I’ll admit it: I’m a tab fiend. I switched away from IE6 to Firefox all those years ago (when I was still a Windows user) for tabs. Tabs were, and still are the miracle of the modern internet. They allow you to open content and come back to it later.
In my case, that’s opening content in Google Reader that I might want to read in full later, or even post about. On a busy day, that can be as high as 40-50 tabs…which is also why I do my reading in Safari today, even if I do my posting and stats work in Firefox, Safari is more stable.
But I digress. The problem I have today is with audio. Sometimes I’ll open a tab (and they’re opened in the background, not upfront) and it will play music. Sometimes which ones are obvious, for example with auto-playing video. But many other times it’s not so obvious, and if you have dozens of tabs open, it’s hard to identify where the audio is coming from, if you can at all.
Numerous times lately I’ve just had to turn off sound because I couldn’t find the source, which is where browser makers come in. Please, please add a tab, or icon, or something to identify the source of audio on webpages. It’s all I ask, honestly (well aside from FF stability).
One thing I hate is not having the ability to turn down sound for even the browser. I hate Flash Games making noise when I'm listening to something. (And knowing me, its something important like a lecture). I wish I could individually turn off the sound for the browser.
I second that! I have the same problem (numerous tabs after RSS reading) and no way to track down which one (or more annoyingly, which two or three) are making noise. I hope browsers figure this out, or some kind Greasemonkey script writer comes up w/ a solution.
I experienced that many times and it has never been a problem to me. I suppose that you were opening a new tab, right? Wherein the tab is opened behind the tab that you're currently using. Okay, if I opened youtube and searched for a video, I click New Tab. then the video that I want to see is opened behind the tab I was looking at. Since youtube's video and sound automatically play, that's when I hear it playing.
http://www.autoglassguru.com/state-AZ.html
Nice idea but it is hard for it to be practical as the sound generally comes from a plugin and mostly that plugin is flash. A browser has mostly no idea what a plugin is up to so it doesn't have the information to provide to users.
The programming APIs for plugins (NPAPI for most, ActiveX for IE) could provide an interface for this functionality but plugin makers and browsers would then actually have to implement it.
As Adobe Flash is mostly the culprit maybe they (or some hacker) could provide a way to tack and mute flash instances.
I also think like this. As we know that to add an extra button for audio, there is not more and large complexity but it how much valuable…think once……………..
Not a bad idea!
I think browser Developers should target your suggestion.
Thanks for awaking them.
Absolutely, this has been irritating me for a long time.
Absolutely, I would also like to see tabs like that, I mean it often irritates me to look for the information, it would be great if we get everything under one button.
Emma
Absolutely, I would also like to see tabs like that, I mean it often irritates me to look for the information, it would be great if we get everything under one button.
Emma
Absolutely, I would also like to see tabs like that, I mean it often irritates me to look for the information, it would be great if we get everything under one button.
Emma
I couldn't agree more!
I'm trying to see if there's a way to identify the source of the audio now, which is how I stumbled across your blog!
You're absolutely right!