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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."
Isn't this a solved problem at this point? It seems like all the Chrome users are suddenly rediscovering all the features that have been in Firefox for decades.
Back around Y2K, you got this feature by installing the Flashblock extension. I stopped installing it when Firefox made it so that you had to click to start any plug-in. Now it is available as "media.autoplay.enabled" setting in about:config. I guess I am in shock that anybody *doesn't* set their computer this way. I think there is even an option in Firefox to say "it's okay to let *this* site autoplay stuff."
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.
They should use AI technology to determine if the user wants the audio to start automatically or not. Can't AI do that?