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In Blocking Autoplay Videos, Chrome Is Breaking Many Web-Based Games (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: An update Google rolled out for its popular Chrome browser this weekend helps prevent those annoying auto-playing video ads on many websites from disturbing your day with unwanted sound as well. But that update is causing consternation for many Web-based game developers who are finding that the change completely breaks the audio in their online work. The technical details behind the problem involve the way Chrome handles WebAudio objects, which are now automatically paused when a webpage starts up, stymying auto-playing ads. To get around this, Web-based games now have to actively restart that pre-loaded audio object when the player makes an action to start the game, even if that audio wasn't autoplaying beforehand. "The standard doesn't require you to do this, so no one would have thought to do this before today," developer Andi McClure told Ars Technica. "With Chrome's new autoplay policies, developers shouldn't assume that audio can be played before a user gesture," Google told The Daily Dot in a statement. "With gaming in Chrome, this may affect Web Audio. We have shared details on what developers can do to address this, and the design for the policy was published last year."
Except bandwidth, it sounds like they just mute it. I vote for no autoplay anything without user permission. Same for popups, new tabs, redirects and control overrides.
It broke all of my Captivate tutorials that use autoplay feature as well. Chrome is really making it difficult for me to recommend it lately.
I wouldn't recommend Chrome anyway, BUT this is a positive rather than negative. What broke Captivate was Captivate with its assumption it has rights and access to autoplay.
Mozilla owns neither an ad network nor a massive video site.
A few things are wrong with your post (I like how it got a 5).
1. Browser extensions are not a browser (duh?)
2. You've been able to disable flash for a lot longer than 15 years in any browser I can think of, this article is about DEFAULTS, not available options.
3. Try telling your grandma to go to about:config, find the setting and toggle it. Point being browser's aren't just used by techies.
Lastly, the browser game developer's having to maintain their code is a trivial price to pay for some site loading a video at full volume in the middle of the night.
I vote for no autoplay anything without user permission.
CNN. Goddammitt, if I'm reading the news I'm probably listening to music. I don't like having a newscaster jabbering over Echoes. If I want to watch the story about the article I'm reading, I'll ask for it.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.