980939 - Implement click-to-play for ALL VIDEO

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Audio/Video: Playback, enhancement)

Description

[Hubert Figuiere [:hub]]

Notable website:

Youtube
MacWorld
Huffington Post

Implement a video auto-play over HTML5 either a main content (Youtube), Side content (Huff Post) or worse as "pimp my other content elsewhere" - advertising (MacWorld)

So far I was protected since I do not have Flash, but now that they adopt HTML5, we need a new protection against these abuses.

Comment 1

[Michael]

Are you asking for click-to-play for each video element or for click-to-play for each site (like how "Ask to Activate" works on plugins)?

Comment 2

[tofumatt [:tofumatt]]

Surely this is something an add-on could handle better? I don't see why we should prevent the ability of autoplaying video for sites like YouTube.

Comment 3

[Dave Garrett]

(In reply to tofumatt [:tofumatt] from comment #2)
> Surely this is something an add-on could handle better?

Addon discoverability is very low and click-to-play is a fairly basic feature that makes a large usability improvement.

> I don't see why we
> should prevent the ability of autoplaying video for sites like YouTube.

I don't see why autoplay is allowed by default at all. It only makes sense in a single tab browsing use-case. Autoplay greatly inhibits the ability to navigate using multiple tabs as it allows video and audio to start playing in the background without user consent.

Comment 4

[Mark Hammond [:markh] [:mhammond]]

(In reply to Dave Garrett from comment #3)
> I don't see why autoplay is allowed by default at all. It only makes sense
> in a single tab browsing use-case. Autoplay greatly inhibits the ability to
> navigate using multiple tabs as it allows video and audio to start playing
> in the background without user consent.

I'd imagine that preventing autoplay from background elements (and starting them when it becomes foreground) would be an easier sell than blanket click-to-play.

Comment 5

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

I suspect "blanket click-to-play", at least as an option, would be a welcome feature to a significant number of users. (See, for example, http://itreallyisupsidedown.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/an-open-letter-to-mozilla.html.)

We could expose an option in the Preferences/Content screen (along with "Block pop-up windows") such as "Always require click-to-play for video/audio", or "Never auto-play video/audio content".

Whether to make such an option enabled or disabled by default is a further question, but I think making it (readily) available to users would be a useful step forward.

Comment 6

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

It wouldn't necessarily have to be "click-to-play", it could be "the page asks to play()". Like the popup blocker that--if the appropriate user-accessible-through-ui options are set--tells you the site would like to play media and gives you the option to play it, ignore it, or remember your choice for that site. In general we won't know what the "play" element in a user's video controls are and mapping any click anywhere on the video to .play() might lead to bad results that conflict with the controls the page is trying to implement.

bug 659285 seems to be looking at this from that broader perspective. It also recently picked up an assignee so maybe we can dupe this one there?

Comment 7

[Hubert Figuiere [:hub]]

I like the popup blocker style suggested in bug 659285. As long was we don't whitelist anything. The first offender is youtube, and they need to be hammered down. Rick-rolling anyone?

We can have this bug track the other and whatever other sub bug is needed ; I have no strong feeling if bug 659285 is clearly to BLOCK auto-plays and this is marked as dupe.

Comment 8

[Anthony Jones (:ajones, :kentuckyfriedtakahe, :k17e)]

This is covered by media.autoplay.enabled form the platform perspective. Anything outside of that needs to be driven from the Firefox perspective.