This was also true of popups. It still is. Yet it became such a scourge from people misusing it that browsers interested in providing their users the best experience provided an option to disable them (where we are now with auto-play) and eventually turned on that option by default. Pop-up blocking became a feature users would switch browsers for, forcing all vendors to add it. If advertisers continue to use auto-play and ridiculously large animated gifs the way they've been going, I suspect it's only a matter of time before this potentially useful feature also defaults to off.

> > Some websites have legitimate use for autoplaying media. Some users (believe it or not) actually _like_ their videos autoplaying when they scroll through their Facebook feed or whatever media site they visit.

> This was also true of popups. It still is.

Is this analogy really correct, in the sense that there are legitimate, user-focussed cases for pop-ups? I know lots of web-sites want me to see pop-ups, and some (cough PeopleSoft cough) even think that it's the best way to display certain status notifications, but does any user like them?

Not only is the analogy correct, the problem has the same solution: require evidence of user intent. Pop ups work just fine when spawned as a result of a user clicking on a link. Videos can start playing when a user taps or clicks on them.

> Not only is the analogy correct, the problem has the same solution: require evidence of user intent.

You make a very good point, but I'm not totally sure that it is the complete answer. I agree that it is clearly right for my browser to display pop-ups, and play videos, when I indicate my intent that it do so. My question was not whether that should happen, but whether any users want pop-ups as the method of interaction (or information display). Although I definitely want, in an operational sense, PeopleSoft to show me a pop-up when I click on the relevant button, because that's the only way to get to certain information, what I really want, in an aspirational sense, is for it to display the information in some other way, without a pop-up at all.

The ability to launch popups (on user click) is vital for our "Direct Results"[1] option at searchtempest.com, although admittedly that's quite an edge case.

http://support.searchtempest.com/hc/en-us/articles/205166847...

I like it when I open a youtube page and it automatically plays.

Easily handled with a prompt:

  "This site is attempting to auto-play media"
  [Allow once] [Always allow site] [Block site]

Right now, I don't think people generally want popups, but they became popular well before AJAX.

Pop-ups that open new tabs are still useful on sites where you're unlikely to want to navigate away and are prone to the same abuses.

That is pop-up on click, a user action. I don't think people despise that as much as pop-up at any random time while you are reading stuff.

A good use case is linking to a FAQ item in a form. You don't want to navigate away, but the item is usually small, so a pop-up in a small window is good.

A frame that displays the item you clicked on on the right, with the faq links on the left, would be great for this use case. The only thing I think was wrong with frames was that the main url didn't point to the frame you had open, like url#framename.

Why not have some sort of CSS / JavaScript trickery so that the FAQ item can be displayed or hidden without any sort of pop-up at all? Anyone who browses with JavaScript off is tech-savvy enough to open up the page in a new tab. (Anyway, for me, this definitely falls under the "web site thinks it's the best UI; I don't", but I recognise that this is almost by definition a matter of personal opinion.)

This was the use case for frames.

And that still works today.

The types of popups that are blocked are the ones that open automatically.

Is there a good use case for automatic popups?

Well, media players and help sections are decent use cases for popups. Opening external links in a new tab is also great. I've even played some browser-based games that used popups to minimize chrome, enable alt-tabbing and force a cookie reset.

Pop ups are awesome when they have content I want. They're a quick way to draw attention to something important while retaining the page they are on. These aspects of usefulness unfortunately apply to ad-infested pop ups.

Your Starbucks example is flawed. Starbucks employees don't barge into your office with a boombox playing at full volume and screaming at you about their latest drinks, then make you pay for the taxi that brought them there, simply because you opened an article about their new store in your area.

That's what autoplaying ads and videos on the web do: They catch you off guard with loud, annoying audio that you can't always just turn off, and if you're on mobile you're paying for the privilege with your data allowance. You didn't ask for it, it attacked you without warning.

> A call for browser vendors to implement some opt-in setting that does what you want would be much more realistic suggestion.

On this I agree with you entirely, and I think that's what the OP is actually asking for.

"barge into your office"? Seems to me when you visit someone's website, you're in their office, not the other way around.

I'm no fan of the auto-everything web, but I don't think your analogy here is sound.

Only if "their office" is out on the street in full view of the public, just like the rest of the web.

Since we're ripping this analogy to shreds anyway, let's take a different view: You call up Starbucks on the phone (i.e. visit their website) and request that they read you their new menu and describe to you their new store location (read: you click on the link with the info you wanted). Before they do as you asked, without warning they turn on a megaphone, point it to the receiver, and start playing a looping advertisement for a new Harry Potter line of toys. You didn't ask for that Potter nonsense, you're now deaf in that ear, everyone around you is looking at you funny, and you hang up the phone in disgust rather than wait through three iterations of toy pimping just to find out some simple information they claimed to have on their info line (website). Then, on your next phone bill you see a per-minute charge for that call (as in, they used your metered data to spam you).

I am not so sure any more, since more and more stuff is calculated on the client, fetched from many different servers by the client and assembled in the client. In fact the web page as we see it never exists on the main server (their office), it only exists in the client (our office).

Just a thought.

I like the taxi analogy.

I agree that doing away with the autoplay attribute on the video tag is probably not the right thing to do. It definitely has use cases.

However, I think it is completely reasonable to allow users to configure their browsers to not allow this behavior if they so desire. This may exist in some form in some browsers already, but it's definitely not accessible to the average user.

I think the ideal solution, for me at least, would be to treat autoplay the same way browsers treat the location API. When a website tries to use it, present a little notification that asks if it's alright. If a user is clearly visiting a video-centric website (youtube, vimeo, etc), they will probably click 'yes' to let that website autoplay in the future. The possible downside is that some users may not "understand" it, and get upset at the website for not autoplaying like they expect it to.

The core of the issue is that autoplay was on by default in the first place. Turning it off cannot be clean, no matter how it's done.

Indeed. Many websites have legitimate use-cases for auto-playing video. I don't want to click again on a youtube video to make it play.

There are definitely legitimate use cases for autoplaying media. Youtube would be annoying if you had to click play on every page.

I think Facebook's implementation strikes just the right balance. The video autoplays when it's in view, but without audio. If you want audio, you can click the play button to view it properly.

This seems like a good setting if the preference varies.

It may not be annoying for you, but it is for others. Once I opened a link from a website, basically it's some ad, and what I got is a porn video playing aloud. What would have happened, if you're parents were beside you and it's a public place? You maybe from someother country, where people wouldn't mind way too much.

But if you are from India, then all balls would be on you, and that would be the most embarrassing moment in your life.

> What you are really asking is for Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS to make a better web _for you_.

Well, what's wrong with that?