1587038 - Persist default volume for raw media files

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Toolkit :: Video/Audio Controls, enhancement)

Description

[Synetech]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/77.0.3865.90 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

1. Navigate to a direct, non-embedded, media file (i.e., to the media file itself, e.g., "http://example.com/foobar.mp3", not a page containing a media file).
2. Adjust volume.
3. Navigate to a media file (the same or different, it doesn't matter).

Actual results:

The volume always defaults to 100% and blasts sound, often unexpectedly.

Expected results:

The volume should play at the volume that was set.

Issue 497164 mentions this, but I can't tell if it was for a direct media file or an embedded one since the example seems to have changed since then.

Regardless, this is extremely frustrating because it always defaults to full-blast which is shocking, embarrassing, and potentially even lethal (some people have died from being startled).

The argument against a default setting in the other issue was that some people may forget that they muted it and be confused which is an absurd argument. Why should everybody be inconvenienced and frustrated because a handful of people don't know how to use their computers? It's better to have them learn to used the browser than to ruin the browser for everybody else. ¬_¬

Besides, the media-viewer does have controls for all files now, so that excuse doesn't apply anymore.

There are two related about:config variables, media.default_volume and media.volume_scale. I can't tell what the latter does, but the former sets the default volume for the whole browser, including embedded media. This is okay, but it's not good enough because it affects embedded media and is hidden away. Firefox needs to persist the volume setting when directly viewing media files; that would be easier and more convenient for users.

It should be easy to implement too, since it would only entail checking if the URI is a page or a media file and checking a single variable to get the default volume and setting that variable when changed.