493217 - add UI pref for media.autoplay.enabled

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: Preferences, defect)

Description

[Robert Kaiser]

The media.autoplay.enabled pref controls if we allow videos (or audio elements) to be automatically played, and we should give it the same exposure as the image animation pref, probably add it in UI prefs near to that one.

Comment 1

[Jens Hatlak (:InvisibleSmiley)]

(In reply to comment #0)
> The media.autoplay.enabled pref controls if we allow videos (or audio elements)
> to be automatically played, and we should give it the same exposure as the
> image animation pref, probably add it in UI prefs near to that one.

That would be under Privacy & Security > Images. Unless you want to rename that panel to Media I think that's a bad idea...

I'd put it under Appearance > Content, where we already have three checkboxes and lots of space left.

Comment 2

[Robert Kaiser]

Hmm, we have auto-image-resize in Appearance > Content, and other image stuff in privacy and security, that's also inconsistent.

I'd almost lean for renaming the images panel but then, neither looking images nor media autoplay is actually privacy/security. It looks like something's wrong there...

Maybe we should move the panel to appearance, rename it to media and move auto-resize there?

Ian, Neil, any opinions?

Comment 3

[[e-mail]]

Well, Privacy & Security also relates to blocking unwanted behaviour.
So, I wouldn't object to putting the autoplay preference there.
Nor would I object to renaming it to Media.
However, I think it should stay under Privacy and Security.

Comment 4

[Jens Hatlak (:InvisibleSmiley)]

(In reply to comment #2)
> I'd almost lean for renaming the images panel but then, neither looking images
> nor media autoplay is actually privacy/security. It looks like something's
> wrong there...

[It took me a moment to understand you probably meant "looping" ;-)]

I agree. I think it's been wrong to put looping images under Privacy & Security in the first place. It doesn't really matter that the pane is called Images, it's the main category that matters here.

> Maybe we should move the panel to appearance, rename it to media and move
> auto-resize there?

Instead move I'd say create a new one because I think Image Acceptance Policy is actually correctly put under Privacy & Security, it should stay there. Suggestion:

new pane Appearance > Media:
- move Loop groupbox from Privacy & Security > Images here
- move Resize checkbox from Appearance > Content here
- add new Autoplay checkbox

KaiRo, Neil, would you be OK with that?

Comment 5

[Robert Kaiser]

One panel with just 3 checkboxes and one with just the image blocking stuff sounds like just making things more complicated in navigation by adding a lot of whitespace, that's not ideal. We should try to reduce the number of panels where possible, not increase it just because. I'd rather go down the road Neil has described and add it to the privacy/images panel by renaming it to "media".

Comment 6

[Ian Neal]

(In reply to comment #4)
> new pane Appearance > Media:
> - move Loop groupbox from Privacy & Security > Images here
> - move Resize checkbox from Appearance > Content here
> - add new Autoplay checkbox
> 
Rather than a new panel could those three not just go/stay in Appearance > Content? (Though would mean changing at least one of the radiogroups to a drop down menu)
Not sure if there is enough space for a Media groupbox on all platforms but looks like there could be on windows and linux.

Comment 7

[Robert Kaiser]

(In reply to comment #6)
> Rather than a new panel could those three not just go/stay in Appearance >
> Content?

That would work and not add a panel, but make the remaining item in the images panel look kinda lonely :P

Comment 8

[Benoît]

Personally I like Jens Hatlak's solution best, because it makes more sense.

Comment 9

[Liam K.]

Shouldn't this be in toolkit/core so that Firefox and other Mozilla browsers support it, too?

Comment 10

[Jens Hatlak (:InvisibleSmiley)]

(In reply to comment #9)
> Shouldn't this be in toolkit/core so that Firefox and other Mozilla browsers
> support it, too?

This bug is about adding UI for a preference to the SeaMonkey Preferences window which is totally different from the Firefox Preferences dialog (or whatever it's called). There is no point in having discussions about where and how to put UI elements into differently set up windows of different products so please open a Firefox bug for this if you like, or Fennec or whatever, but one per product. Thanks.

Comment 11

[Edmund Wong (:ewong)]

Just a FYI, Bug #90837 offers a 'possible' solution (comment #2); but, 
Neil mentioned on IRC that it'd make the Privacy & Security -> Images 
mighty 'empty'.  Unless we change it to Multimedia which makes it even 
'weirder' within the Privacy & Security category.

Or have it as a separate category?

Comment 13

[Frank-Rainer Grahl (:frg)]

I discussed the pref with Ratty on irc two weeks ago. Its default is set to enabled and with Flash on the way out and html5 in more websites are now playing more or less annoying or bandwith taking videos by default. We think the pref should be set to false by default but the UI pref needs to be there.

rsx11m. Would that be a job for you?

Comment 14

[rsx11m]

I'll look into it, but there should be some consensus where it's supposed to go. To some extent I'd disagree that Privacy & Security > Media is the wrong place for this option. Consider a youtube video embedded in some web page; this indeed poses a privacy issue, given that you may not want youtube registering that you are watching that video for whatever reason (well, they may get that information by other means like 3rd-party cookies, but anyway).

By now, the Content prefpane is fairly full already. It could accommodate another checkbox for video auto-play, but not the full three radiobuttons of the Images prefpane. Another option might be to just move the pane into the Browser section, though strictly speaking it's not restricted to the Browser functionality as such (Mail & News certainly would be affected by the looping pref, but remote content is secured by yet another mechanism than for images, and embedded videos may be prevented by that too).

Also, judging from the discussion here, should the default for media.autoplay.enabled set to false?

Comment 15

[Frank-Rainer Grahl (:frg)]

Well the last comment was from 2012 so maybe we can find a consensus now. 
I am ok with Privacy and Security or browser but I would also prefer a new Media prefplane.

We might also need it to explicitly let the user turn on or off webm video because of bug 1279851 which crashes Seamonkey.

Maybe we can discuss it in todays status meeting.

Comment 16

[rsx11m]

(In reply to Frank-Rainer Grahl from comment #15)
> Well the last comment was from 2012 so maybe we can find a consensus now. 
> I am ok with Privacy and Security or browser but I would also prefer a new
> Media prefplane.

Another option might be to move Privacy & Security > Images to Advanced > Media, just underneath the Script & Plugins prefpane (which also contains quasi-security/privacy items such as toggling on and off certain JavaScript features or plugins as a whole).

> We might also need it to explicitly let the user turn on or off webm video
> because of bug 1279851 which crashes Seamonkey.

So, a separate checkbox for toggling the media.webm.enabled pref?
How about the other media types then?

Comment 17

[Frank-Rainer Grahl (:frg)]

>> So, a separate checkbox for toggling the media.webm.enabled pref?
>> How about the other media types then?

I just thought about it because its media and it causes a crash. bug 1279851 is unrelated to this one here but having a media prefplane would make it easier for other changes.

Comment 18

[rsx11m]

Looking at https://dxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/mozilla/modules/libpref/init/all.js#322 there are plenty of media.*.enabled prefs which should relate to the various video formats. Thus, we could add a checkbox for each of those if the default preference is available (i.e., support for it compiled into the build). But then, what are media.mediasource.*, media.navigator.*, etc.? Confusing.

Comment 19

[Ian Neal]

I am happy to go for Jens suggestion of Appearance -> Media

Comment 20

[Frank-Rainer Grahl (:frg)]

rsx11m, you indicated that you currently don't have time for the bug. I asked Bill if he can do it and he said yes. Because he no longer has a bugzilla account I am taking it as a placeholder fro him. Let me know if not ok.

Comment 21

[rsx11m]

Frg, Bill - sure, thanks. Updating the Help content will be a big chunk with the introduction of the new prefpane, but maybe that can still be taken care of during the 2.57 beta phase.

Comment 22

[Frank-Rainer Grahl (:frg)]

Attachment: 493217-media-prefs.patch

Patch from Bill. I tested an earlier one and asked for some string changes. This looks good now. 

The new media pane is almost empty now but we should fill it up with image and other stuff later.

Comment 23

[rsx11m]

Comment on attachment 8956586 [details] [diff] [review]
493217-media-prefs.patch

Looks good per visual assessment.

>+++ b/suite/locales/en-US/chrome/common/help/suite-toc.rdf
>+        <rdf:li> <rdf:Description ID="appearance_pref_media" nc:name="Media" nc:link="cs_nav_prefs_appearance.xhtml#media"/> </rdf:li>

I'm usually adding those also to help-index1.rdf and/or help-indexAZ.rdf though I'm not quite sure where exactly the current Help Viewer is using those (as a side effect, it may show up multiple times).

>+++ b/suite/locales/en-US/chrome/common/pref/pref-media.dtd
>+<!ENTITY pref.media.title                  "Media">
>+<!ENTITY mediaHTML5Preferences.label          "Audio/Video">

Nit: vertical alignment of the whitespaces would be nice.

>+<!ENTITY allowMediaAutoplay.label          "Enable autoplay of HTML5 media content">
>+<!ENTITY allowMediaAutoplay.accesskey      "A">

Either the accesskey should be "a" here (will match "En_a_ble" either way) or capitalize "Autoplay" if you want it to match the "A" rather than the first "a"

r=me with those addressed (and yes, some more options should be moved into it during beta)

Comment 24

[Frank-Rainer Grahl (:frg)]

Attachment: 493217-media-prefs.patch

Bill sent me a new patch which addressed the NITs. r+ from me too and r+ from rsx11m retained.

> I'm usually adding those also to help-index1.rdf and/or help-indexAZ.rdf though 
> I'm not quite sure where exactly the current Help Viewer is using those (as a 
> side effect, it may show up multiple times).

Imho dead as a doorstopper. Not displayed anywhere. Help is currently broken after the xul datasource removal. We should addrsss this when we fix the help viewer.

Comment 25

[Frank-Rainer Grahl (:frg)]

Attachment: 493217-media-prefs.patch

And now the right patch with r+ retained...

Comment 26

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/2c6f407415f2
Add an Appearances->Media preferences panel to permit confguring media.autoplay.enabled. r=rsx11m,frg

Comment 27

[Frank-Rainer Grahl (:frg)]

Target 2.53.1
https://gitlab.com/seamonkey-project/seamonkey-2.53-comm/-/commit/4cca4b9dc7103975fc5b5210317f167f7251a707