1301099 - Want to be able to mute all tabs by default

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, enhancement)

Description

[Jefferson Carpenter]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:44.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/44.0
Build ID: 20160402180744

Steps to reproduce:

Larger context: Desired behavior is for Firefox to prompt me before playing sounds.  Existing plugins for this are not compatible with new firefox.  However, there appears to be an about:config setting that will achieve the desired result.

Steps to reproduce: In about:config, change the setting "dom.audiochannel.mutedByDefault" to true.  Open any website that plays sound.


Actual results:

As expected, no sound plays.  However, the audio playing icon is the non-muted icon, not the muted icon.  Clicking toggles the icon, but no sound plays.


Expected results:

The icon should have appeared in the muted state.  Clicking it should toggle sound on and off.

(This here is the mute icon to which I am referring: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/mute-sound-firefox-tabs )

Comment 1

[Timvde]

Confirmed in Nightly (2016-09-05) in a clean profile.

Comment 2

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Changing prefs without understanding how they work is a poor idea in general. The warning before you open about:config is there for a reason, and the fact that we only expose a limited number of those prefs is also the case for a reason.

In this case, dom.audiochannel.mutedByDefault does not have any relation to what the mute button does. It's an internal thing for the (originally b2g-targeted) Browser API (see e.g. bug 1113086), which is unused by Firefox's front-end code, which is why it has no relation to the icons you see or don't see. I also somewhat suspect it won't actually mute things like flash audio, but I haven't bothered to check the implementation.

I'll morph the bug into what you actually want, though I don't think we're currently considering doing anything along these lines - it feels like something that should be done with an add-on. Jared/Ehsan, are you aware of any work in this area?

Comment 3

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

I'm not aware of any work in this area though I have seen similar requests for the same functionality.

Comment 4

[(no longer active)]

What we want to do here in response to the audio playing icon appearing when you set that pref is to tell people to not set random prefs.  I don't think we need to change our code to accommodate this pref.

If someone comes up with UX plans around how to expose a "muted by default" option for all audio coming out of Firefox, implementing the change is quite trivial, but using this pref isn't the right way.

Needinfo'ing Madhava since I don't know of anything better to do here.

Comment 6

[Hlsg]

Please see https://bugzil.la/1408062 and https://bugzil.la/1435513
https://bugzil.la/1435513 is not exactly a duplicate, as in it I'm proposing an UI element separate from the per-tab audio toggle, and I believe that the UI team should consider merging these functionalities in a single element, which will probably be required by https://bugzil.la/1408062 as part of the tab hiding agenda.

Comment 7

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

(In reply to :Gijs from comment #2)
> I'll morph the bug into what you actually want, though I don't think we're
> currently considering doing anything along these lines - it feels like
> something that should be done with an add-on.

FWIW, this add-on seems to provide this functionality: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mute-tab-webextension/