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A comment on Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Playing Media in Browsers. Parent comment

Re:Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Play... by LamaOfRuin on Sunday November 13, 2016 @09:18AM (#12943399)
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.
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Re:Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Play... by JadeNB on Sunday November 13, 2016 @10:49AM (#12943863)
> > 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?

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Re:Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Play... by xenadu02 on Sunday November 13, 2016 @01:03PM (#12944600)
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.
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Re:Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Play... by JadeNB on Sunday November 13, 2016 @02:36PM (#12945172)
> 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.

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Re:Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Play... by tempestn on Monday November 14, 2016 @05:29AM (#12948789)
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...

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Re:Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Play... by Buge on Sunday November 13, 2016 @04:31PM (#12945786)
I like it when I open a youtube page and it automatically plays.
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Re:Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Play... by biot on Sunday November 13, 2016 @06:10PM (#12946314)
Easily handled with a prompt:

  "This site is attempting to auto-play media"
  [Allow once] [Always allow site] [Block site]
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Re:Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Play... by Eridrus on Sunday November 13, 2016 @11:53AM (#12944201)
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.

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Re:Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Play... by Too on Monday November 14, 2016 @04:37AM (#12948614)
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.
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Re:Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Play... by rtpg on Sunday November 13, 2016 @10:55AM (#12943896)
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.
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Re:Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Play... by jimmaswell on Sunday November 13, 2016 @11:35AM (#12944104)
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.
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Re:Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Play... by JadeNB on Sunday November 13, 2016 @11:01AM (#12943934)
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.)
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Re:Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Play... by jimmaswell on Sunday November 13, 2016 @11:30AM (#12944080)
This was the use case for frames.
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Re:Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Play... by Navarr on Sunday November 13, 2016 @11:54AM (#12944211)
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?

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Re:Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Play... by sesqu on Sunday November 13, 2016 @02:52PM (#12945247)
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.
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Re:Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Play... by random_rr on Sunday November 13, 2016 @11:26AM (#12944057)
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.
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