video is PLAYING you idiots. Why would we want the video to play in a tab we just opened in the fucking background? Here's the problem."

And "Soviet Google", whatever that is (Apple? Microsoft? Altavista?) scrolls to line 27192 of the ActionScript in YouTube.flv, and point at a line that says:

//
// OK, now everything's in position, we've loaded the player object, finally let's save the user a click
//

video.play();

Soviet Google would have done this:

//
// OK, now everything's in position, we've loaded the player object, finally let's save the user a click
// Update: 2013-AUG-05 - Users don't want the thing to autoplay, actually they hate this, disabled - sg
//

//video.play();

Even better

[Cant use a slash wtf]

A mind-blowing concept that doesn't seem to exist in the default form of any browser I have come across; only in a few extensions and add-ons that don't always work exactly how I would like them to.
The ability to individually mute tabs. I'm no expert in browser-progamming, but surely if Chrome can have a separate process for each tab, muting individual tabs can't be much of a stretch. Every time I open up a range of tabs, with one having a stupid auto-playing video, I have to look through every single tab to find it.
Worse still if I have a flash game open in one tab (I know, I know, 'too old for flash games') that doesn't have a mute option I can't just mute that tab if I want it to temporarily shutup while I watch a video in another tab. Forget hover-boards, where is my tab-muting? It's 2013!

Re:Even better

[Anonymous Coward]

oh http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/02/25/2331248/google-chrome-getting-audio-indicators-to-show-you-noisy-tabs

Re:Even better

[jones_supa]

A lot of that can be alleviated by having Flash applets to play only when you click the plugin. You can accomplish this by following this route:

Settings > Advanced Settings > Content settings... > Plug-ins > Click to play

Of course some advertisers have started to use HTML5 to play audio, so some jingles might still get through.

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it worthy of attention? Does that have to be reported by /.?!?!

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because the users voted this up in the recent submissions page.

A useful upgrade....(snide comment inside)

[Anonymous Coward]

This is refreshing. It is much more common for a website to impose and upgrade that
a. breaks something
b. works fine if you have the fastest internet connection known to man on the fastest computer known to man. You, know, like the equipment the geeks--yeah, I'm talkin' about you!--used to develop the upgrade. For the rest of us mortals, the upgrade causes something to crawl along s-l--o--w---l----y.
c. no one asked for the upgrade
d. even if a. and b. don't apply, it doesn't benefit the usual user. ... and so on and so on. Ebay was one of the worst offenders a few years ago, rolling out some new upgrade announced or unannounced faster than you could keep up. I think the cause of this "upgrade-itis" is that people creating upgrades (the geeks) and the decision makers who launch them do not use the product. Ebay example: so many dumb things have occurred over the years that are obviously done by people who never shopped or sold there.

Another cause of this is the departments in charge of creating upgrades need to justify their existence and continued growth, and does the executive in charge of approving upgrades.

anonymous coward. Only the NSA knows who I am
 

Never load multimedia in the background

[Anonymous Coward]

Or just do what Safari does: Load the entire page in the background, but only load plugins and multimedia when the user clicks on the tab.

I find this to be the best system for websites like YouTube.

Stupid Analogies

[tuppe666]

Ignoring the whole Google+ war on facebook

Isn't that like Luxembourg deciding its at war with Germany? Or Polish knights on horseback charging the Panzers?

Maybe a more sensible analogy would be Google Search vs Yahoo; Gmail vs Hotmail; Android vs iOS

Flashblock

[palemantle]

Flashblock (extension for Firefox and possibly other browsers) is particularly convenient to stop auto-play and start when necessary. Any decent script blocker will take care of this as others have pointed out.

Re:Flashblock

[pla]

This.

Thanks to Flashblock, I never wonder which tab has started making noise, because none of them do unless I manually tell them to start playing Flash.

FireFox actually has similar content built in as a config option, but unlike Flashblock, the stock click-to-play feature seems to break a lot of sites (I think it works by not even loading the plugin, so if the page uses a script to detect your browser's capabilities, they report that you don't have Flash and give up).

Re:Flashblock

[BitZtream]

Or just get a browser that doesn't suck and doesn't auto-play flash by default without extra plugins.

Re:Flashblock

[Anubis IV]

And which one(s) do that? Chrome, Firefox, and Opera all have Flash enabled by default if it's installed, and all of them auto-play videos that are in background tabs. By your standard, they all suck, it would seem.

You can obviously use a Flash blocker or use browser settings to disable plugins until they are clicked, but none of them are configured that way on first launch. Personally, I like to whitelist Flash on certain sites (e.g. Hulu, YouTube), but I still don't want videos playing in background tabs just because I chose to not disable the plugin. I want them to wait to play until I actually am on that tab. Safari does this right out of the box, and it's a really nice touch, but it's the only browser that does it as far as I know, and while I like Safari decently well on my Mac at home, I can't stand it on my Windows computer at work, and even the Mac version is giving me headaches due to the piss poor support for userscripts.

For Chrome, I've handled the problem using an extension: Stop Autoplay in Background Tabs for Youtube. Works great, but it's definitely not configured like that out of the box, so by your standard, Chrome apparently sucks.

For Firefox, I've been looking for an extension that does the trick, but so far all of the ones I have tried fail under various conditions, most of which are obvious, non-edge cases. Again, by your standard, Firefox sucks.

Opera too, apparently, since out of the box it has Flash enabled and auto-plays videos.

I didn't bother testing IE, but maybe it does what you described and you're a big fan of it?

Re:Flashblock

[Anonymous Coward]

And which one(s) do that?

Konqueror.

this Google ad...

[Anonymous Coward]

brought to you by Slashdot!

This absolutely needs to be on /.

[Anonymous Coward]

This absolutely needs to be on /.

Heh, I noticed this yesterday

[Trogre]

I noticed this yesterday when I restarted my browser and all several hundred tabs opened across five windows. A very welcome addition!

good but

[etash]

too bad this displays as a square in firefox in the title bar.

Re:good but

[Anonymous Coward]

It's weirdly and unevenly elongated on mine, looks more like a nail than a Play button.

Who doesn't disable autoplay?

[loufoque]

Any sane person already disables autoplay.

Re:Who doesn't disable autoplay?

[Rob the Bold]

Any sane person already disables autoplay.

I think you're right, that's mostly true. However, not all your co-workers are sane, and you can still hear them and their speakers . . .

Other sites too?

[Anonymous Coward]

While I noticed the YouTube mod a couple of days ago, I also remember seeing something similar while playing an audio file stored in MediaFire.

Now fix the fullscreen bug

[Blaskowicz]

Lately the controls have been sliding out incorrectly when going full screen, the top of the time bar stays visible and functional.
I can't get the bar back with mouse over so I have to exit full screen mode to change sound. I can trick it to stay up by mousing over before it half disappears, or try going back and forth between window and full screen.

This happened when I switch to Opera (12.16) but back on Firefox (22) the bug is there so it must have been a coincidence and Google updated their code. It's running on Flash 12.2, because that's all that is available. I have a feeling Google doesn't test their stuff on 12.2, as there was some other breakage before : the obnoxious sound volume control bug, which would deafen you at 100% volume, after you unmuted, after you muted by error / because of the bug of the auto-hide slider that didn't pop out on mouse over.

I don't have or use an OS or browser with Flash 15 or 16 or whatever it is to know how it behaves. I even want to believe it's a conspiracy to make me move to Chrome or Windows but that's probably just bad support. Chromium seemed to use system-wide flash by default on my OS, by the way. I still prefer flash to html5 video somehow (or worse, stumbling on a raw file randomly opened by totem or mplayer plugin).

Re:Now fix the fullscreen bug

[MattskEE]

Lately the controls have been sliding out incorrectly when going full screen, the top of the time bar stays visible and functional.
I can't get the bar back with mouse over so I have to exit full screen mode to change sound.

...

  I even want to believe it's a conspiracy to make me move to Chrome or Windows but that's probably just bad support. Chromium seemed to use system-wide flash by default on my OS, by the way. I still prefer flash to html5 video somehow (or worse, stumbling on a raw file randomly opened by totem or mplayer plugin).

I've been having the same problem using Chrome on Windows, so that's not going to fix it yet.

Videos intentionally not available on mobile

[tepples]

I believe that's up to the publisher of each video. Nothing implements HTML5 DRM yet. Everything with Flash implements Flash DRM. And I'm under the impression that for certain premium videos, YouTube refuses to show the video unless it can enforce ad playback. I've seen notices to the effect "You must install Flash Player" on several YouTube videos on PC, and "The content owner has not made this video available on mobile" on my Nexus 7 tablet.

Re: Videos intentionally not available on mobile

[quacking duck]

Never mind premium videos, I don't have Flash installed on my computer but YouTube has started refusing to automatically serve HTML5 versions on an increasingly large percentage of videos, none of which come close to qualifying as premium content.

Fortunately there are a few browser extensions which take care of that and force load the html5 versions, though they need to be kept updated in a cat-and-mouse game with google as they try blocking them. In an older version of one such extension, HTML5 video will actually load and start playing before some CSS and JavaScript overlays the video and blocks the audio, then blatantly lies with a bullshit error claiming Flash is required.

Re: Videos intentionally not available on mobile

[Gallomimia]

I hate to say the obvious, but when companies fundamentally break the internet and force their own content and content delivery methods on them, It's time for the public at large to drop them on their heads and stop using any product by them. I think that'll be pretty hard to do with Google.

Re: Videos intentionally not available on mobile

[tepples]

when companies fundamentally break the internet and force their own content and content delivery methods on them, It's time for the public at large to drop them on their heads and stop using any product by them. I think that'll be pretty hard to do with Google.

It'll be hard to do with the major record labels as well, seeing as they have already got their products on loop as background music in places of business open to the public.

How to make life harder for Flashblock users

[tepples]

I've seen several video sites that put a transparent HTML5 div that covers up the entire Flash plug-in area. Without Flashblock, the div is supposed to trigger JavaScript that sends a play event to the Flash object. But if Flashblock is installed, the div will block click-to-play actions, and thus the site will refuse to play video unless the user knows to retype the appropriate hostname into Flashblock's whitelist.

I wanna be a minority

[tepples]

my gut tells me that these people [who minimize YouTube] would be in a minority.

Some of my best friends are in minorities.

Trust and how to gain it

[tepples]

but unless it's a trusted site or 'safe site' set by me; I want all sites muted by default.

So what should site operators do to gain your trust?

The problem is that plenty of the time, some random site i'm visiting will bring up some 'ad video' and start playing things on my speakers without my consent.

I haven't seen that happen much. But then I use the Flashblock extension for Firefox, which turns SWF objects on sites that aren't whitelisted into click-to-play controls. Or are these random sites using HTML5 video now?

Re:Trust and how to gain it

[Anonymous Coward]

So what should site operators do to gain your trust?

Give me free porn, obviously.

Re:Trust and how to gain it

[DMUTPeregrine]

To gain my trust, put a play button for your audio. If I want to hear the sound, I can click the button.

Re:Trust and how to gain it

[mysidia]

So what should site operators do to gain your trust?

Be Google or Youtube; and not in an iframe, embed, or other remotely sourced location on a page.

The point of having an enumerated list is not necessarily "trust" per se ---- it's about maintaining control.

If the mute was more annoying than the alternative for a certain site; i'd add them to the list. If it ever came to bite me; I would be in control to be able to remove them from the list.

That way i'm in control; and trust (in that case) is just a metaphor for control.

Looks more like a nail to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Although a "Play" button triangle does appear correctly in my task bar, on the actual tab it looks unevenly elongated, giving it the appearance of a slightly bent nail. Am I the only one?

(Not that this is a tech support forum but I'm running Firefox and Windows 7)

Youtbe isn't the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Youtube isn't the problem, its the obnoxious flash adverts that many other sites use to generate revenue.

No need for Google's JavaScript on YouTube

[aloniv]

There are lots of alternatives that can play back YouTube videos without using Google's JavaScript or Adobe Flash (e.g. ViewTube, youtube-dl, UnPlug, quvi and youtube-viewer (which also supports viewing comments).

Re:No need for Google's JavaScript on YouTube

[aloniv]

Also, the add-on LinkTube replaces embedded video with a link, which you can feed to youtube-dl or to the other programmes.

Instead of JavaScript

[tepples]

So instead of JavaScript, what would you have preferred for making an Internet-connected application that runs on Windows, OS X, GNU/Linux, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and game consoles?

Re:Instead of JavaScript

[Anonymous Coward]

Qt.

Great idea

[Anonymous Coward]

How about doing this for advertisements too?

Question

[ArcadeMan]

How can a browser change the favicon being displayed after the page is done loading? Is Google opening up the floodgates to a new plague, the animated favicons?

Re:Question

[squiggleslash]

It's been possible for a long time. There's an optional GMail extension that puts a number (number of unread emails, obviously) on the favicon that's continually updated, I have it installed for obvious reasons.

Unnecessary animated favicons I suspect would be so pointless that any website that used them would soon suffer a boycott, so I don't see that happening.

Re:Question

[Dynedain]

They aren't changing the Favicon, they're changing the contents of the title tag.

This is actually really simple, cross-browser supported, and a nice gesture for visitors.

This can be done in one line of Javascript if you add it to your play event. Here's a JQuery-flavored example:

$('title').html( "▶ " + $('title').html() );

Talk about an mind-boggling easy and straightforward solution. Surprising no one implemented it before.

Re:Question

[ArcadeMan]

Thank you, the title made it sound like the favicon itself was changing.

Mozilla bug 516752

[tepples]

or an object handled by the sound API in case the noise is generated from within the calling process.

I found "the sound API" in your comment ambiguous. Did you mean by the browser's sound API or by the operating system's sound API? The NPAPI architecture allows to shortcut the browser's sound API and directly call that of operating system's, and the latter may not enforce association of an audio stream with a window or subwindow.

If you meant the operating system's sound API, the browser knows which process it's coming from. But using the process to identify a tab that plays audio would require all browsers to adopt a process per tab, and I'm not aware of any browser other than Chromium that consistently uses a process per tab. YouTube has implemented the feature described in the article as a workaround for the fact that not everybody is able to switch to Google Chrome or another Chromium browser. If you want this implemented in browsers other than Chromium, join me in voting for bug 516752.

Safari Standards

[Reliable Windmill]

Safari has always paused YouTube and other Flash-stuff nicely until you first view the tab. I thought every browser did simple things like this, I had no idea it was an actual problem.

You'd tube, too

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

YES...YouTube. I need it for...YouTube. Because I have dozenz of...YouTube windows open that, after 10 minutes, spontaneously start playing loud, embarrassing ads or other noises.

Yes...YouTube problems. Thanks for helping my...YouTube...embarrassing issues.

making noise

[Anonymous Coward]

people play multiple videos at once? never knew that. i just watch the videos one at a time

So you want a Google monopoly

[tepples]

Be Google or Youtube

Granting Google and its subsidiaries a monopoly on web video won't work so well for videos that violate YouTube's content guidelines, such as music criticism videos blocked by the label or music publisher through Content ID. (Methods for contesting a DMCA block and a Content ID block differ, and the copyright owner under Content ID has the power to keep a contested video blocked.)

Re:So you want a Google monopoly

[mysidia]

Granting Google and its subsidiaries a monopoly on web video won't work so well for videos that violate YouTube's content guidelines

In the rare occasion that I choose to visit a site containing 3rd party video content, or embedded Youtube/other content for that matter; I would be doing a temporary manual unmute on a case-by-case basis.

Recurring fee

[tepples]

So instead of JavaScript, what would you have preferred for making an Internet-connected application that runs on [platforms including] Windows Phone and game consoles?

Qt.

The Wikipedia article doesn't list Windows Phone or any Nintendo, PlayStation, or Xbox console as a supported platform. Even the consoles have web browsers nowadays. And besides, the developer would have to pay an annual fee per platform to keep the application on the store no matter how few users it has, a fee that a developer of a web application doesn't have to pay. Furthermore, console makers always have the choice to decline to deal with a particular developer, an option that they have historically used ruthlessly against individual developers like Robert Pelloni.