Disable Video Autoplay

User Help for Seamonkey and Mozilla Suite
Post Reply
User avatar
fixit7
Posts: 233
Joined: May 19th, 2015, 3:11 pm

Disable Video Autoplay

Post by fixit7 »

How do I Disable Video Autoplay in Seamonkey?

I already have Shockwave Flash set to ask to activate.

Thanks.
Anonymosity
Posts: 8779
Joined: May 7th, 2007, 12:07 pm

Re: Disable Video Autoplay

Post by Anonymosity »

There is a good extension that will toggle autoplay (since some video sites actually need it).
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/seamon ... startless/
User avatar
Frank Lion
Posts: 21173
Joined: April 23rd, 2004, 6:59 pm
Location: ... The Exorcist....United Kingdom
Contact:

Re: Disable Video Autoplay

Post by Frank Lion »

fixit7 wrote:How do I Disable Video Autoplay in Seamonkey?

I already have Shockwave Flash set to ask to activate.

Thanks.
Put about:config in the addressbar and press Enter.

Search for media.autoplay.enabled right click and toggle to false.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)
.
User avatar
James
Moderator
Posts: 27999
Joined: June 18th, 2003, 3:07 pm
Location: Made in Canada

Re: Disable Video Autoplay

Post by James »

The media.autoplay.enabled preference can cause issues on some sites and people may forget they have it set.
Bug 1231886 - media.autoplay.enabled set to false is breaking user experience (videos won't play)

A alternate preference to try instead is to try toggling the media.block-play-until-visible Preference to true as it stops media from auto-starting in background tabs.

Another Preference is media.block-autoplay-until-in-foreground
User avatar
Frank Lion
Posts: 21173
Joined: April 23rd, 2004, 6:59 pm
Location: ... The Exorcist....United Kingdom
Contact:

Re: Disable Video Autoplay

Post by Frank Lion »

James wrote:The media.autoplay.enabled preference can cause issues on some sites ...
...some sites being one single site on the whole Net, i.e. Vimeo, which has no good vids anyway.

But yeah, people can do those media.block prefs instead, if they want.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)
.
User avatar
fixit7
Posts: 233
Joined: May 19th, 2015, 3:11 pm

Re: Disable Video Autoplay

Post by fixit7 »

Thanks for all the help.
Lemon Juice
Posts: 788
Joined: June 1st, 2006, 9:41 am

Re: Disable Video Autoplay

Post by Lemon Juice »

Frank Lion wrote:
James wrote:The media.autoplay.enabled preference can cause issues on some sites ...
...some sites being one single site on the whole Net, i.e. Vimeo, which has no good vids anyway.
Not really, I've seen many sites broken when media.autoplay.enabled is set to false - by broken I mean not being able to play videos on demand, which means not being able to play at all. To make things worse, in many cases videos are still being downloaded when disabled with this pref, which results in waste of bandwidth.

From my perspective the heart of the problem lies in badly constructed HTML5 audio/video specification by w3c. In the specs there is no notion of "play on demand" and web sites (ab)use this fact. This is also the reason why there is still no browser extension that successfully makes HTML5 videos playable on demand and works on all kinds of sites. Sites can simply start playing videos automatically by executing javascript but if a browser does not play it (because playback is disabled with a pref) then the site has no obligation to offer a button to play it - and it wouldn't even work in a browser with disabled playback. Forcing click-to-play is easy for unscripted videos with a simple <video> html tag but if a player is heavily scripted then the task becomes very complicated. Extensions can try targeting players on most popular sites and this may work to some extent as long as the extension is updated when player scripts are changed.

The specs should be built from ground up to support click-to-play. When a page executes a script to start playback the browser shouldn't offer any guarantee that the playback begins and when - it may begin immediately or at any later time depending on browser setting. If a user sets his browser for click-to-play then the browser should display a play button that can't be hidden by any page's css or js. Sure, this wouldn't make click-to-play work in all sites as I'm sure some of them would find tricks to implement "either enable autoplay in your browser or we won't show you any content" but at least this would make click-to-play a common feature supported by standards and there would be far fewer sites where it would not work - and going further, if all major browsers shipped with click-to-play enabled by default then most sites would not attempt any malicious tricks since they would risk not being reachable by the majority audience - they would simply have to accept click-to-play.

In other words - sites abuse audio and video autoplay because they can - because the browsers and the w3c specs simply allow them.
Anonymosity wrote:There is a good extension that will toggle autoplay (since some video sites actually need it).
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/seamon ... startless/
Thanks, I've been waiting for an extension like this. It's very simple and has its limitations because of the issues I mentioned above but at least it allows me to quickly toggle auto-play on and off.
*** SeaMonkey — weird name, sane interface, modern bowels ***
Mouse Gestures for SeaMonkey/Firefox
Convert Fx and TB extensions to SeaMonkey
User avatar
Frank Lion
Posts: 21173
Joined: April 23rd, 2004, 6:59 pm
Location: ... The Exorcist....United Kingdom
Contact:

Re: Disable Video Autoplay

Post by Frank Lion »

Lemon Juice wrote:Thanks, I've been waiting for an extension like this.
Waiting? I was using a Vimeo toggle button over 5 years ago! I just used the Custom Buttons ext and added some code for it (all pref toggling code is pretty simple because, er, all it's doing is toggling a pref)

I stopped using it a good while ago after realising that Vimeo was rubbish on vids and that other site vids that insisted on autoplay only ever showed vids of someone taking a knee or the gory details of some NASCAR guy taking it far too wide on the first turn or the like.

I suppose the Net has to cater for all tastes, or even those with no taste at all, but there really is a surprisingly large amount of total dross on it.

***

I just figure if a guy comes here and asks a simple one line question, then they are probably after a simple answer and don't need me standing at the door, like Columbo, going 'Just one more thing..' over and over again.

So, if I seem 'concise' at times, as has been (often) suggested at times, it's usually because I'm either busy or, more likely, I'm tailoring my reply to the needs, as I judge them to be, of the person I'm replying to.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)
.
Lemon Juice
Posts: 788
Joined: June 1st, 2006, 9:41 am

Re: Disable Video Autoplay

Post by Lemon Juice »

Frank Lion wrote:
Lemon Juice wrote:Thanks, I've been waiting for an extension like this.
Waiting? I was using a Vimeo toggle button over 5 years ago! I just used the Custom Buttons ext and added some code for it (all pref toggling code is pretty simple because, er, all it's doing is toggling a pref).
Yes, I was waiting - but without caring much about the outcome... There are some things in life I care very little about - like a button to toggle autoplay. Therefore, I was too lazy to go as far as creating code for a custom button, just a bit too much effort. Finally, I find this extension and there it is - just install and use - which is the right amount of effort in this case!
*** SeaMonkey — weird name, sane interface, modern bowels ***
Mouse Gestures for SeaMonkey/Firefox
Convert Fx and TB extensions to SeaMonkey
User avatar
Frank Lion
Posts: 21173
Joined: April 23rd, 2004, 6:59 pm
Location: ... The Exorcist....United Kingdom
Contact:

Re: Disable Video Autoplay

Post by Frank Lion »

Lemon Juice wrote:
Frank Lion wrote:
Lemon Juice wrote:Thanks, I've been waiting for an extension like this.
Waiting? I was using a Vimeo toggle button over 5 years ago! I just used the Custom Buttons ext and added some code for it (all pref toggling code is pretty simple because, er, all it's doing is toggling a pref).
Yes, I was waiting - but without caring much about the outcome... There are some things in life I care very little about - like a button to toggle autoplay. Therefore, I was too lazy to go as far as creating code for a custom button, just a bit too much effort. Finally, I find this extension and there it is - just install and use - which is the right amount of effort in this case!
Fair enough. I was just surprised that you, as a guy who has a proven track record of code writing, hadn't ever found 5 minutes to write a pref toggle snippet. It really does only take that time.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)
.
Post Reply