1196192 - Mute tab audio indicator is displayed even if navigate to any non-audio pages

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[magicp]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:42.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/42.0
Build ID: 20150818004007

Steps to reproduce:

1) Run Firefox 42.0a2 or 43.0a1
2) Playing a video on Youtube
3) Mute tab audio indicator
4) Navigate to any non-audio pages


Actual results:

Mute tab audio indicator is displayed even if navigate to any non-audio pages.


Expected results:

Tab audio indicator should NOT display without sound.

Comment 1

[Gingerbread Man]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:43.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/43.0
20150819030206

I don't see how this is a bug. Once you've muted the tab, the indicator should remain to allow unmuting the tab.

Comment 2

[magicp]

When there is a sound, mute indicator appears again. Users can unmute it.

I believe that there are four indicators. but important indicators are #1 to #3
#1 There is a sound.
#2 There is a sound and it has been muting.
#3 There is no sound.
#4 There is no sound and also it has been muted.

If you are correct. After muted, #3 could not be indicated and also users cannot distinguish #2 and #4.

Comment 3

[(no longer active)]

This is by design.  Muting is a per-tab action, not a per-page one, and once you mute a tab, we play any current and future content to play audio in the tab until you have unmuted it.

(In reply to magicp from comment #2)
> I believe that there are four indicators. but important indicators are #1 to
> #3
> #1 There is a sound.
> #2 There is a sound and it has been muting.
> #3 There is no sound.
> #4 There is no sound and also it has been muted.

No, that's not quite right.  There are three states:

1. Tab is muted.
2. Tab is not muted, and it's playing audio.
3. Tab is not muted, and it's not playing audio.

Comment 4

[magicp]

(In reply to Ehsan Akhgari (don't ask for review please) from comment #3)
> This is by design.  Muting is a per-tab action, not a per-page one, and once
> you mute a tab, we play any current and future content to play audio in the
> tab until you have unmuted it.

Thanks for your explanation.

However, I think it's a strange design.
After tab was muted, we can't know which tab is playing audio or not in the background by mute icon. We might get ear-deafening explosion sound when unmute it. Can you unmute it safe?

Comment 5

[(no longer active)]

Well, it's very hard to do both of these things at the same time, since they are essentially opposite use cases (wanting to keep the tab muted no matter what page it has loaded versus wanting to know whether a muted tab is playing audio or not).

I think that the former use case covers the needs of more users.  But to answer your question: in many cases you can click on the muted tab and tell whether the tab is playing something by looking at it, since most websites do not try to play sound mysteriously without displaying some kind of UI for it.  And you can also use your desktop volume control.  :-)

That being said, we do provide full control over the playback of audio in a tab (including volume control) in the UI, and I do hope that extension developers would create extensions that address use cases similar to yours.

Comment 6

[magicp]

(In reply to Ehsan Akhgari (don't ask for review please) from comment #5)
> Well, it's very hard to do both of these things at the same time, since they
> are essentially opposite use cases (wanting to keep the tab muted no matter
> what page it has loaded versus wanting to know whether a muted tab is
> playing audio or not).
> 
> I think that the former use case covers the needs of more users.  But to
> answer your question: in many cases you can click on the muted tab and tell
> whether the tab is playing something by looking at it, since most websites
> do not try to play sound mysteriously without displaying some kind of UI for
> it.  And you can also use your desktop volume control.  :-)
> 
> That being said, we do provide full control over the playback of audio in a
> tab (including volume control) in the UI, and I do hope that extension
> developers would create extensions that address use cases similar to yours.

As I filed firstly, my expected result is very simple. "No sound, No indicator"
It covers both of use cases. And also we don't need any extensions.

For example in browser.css

[Before]
.tab-icon-sound[muted] {
  list-style-image: url("chrome://browser/skin/tabbrowser/tab-audio.svg#tab-audio-backgroundTab-muted");
}

[After]
.tab-icon-sound[soundplaying][muted] {
  list-style-image: url("chrome://browser/skin/tabbrowser/tab-audio.svg#tab-audio-backgroundTab-muted");
}

Comment 7

[(no longer active)]

As I said before, the problem with your suggestion is that when you mute the tab, the icon will go away as soon as the page starts to play back audio, so at that point, the UI shows the tab as unmuted, whereas it is really muted.  That will prevent the user from unmuting the tab, and it looks broken since the mute icon will come back the next time that the tab tries to play sound.

Comment 8

[magicp]

(In reply to Ehsan Akhgari (don't ask for review please) from comment #7)
> As I said before, the problem with your suggestion is that when you mute the
> tab, the icon will go away as soon as the page starts to play back audio, so
> at that point, the UI shows the tab as unmuted, whereas it is really muted. 
> That will prevent the user from unmuting the tab, and it looks broken since
> the mute icon will come back the next time that the tab tries to play sound.

Aha, That's indicator! Do you suppose how many mute tabs are there? Firstly users will understand that the icon appears on tab when playing audio. They will be able to see that it goes away when stopping, pausing and muting audio. "No sound, No indicator". Mute icon is same thing. Users don't like that many elements are always displaying on tabs. Already same bug is filed.

Comment 9

[(no longer active)]

I'm not sure what you're suggesting in comment 8, but anyway, I am trying to explain how things currently work.  I am not the UX designer for this feature, and I really don't think there is much point in arguing with me over this since this is not my call, I'm just describing the design (and I personally agree with the current design, but my personal opinions are besides the point here.)

I'm CCing shorlander on this bug who is the UX designer for this.  Please feel free to discuss this with him.  Sorry I can't be of more help.

Comment 10

[magicp]

(In reply to Ehsan Akhgari (don't ask for review please) from comment #9)
> I'm not sure what you're suggesting in comment 8, but anyway, I am trying to
> explain how things currently work.  I am not the UX designer for this
> feature, and I really don't think there is much point in arguing with me
> over this since this is not my call, I'm just describing the design (and I
> personally agree with the current design, but my personal opinions are
> besides the point here.)
> 
> I'm CCing shorlander on this bug who is the UX designer for this.  Please
> feel free to discuss this with him.  Sorry I can't be of more help.

I am awaiting his comment

Comment 11

[Jean-Bernard Marcon]

Not sure it is "on design", but I find perfectly useless to have the entry "Mute tab" in context menu *on all open tabs* when clicking on tabs *which have no sound at all and never had before*

(Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:47.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/47.0)

Comment 12

[Gingerbread Man]

(In reply to Jean-Bernard Marcon from comment #11)
> Not sure it is "on design", but I find perfectly useless to have the entry
> "Mute tab" in context menu *on all open tabs* when clicking on tabs *which
> have no sound at all and never had before*

Bug 1197569, comment 7.