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Firefox Will Soon Show You Which Tabs Are Making Noise, and Let You Mute Them

Posted by Soulskill on from the hush-little-browser-don't-say-a-word dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla is working on identifying Firefox tabs that are currently playing audio. The feature will show an icon if a tab is making sounds and let the user mute the playback. It's worth noting that while Chrome has had audio indicators for more than a year now, it still doesn't let you easily mute tabs. The option is available in Google's browser, but it's not enabled by default (you have to turn on the #enable-tab-audio-muting flag in chrome://flags/).

102 of 151 comments (clear)

  1. Finally! by weilawei · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Something approximating a useful feature!

    1. Re:Finally! by JMJimmy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Indeed. Now if we could only get CPU/RAM usage as well!

    2. Re:Finally! by bondsbw · · Score: 4, Informative

      And kudos to subby for pointing out the way to do it in Chrome... didn't realize it was there.

      --
      All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
    3. Re:Finally! by Billly+Gates · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Keep in mind Chrome had this .... then advertisers disabled it :-(

      I tried a system without adblock and it was astounding what these guys do these days. Website redirects, 15 second commercials you can't close, etc.

      My fear is as flash dies HTML 5 will make blocking this harder if they can hack and disable muting

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    4. Re:Finally! by alvinrod · · Score: 4, Insightful

      For a long time I didn't mind having ads enabled on Slashdot as they tended to behave well, but recently they've been beyond annoying. They make noise and eat inordinate amounts of CPU time for no purpose. When will advertisers realize it's better to make a simple ad that's respectful to the audience than to make one that no one will ever care to look at? I don't doubt that they can get by fine in general when advertising to the unwashed masses, but this is a tech site and the users are no strangers to ad-blocking plug-ins or other means of never viewing their content.

    5. Re:Finally! by Billly+Gates · · Score: 2

      For a long time I didn't mind having ads enabled on Slashdot as they tended to behave well, but recently they've been beyond annoying. They make noise and eat inordinate amounts of CPU time for no purpose. When will advertisers realize it's better to make a simple ad that's respectful to the audience than to make one that no one will ever care to look at? I don't doubt that they can get by fine in general when advertising to the unwashed masses, but this is a tech site and the users are no strangers to ad-blocking plug-ins or other means of never viewing their content.

      Which is why I use adblock plus. Slashdot gets paid still by ethical ads with guidelines that must be met and will lose money when these clowns get blocked. I still get 3 ad networks blocked as of right now with adblock. If Slashdot wants more money replace them with ethical ads and VIOLA.

      So to me this is the perfect solution so we can have some free stuff and profitability goes down for the unethical ones

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    6. Re:Finally! by weilawei · · Score: 3, Funny

      If Slashdot wants more money replace them with ethical ads and VIOLA.

      I prefer violin.

    7. Re:Finally! by Fortran+IV · · Score: 3, Funny

      I'll take either as long as the audio stays muted.

      --
      I figure by 2030 or so my 6-digit UID will be something to brag about.
    8. Re:Finally! by Fortran+IV · · Score: 2

      Now if we could only get CPU/RAM usage as well!

      Exactly what I came to say. I'd love to be able tell which tabs are pushing FF over 2GB, or carpet-bombing my CPUs when they auto-refresh, without having to close them all one by one.

      --
      I figure by 2030 or so my 6-digit UID will be something to brag about.
    9. Re:Finally! by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      Keep in mind Chrome had this .... then advertisers disabled it :-(

      I tried a system without adblock and it was astounding what these guys do these days. Website redirects, 15 second commercials you can't close, etc.

      My fear is as flash dies HTML 5 will make blocking this harder if they can hack and disable muting

      Then you switch to a browser that lets you do that. That's the cool thing with HTML5 - if one vendor refuses to make their browser work for you, you move on. Whereas if it was flash, then they all are broken in the same way.

      I went across a website that did that - it did popups and alertboxes and played a sound. And the alertbox was triggered on closing, making it nigh impossible to close the window. Then I noticed a "suppress further alerts" checkbox, which made it simple to close the tab.

      Do it in flash and the only way is to kill the process.

    10. Re:Finally! by rwa2 · · Score: 2

      Yeah, I'm happy enough just closing any tab that starts sprouting unsolicited audio, either from ads or actual content that autoplays. Unfortunately, I doubt most web analytics do a good job showing people leaving their site in droves once some autoplay content starts.

      Slashdot might be a good example of this, though... I used to leave /. running in a tab all day long, but now I usually end up closing it after something autoplays nowadays and not going back. Maybe someone noticed, because I do see autoplay junk hit the page slightly less often now.

      Facebook oddly enough actually has a pretty nice system where videos autoplay muted as you scroll by them, pause once they're offscreen, unless you unmute or hit play. It would be nice to be able to give better reasons for blocking content, though, like "This link was a useless slideshow" or "The page had some stupid autoplay thing"

    11. Re:Finally! by Feanturi · · Score: 4, Funny

      We already get lots of that.

    12. Re:Finally! by ckatko · · Score: 2

      I've been using it for so long I didn't realize it was a special feature in Chrome.

    13. Re:Finally! by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

      Indeed. Now if we could only get CPU/RAM usage as well!

      Yes, yes, YES. Firefox slowly eats/leaks memory until it's using more than 3.5Gb on my machine...and then everything slows down, images don't load, etc etc. Yes, fix the damn memory issue before doing anything else.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    14. Re:Finally! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Go to: about:memory

      But don't expect it to help much. It tells me FF the browser itself is very bloated and the JavaScript engine doesn't let go of things. Even if I close a lot of tabs (like 50, each containing at least one 1MB image) and use the free memory buttons, the total memory usage barely changes. You could argue FF is holding onto those images in case I browse back to those sites. Ok I guess, but it should drop them when I tell it to free up memory. I don't care if it's only holding caches or not, when it gets near 4GB the browser becomes unstable and very slow*. Sometimes it successfully starts swapping, the rest of the time it crashes.

      *WTF is with the slow down when memory usage increases? Are all the internal algorithms doing linear array searches or something?The time to open a new tab should be constant whether you already have 2 tabs open or 1000.

    15. Re:Finally! by DeVilla · · Score: 1

      Then for the trifecta, could we get a way to detect and prevent rebinding of standard keys?

    16. Re:Finally! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      There are ads on /.? Wait, let me disable Alblock Plus...

    17. Re:Finally! by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 1

      Umm... you could just not let Flash play. That's easier than using an automated method designed to avoid bad behavior in a Turing Complete language autorun natively.

      --
      Your ad here. Ask me how!
    18. Re:Finally! by JMJimmy · · Score: 1

      Then for the trifecta, could we get a way to detect and prevent rebinding of standard keys?

      Didn't you know? That's a "feature".

    19. Re: Finally! by Redbehrend · · Score: 1

      Didn't Chrome do this like 2 years ago?

    20. Re:Finally! by Seferino · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yep, I'm working on it. Firefox Nightly should have a usable display of CPU by the end of August. Memory usage is planned, but I have many other things to do first.

    21. Re:Finally! by Seferino · · Score: 4, Informative

      That's not planned for the moment, but with PreferenceStats.jsm (currently in Firefox Nightly), it is already possible to write an add-on that does monitors each tab. Firefox doesn't have a feature for stopping all scripts in a page yet (that's https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/s..., if you're curious), but reloading the tab without scripts (or other features) shouldn't be too hard.

    22. Re:Finally! by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      Umm... you could just not let Flash play. That's easier than using an automated method designed to avoid bad behavior in a Turing Complete language autorun natively.

      That assumes you don't want said flash running anyways.

      There is just as much chance it happens while running flash just like it does on HTML5.

      So I'm running Flash because I want to watch a video (or play a flash game, or download a file) and one of these annoying won't-go-away ads show up (which because it's flash, has a nice tendency to bypass plugins that block ads and crap).

      With flash, it's all or nothing - if a flash thing wants to show an ad and force you to see it, there's nothing you can do about it other than close the webpage. If it was done in HTML5, then just that bit can be blocked while still getting full functionality.

    23. Re:Finally! by datavirtue · · Score: 1

      Is this supposed to be a newsworthy innovation? Sounds like a basic requirement to me.

      --
      I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
    24. Re:Finally! by GuldKalle · · Score: 1

      Next step is muting all domains not on a whitelist.

      --
      What?
    25. Re:Finally! by bondsbw · · Score: 1

      I'd love to combine that with the mute toggle. Everything starts silent, and you can unmute any domains you want to hear. That builds your whitelist.

      --
      All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
    26. Re:Finally! by supremebob · · Score: 1

      Yeah, and only about 18 months behind Chrome on this feature.

      I wonder if the new Microsoft Edge browser has this feature. If so, Mozilla can gloat about beating them to it by a week!

    27. Re:Finally! by KGIII · · Score: 1

      Opera, even now with it's current WebKit incarnation, has had an 'icon' that showed which tabs had playing media. It has had this feature for quite a while now. It does not allow you to mute it, AFAIK, but it does let you see which tab is blurting out sound and allow you to navigate to it quickly. Opera always gets the cool features first, they just suck at monopolizing on this.

      It would be nice to see CPU/RAM usage. I seem to recall that Chromium does this. I typically just use a single browser across all platforms. I have found the sync functionality to be especially handy because of this.

      Of course, I say that but I am actually making this post in Lynx. No, I do not have a good reason for doing so. (Does anyone have a good reason for using Lynx?) I am doing it just because I feel inferior for having never tried to post to /. with Lynx before. So, no, I have no good reason...

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    28. Re:Finally! by Mal-2 · · Score: 1

      No shit. I've been requesting this exact feature for at least five years.

      --
      How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
    29. Re:Finally! by arglebargle_xiv · · Score: 2

      Now if we could only get CPU/RAM usage as well!

      On a related note, show the CPU use of scripting, and allow temporary enabling of scripting on a per tab basis (but block third party and hidden https calls in the scripting like the gew-gal code)

      An even better one would be to simply allow disabling of animations and sound and whatnot on non-visible tabs. This is one of the major CPU-sucks in Firefox (at least in my experience), the fact that it insists on animating a dozen GIFs and who-knows what else in non-visible, background tabs, with the CPU on my laptop pegged at 80% and the fan screaming away trying to keep the system from melting.

      Firefox developers, an inactive tab is, you know, inactive, not "sucking up 80% of the CPU in the system doing nothing useful". As the OP pointed out, this is, finally, an almost-useful feature added in a new release of Firefox. Not actually that useful, but almost. Just keep plugging away there, eventually a new release will finally contain something worthwhile.

      (I mean it has to, eventually, doesn't it? You can't just keep throwing random features at a browser without eventually hitting a useful one, can you? Can you?).

    30. Re:Finally! by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 2

      Breaking themes and extensions with every new release isn't a useful feature? Who could tell?

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
    31. Re:Finally! by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      Brilliant!

      I'm really looking forward to this. Firefox (well, in fairness, stupid websites with "app" envy) are responsible for a lot of CPU usage and shortening of battery life. I lookforward to being able to kill hoggy tabs easily.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    32. Re:Finally! by davester666 · · Score: 1

      Also, whatever Amazon does to try to try and super-track what I am doing on my computer. I can always tell if an Amazon page is loaded, a CPU is pegged at 100% and every other tab will feel like my computer has just been dipped in cold molasses.

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    33. Re:Finally! by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

      People use the browser as a music player now.

    34. Re:Finally! by yithar7153 · · Score: 1

      That's why you install Flashblock and click on the stuff you want to play.

    35. Re:Finally! by Seferino · · Score: 1

      It can work both with and without Electrolysis. However, you are right that it will take time, so don't expect it before 42 (current Nightly) or 43.

  2. Not that Useful by avandesande · · Score: 1

    Any browser tab that starts inadvertently making noise is immediately closed.

    --
    love is just extroverted narcissism
    1. Re:Not that Useful by cen1 · · Score: 1

      It's usually a problem when you open several tabs at once and one of them starts playing. And you have no idea which one.

    2. Re:Not that Useful by Runaway1956 · · Score: 1

      Ehhh - I'm in agreement with your approach - but I don't usually bother. The headphones generally lie at arm's reach. Occasionally, I'll hear the things making odd noises. If the noises from the tabs aren't very loud, they never get my attention. WIth uBlock and NoScript, most pages don't load noise making advertisements anyway.

      But, most certainly - if a noisy tab annoys me, it's closed immediately. Although, I have to SEARCH OUT the offending tab. With this addon, I suppose the search is over.

      (Imagine one browser on the main monitor with 20, 30, maybe more tabs open. Imagine a VM open on the second monitor, with another browser which often has even more tabs open. Search for the offending tab? TBH, though, that second browser is on I2P where few people try to autoload stupid bullshit.)

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
    3. Re:Not that Useful by amicusNYCL · · Score: 1

      Seriously. BS that Chrome doesn't easily let you mute the tab, there's a little X right there. Click on that and, poof, no more audio.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    4. Re:Not that Useful by hackertourist · · Score: 1

      If the tab you're looking at is the source of the noise, that's easy enough. But I often have 50+ tabs open in several windows, and then good luck hunting down the culprit. This feature will be a God-send.

    5. Re:Not that Useful by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      They do.

      IT has been out for awhile. Advertisers found a way to disable it without javascript

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    6. Re:Not that Useful by amicusNYCL · · Score: 1

      You misunderstood my post, but whatever.

      Advertisers found a way to disable it without javascript

      Why hasn't that bug been fixed?

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    7. Re:Not that Useful by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

      So this is more bloat in FF isn't it? It doesn't even solve what's a niche problem for those few people who insist on having so many tabs open they cannot read them. If you can't read them, you can't see which one to mute.

      I typically have 3 or 4 browsers open with 5 ~ 10 tabs in each one...and being able to tell which tab has overstepped its bounds would be an extremely useful feature for me.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    8. Re:Not that Useful by KiloByte · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The real problem is, why a webpage can make noise without permission.

      Seriously, all video/audio should be behind a click-to-play block by default, with no way around.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    9. Re:Not that Useful by Lost+Race · · Score: 1

      I can't imagine why this is such a bewildering puzzle for the Firefox guys. Click to play video: how hard could it possibly be?

  3. It's About Time! by tbq · · Score: 1

    That's the only really useful feature that I've wanted built in for years that hasn't been available.

    1. Re:It's About Time! by Zanadou · · Score: 1

      Now let's hope Adobe fixes some more of the numerous bugs and issues with NPAPI Flash.

      Yes, by killing it off.

  4. Thank the gods by m.dillon · · Score: 3

    We finally get video and sound working properly and it's just been driving me BATTY when I have 30 firefox tabs open and can't figure out which one is making all the noise.

    My absolute favorite is actually when a video site has video ads on the side bars that play over the video in the article. Sometimes more than one at once.

    On the bright side, it finally caused me to get off my duff and map the mute and volume keys into X.

    -Matt

    1. Re:Thank the gods by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Can't a browser mute non-focused tabs by default?

    2. Re:Thank the gods by paul_metcalfe · · Score: 2

      Set flash to 'click to play'. This solves almost all instances of it, and also solves supercookies etc.

      --
      Always read at -1, don't let others decide what you should and should not read.
    3. Re:Thank the gods by Runaway1956 · · Score: 1

      Holy shit - they do that? Videos in the sidebar drown out the main feature video? uBlock or AdBlock, and NoScript. At the least, block third party scripting!

      Personally, I don't recall ever having that happen to me.

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
    4. Re:Thank the gods by Vlad_the_Inhaler · · Score: 1

      You have Flash?
      The Mute button is going to get a lot of use when this feature makes it.

      --
      Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
    5. Re:Thank the gods by amicusNYCL · · Score: 2

      I believe that the technology to do something like that exists, yes. But if people are listening to music through their browser they probably aren't looking at that tab also, it's just in the background.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    6. Re:Thank the gods by squiggleslash · · Score: 2

      HTML5 video cannot be set to "Click to play" at present.

      This idea seems to be a horrible hack to get around the fact that Mozilla, Google, et al, refuse to deal with the lack of any popular support for "autoplay" being a thing.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    7. Re:Thank the gods by gstoddart · · Score: 1

      Uninstall Flash and get on with your life.

      This solves all instances.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    8. Re:Thank the gods by Billly+Gates · · Score: 2

      Try adding flashblocker.

      In 2015 we still need flash like we needed IE 6 in 2005 for some websites. Flashblocker is click to play so you can watch all your HTML 5 videos and still use flash for CBT Nuggets or music from youtube.

      It is a big boost for security and it is how I have Chrome setup.

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    9. Re:Thank the gods by m.dillon · · Score: 1

      Yup, they sure do. Not only is HTML5 video in ads happening a lot more these days, some sites insert the ads in-line with the article making it difficult for adblock software to distinguish them from graphs and other things that are part of the article.

      I've got adblock installed in chrome, but not firefox yet. For some reason some sites think I'm on a chromebook when I use chrome, instead of DragonFly, which I find hilarious. Adblock in firefox is next.

      No flash for ages. Last thing I would ever do. HTML5 or nothing, baby! I complain to sites like Pandora that still have flash requirements for certain browsers, but not for others.

      -Matt

    10. Re:Thank the gods by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

      My absolute favorite is actually when a video site has video ads

      Ads? What is "ads"?

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    11. Re:Thank the gods by paul_metcalfe · · Score: 2

      That reminds me, you can actually mute the flash process separately too, at least in Windows.

      --
      Always read at -1, don't let others decide what you should and should not read.
    12. Re:Thank the gods by paul_metcalfe · · Score: 1

      You don't even need a plugin or addon for it, it's part of your browser!

      It's called "Ask to activate" in Firefox, not sure about Chrome.

      --
      Always read at -1, don't let others decide what you should and should not read.
    13. Re:Thank the gods by paul_metcalfe · · Score: 1

      Not html5 video and audio, like Youtube.

      --
      Always read at -1, don't let others decide what you should and should not read.
    14. Re:Thank the gods by paul_metcalfe · · Score: 1

      Block ads if you find them obnoxious. Force content providers.

      Something animating in the corner of my vision is annoying enough, let alone something that produces sound.

      --
      Always read at -1, don't let others decide what you should and should not read.
    15. Re:Thank the gods by antdude · · Score: 1

      I only play one video at a time.

      --
      Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
  5. Another trick by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    in my book has been to use MS Windows Audio Mixer to mute all browser noises. After all, who listens to audio streams or watches video in a browser? Not me, sir.

    1. Re:Another trick by OrangeTide · · Score: 2

      There is this cool new website called YouTube where you can watch videos that various random people publish.

      --
      “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  6. Re:oh no you dinnit! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    If it catches on, advertisers will stop using hostnames and start using IP addresses. And they'll be the IP addresses of major CDNs so if you just firewall off the IP address half the internet quits working.

  7. Meanwhile... by Sir_Eptishous · · Score: 2

    Man Invents The Wheel!

    --
    We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
  8. This isn't a default? by tnk1 · · Score: 1

    I don't recall ever enabling this feature and I've seen in in Chrome for awhile now. Perhaps I've forgotten doing it, but I rarely change the Chrome flags, and usually only for a very specific reason based on debugging or something.

  9. Chrome is annoying by ArcadeMan · · Score: 2

    You have to turn on the #enable-tab-audio-muting flag in chrome://flags/.

    This is not the type of things I expect from a company the size of Google. The same decision was made to hide plug-ins configurability from users by hiding it inside an "unknown" special URL.

    The same can be said for their "developer tools", I can't even find a way to enable/disable things like CSS via either a keyboard shortcut or a menu item. I have to enable the dev tools that takes half the browser to then hunt down the CSS enable/disable switch.

    What kind of idiots are in charge over there? Must be engineers or third-rate programmers.

    --
    Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
    1. Re:Chrome is annoying by Sir_Eptishous · · Score: 1

      You're missing the point about Chrome and Google in general.

      Chrome and it settings are setup to hide things from the general purpose user. It is all done deliberately, and none of how Chrome is set is due to being idiotic or third rate.
      If anything is diabolically genius, how their browser is setup to be a gaping hole to suck all private info from users to continue Googles quest for absolute power and control.

      Example?
      What happens when you run Chrome in "incognito" mode?
      You get the cute "spy" image in the upper left corner and the usual "OMG you're running incognito! God help us!"

      --
      We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
  10. A better way by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    What I would want is all video, sound, script playing in all tabs to be always suspended, except the tab I am currently looking at.

    Is there any browser that does that?

    1. Re:A better way by roc97007 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      What I want is all video, sound, script playing in all tabs to be always suspended, except when I explicitly permit them to operate. Just confining them to a tab is not sufficient, because you can be watching a video in a tab and have the sound cluttered up by one to three commercials auto-running on the same page. (And I'm not talking about pr0n sites -- certain news sites have been especially annoying lately.)

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    2. Re:A better way by ihtoit · · Score: 4, Interesting

      what I want is each tab to be a sandbox as tight as a Virtualbox VM that I can just pause just like I can with a Virtualbox VM session, preferably to happen when I take focus off it.

      --
      Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
  11. Re:Need to know which tab using all CPU by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    McAfee.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  12. While they're at it, let me boost the volume. by bistromath007 · · Score: 1

    I am sick and tired of videos at "max volume" capping out at around 20% of my system volume. I can't hear shit. Why does this keep happening, and why am I unable to find a more powerful volume control than the standard system one?

    1. Re:While they're at it, let me boost the volume. by nmb3000 · · Score: 2

      I am sick and tired of videos at "max volume" capping out at around 20% of my system volume. I can't hear shit. Why does this keep happening, and why am I unable to find a more powerful volume control than the standard system one?

      For Windows, if the media is coming from Flash, you might check and see if the Flash application volume got turned down. This happens to me on an irregular basis -- I will adjust it up and then at some point it gets turned way back down to around 5%.

      If the Flash and Firefox application volumes are up, the system volume is up, and your physical speaker knob is up, then it could be the media was simply recorded very poorly or maybe your soundcard drivers have yet another volume you can adjust.

      --
      "What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
      /)
  13. Wait, what? by roc97007 · · Score: 1

    People still browse the internet with the sound on? That's so... nineties.

    --
    Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    1. Re:Wait, what? by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      A PC without sound is what's so... nineties.

      For those of us that actually experienced those times, and actually remember them, that was back when PCs didn't even come with ANY audio capacity by default. You usually needed a 3rd party enhancement. One company in particular was prominent in this area. You've probably never heard of them.

      Bundling CD drives with 3rd party sound cards was also a thing.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  14. Really? it took this long? by solune · · Score: 1

    Opera has had this; in fact, I find for a lot of things I prefer that browser. I believe the staff is more tolerant at Opera too.

    1. Re:Really? it took this long? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Hey, that's nice. I used to like Opera a lot too when it was its own browser. But Opera is a Chromium browser now, which means it got that feature for free when Google implemented it for Chrome. It's easy to be nice when you've already alienated a huge chunk of your userbase.

      Plus, other browsers that used NPAPI (like the old Opera) didn't have the ability to know when Flash was using audio or not, let alone control it, without iffy hacking that was buggy and crash-prone at best. Thankfully Adobe *finally* graced the NPAPI version of Flash with an update all this time later that lets Firefox implement this feature (at least on Windows and perhaps OSX).

  15. OMG by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

    Okay, now THIS is a useful feature that almost every user will appreciate.

    --
    Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
  16. Re:Safari will be first by Alan+Shutko · · Score: 1

    Safari 9.0 in the OS X 10.11 beta does this. So it'll be a race!

  17. More useful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    A more useful feature would be to open a tab with audio/video muted and not allow it to play until the user selects to let it play. There are even plugins for Firefox that do this.

  18. nice one by ihtoit · · Score: 1

    you learn something new every day! Didn't know about the #flags thing.

    --
    Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
  19. Extensions to the rescue... by rduke15 · · Score: 1

    Yes, it should be a standard possibility in the browser. But until then, I use Firefox-Muter.

    But it's stupid to need an extension for something as basic. Or even for a (completely unrelated) 15 year old bug which still needs an extension to be corrected.

  20. Re:Chrome DOES have "mute tab" button by SeaFox · · Score: 5, Funny

    Chrome DOES have "mute tab" button right on the tab - I use it everyday ... Look at http://www.omgchrome.com/how-t... or just look up "enable chrome tab mute" to learn...er...what you should have researched before you wrote TFS.

    You know, the summary is only four sentences long. Is your attention span too short to read the whole thing -- where in the next sentence it's mentioned it has to be enabled using the same trick you linked to?

  21. It's about time by PPH · · Score: 4, Funny

    Whenever the boss comes by, I can switch to a work related tab. But if my browser keeps making porn sounds, he gets kind of suspicious.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  22. Mute by default by PenguinJeff · · Score: 1

    I want a mute by default option and an easy way to unmute and play list on the side. Example: lets say the page I'm on has 3 advertisers and all three decide to play their sound clips on load. WTF this does nobody any good. I can't understand any one of them. What I'm asking for is a place to click maybe a sound icon that when clicked shows the items on the page that want to play sound. I can click on the object and allow it to play.

  23. The feature I really want... by Mike+Van+Pelt · · Score: 2

    ... when some web page blasts me with noisy ads at 2AM, is the power from the movie "Scanners" to reach through the Internet with my mind and make their server melt down into a puddle.

  24. Re:oh no you dinnit! by ArchieBunker · · Score: 1

    They will just splice ads right into the content you are watching, like Hulu.

    --
    Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
  25. That's nice by overshoot · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Now when can we find out which tab is sucking 80% of the CPU cycles?

    --
    Lacking <sarcasm> tags, /. substitutes moderation as "Troll."
  26. It's even worse than you think by CrashNBrn · · Score: 2
    uMatrix log, slashdot.org

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  27. Need this feature for Firefox *window* icons by ayesnymous · · Score: 1

    I don't just have one Firefox window open with tons of tabs. I have multiple Firefox windows open, each with tons of tabs. If I start hearing noises, I might look at all the tabs and not see the sound icon. So I have to then switch Firefox windows and keep looking. I need a sound indicator on the Firefox window icon in the taskbar.

  28. Or how about ... by Misagon · · Score: 1

    Or ... how about having all tabs muted except the one that is active?

    --
    "We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
    1. Re:Or how about ... by Useless · · Score: 2

      That'd suck for me at least. Frequently listening to youtube videos in the background while reading other tabs (like right now for instance).

      --
      "Even Prophets don't know everything"
  29. #enable-tab-audio-muting .. by nickweller · · Score: 3, Informative

    "The option is available in Google's browser, but it's not enabled by default

    #enable-tab-audio-muting is enabled by default on this Chrome version 44.0.2403.89 beta ..

  30. You mean like Safari 9 in El Capitan does? by jpellino · · Score: 1

    Like that?

    --
    "Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
  31. Non feature by elvstone · · Score: 1

    Nothing should play unless I press play. Geez.

  32. Now if only... by rakslice · · Score: 1

    the could actually FIND the tab that is making the noise instead of making me HUNT for it visually.

  33. Re:I don't care anymore by OrangeTide · · Score: 1

    Ads cut into corporate profits, they are an investment, when they pay off with more sales, they are a good investment. When everyone blocks the ads, then they are simply a drain on profits and ought to be eliminated or fixed. Companies are not likely to blindly pay for ads if they are projected to lose them money.

    If you think not watching ads will make everything cheaper, that seems unlikely. But if you think not watching ads will get businesses to think of different ways to promote products and stop interrupting your day with their bullshit, that seems more feasible.

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  34. I rather see legislation by MoarSauce123 · · Score: 1

    that punishes autostarting videos on web pages with a minimum 10 year jail sentence.