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Chrome Software Advertising Google Media Power

Chrome Beta Now Automatically Pauses Less Important Flash Content 98

Posted by Soulskill from the let's-hope-they-mean-ads dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Google today detailed a very interesting initiative in partnership with Adobe: The two have been working to make Flash content more power-efficient in Chrome. Available now in the browser's beta channel, Chrome will use less power by simply choosing to play less Flash content on the page. Here's how the feature works: Chrome beta will automatically pause Flash content that isn't "central to the webpage" while keeping central content playing without interruption. The company offers an obvious example: Animations on the side will be paused while the video you're trying to watch will be unaffected.
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Chrome Beta Now Automatically Pauses Less Important Flash Content More

Chrome Beta Now Automatically Pauses Less Important Flash Content

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  • Uninstalled Flash last week. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by danceswithtrees ( 968154 ) on Friday June 05, 2015 @07:58AM (#49847223)

    Can't say that I miss it.

    • I liked Flash when it was ported to Linux. Then Adobe closed the door. I stopped telling people to use it; HTML5 could do the job just a well. Now I use OpenGL and Java/C++. So I should use Flash again because?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ron_ivi ( 607351 )
      I think the noscript extension provides the best of both worlds.

      Flash doesn't load at all unless I explicitly click it -- but for handfulls of websites where I want it to play, I can set noscript to whitelist those.

  • Variation of a theme (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fustakrakich ( 1673220 ) on Friday June 05, 2015 @08:01AM (#49847259) Journal

    Tabs don't pre-load until I click on them. It would just be better if we can just turn off autoplay. But, advertisers... they make the rules

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ron_ivi ( 607351 )

      Tabs don't pre-load until I click on them.

      That sounds like a uniquely bad idea.

      The single most important reason I use tabs is to pre-load pages while I'm reading a different page.

      • Normally I did also, until the damn videos would start playing, and I couldn't the find the tab it was playing in. So, off it goes, minor inconvenience.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • Yes they all would play, that's why I quit pre-loading tabs until I click on them. The videos would start playing even on the tabs I wasn't looking at. Damn noise could wake the dead.

            There is no reason whatsoever for any video to autoplay.

            What Madison Avenue wants, Madison Avenue gets. It's just a money thing, that only they can understand.

  • when you have to actively start working on disabling content built on it

    • I wish someone would disable half of the crap on Slashdot's mobile site. It's virtually unusable on my iPod and frequently causes the Safari version of a crash ("there was a problem with this pageâ¦).

    • Depends on who your customers are...

      Back in the day, when lots of what we now take for granted was pretty much impossible in-browser unless you went Flash, Java, or were among the lost and the damned using ActiveX controls. At that time, Adobe still treated web devs as their customers, since that was substantially the case. They still weren't competent on security or anything, this is Adobe we are talking about; but there was at least the idea that it would be a good thing if Flash were something you cou

  • Throw Flash Under the Bus (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    So I gather dousing flash in gasoline and lighting it on fire, Allowing it to burn until it is nothing but a charred skeleton wasn't even considered?

  • We need this why? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pla ( 258480 ) on Friday June 05, 2015 @08:13AM (#49847335) Journal
    Wait - Does anyone not have click-to-play set as their default?

    Guess what, Google - you don't get to pick what I consider "important" content. I do.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by JimMcc ( 31079 )

      My guess is that this is intended for people who have no idea what preferences are, where to set them, or what they do. I don't think the average Slashdot user is the intended audience.

    • Yes. Many, many people.

    • Agreed. Flash is such a security risk on its own that it would be insane to allow it run by default. It should always be click-to-played or whitelisted for trusted sites.
    • They don't want to set click to play as their default because of YouTube. Just think of how many you'd piss off as that as your default. Hence the "smart" playback selection.

      • People would be pissed off that they'd have to manually start a Youtube video with a single click? I suppose it's theoretically possible, but they'd be immensely outnumbered by the people who want it the other way (no more searching down which tab just started blasting out sound).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jc42 ( 318812 )

      Wait - Does anyone not have click-to-play set as their default? Guess what, Google - you don't get to pick what I consider "important" content. I do.

      Well, yeah, I've done that when I can find the setting. But I need to do a lot of web testing, and have lots of browsers installed on my various test machines. With most of them, I can't find any such setting anywhere. This doesn't mean they don't have such controls, of course; it could just mean that I don't recognize whatever they call it. Terms like "click to play" don't seem to exist on any of them, and for the few that I know how to do it, they all use different terminology.

      So does someone have

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by pla ( 258480 )
        So if you think that everyone should have click-to-play set by default, you presumably know how to do this on every browser, or you know where there's a list of explanations. Can you give us a link to this list?

        TFA deals exclusively with Chrome. Chrome supports Click-to-play. I know where to change that setting in Chrome.

        (That said, I do have a plugin that does the same for FireFox, and beyond Chrome and FireFox, I don't care in the least what they do or don't support). :)

    • This whole problem is also solved by having adblock. Seriously, anyone who puts up with "animations on the side" needs to start blocking these.

    • I'm seeing an increasing number of websites sticking transparent div elements over flash so that you can't click on them in flashblock. I've got to assume it's an effort to devalue flashblock and make people turn it off. (It causes me to close the web site in question, unless I absolutely have to use it, in which case I fire up firebug and delete the element)

      • Adblockers usually also have a "block element" option (uBlock has "Element Picker" when you click on its options) which gets rid of those types of overlays quite handily.

  • news site will redesign... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tekrat ( 242117 ) on Friday June 05, 2015 @08:34AM (#49847499) Homepage Journal

    So now the flash Ads will be centered on the webpage, and the story you're trying to read will be a sidebar. Not that that's not already happening. Every damn news website is now nothing but a crapfest with a paragraph of story.

  • Adsense (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JimDarkmagic ( 1339257 ) on Friday June 05, 2015 @08:43AM (#49847589)

    Adsense and Doubleclick must not use flash ads...or they will make an exception for their ad platforms.

  • HTML5 Adverts (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tomxor ( 2379126 ) on Friday June 05, 2015 @08:46AM (#49847613)

    I actually quite like that most of the highly animated CPU hogging adverts are written in flash, because i can easily disable all of them.

    What concerns me is when those advertisers are finally forced to start writing them in javascript + Canvas / SVG / WebGL... yes it's possible to write efficient animated HTML5 content, request animation frame etc... but that's not forced, you think advertisers give a shit about that stuff? they will use everything at their disposal once flash is considered completely obsolete. Look forward to unsandboxed memory leaks and poorly optimised animation directly in your page... yay

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by halivar ( 535827 )

      Look forward to unsandboxed memory leaks and poorly optimised animation directly in your page... yay

      So you're saying we're going back to GeoCities circa '98?

      • Cool. I loved Geocities! However, I recently found out, much to my shock and horror, that modern browsers no longer support the blink tag. :(

    • Worse, they might do some WebGL stuff. Depending on your graphics card or driver this causes various levels of lock ups, from browser freeze (complete or in a favorable case corrupt rendering and you can close the page), X11 session freeze that you can kill by ctrl-alt-backspace or ctrl-alt-f1, or X11 server locked up so bad it doesn't take keyboard input anymore and you have to hit the reset button.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      What concerns me is when those advertisers are finally forced to start writing them in javascript + Canvas / SVG / WebGL... yes it's possible to write efficient animated HTML5 content, request animation frame etc... but that's not forced, you think advertisers give a shit about that stuff? they will use everything at their disposal once flash is considered completely obsolete. Look forward to unsandboxed memory leaks and poorly optimised animation directly in your page... yay

      Well, your browser has direct co

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tomxor ( 2379126 )

        Well, your browser has direct control of that stuff, so it can easily make it also click-to-play and other things.

        The browser has direct control of globally determining what is allowed in that page. You cannot click to play HTML5 adverts because the whole point is that they are part of the page... there is no rule for determining how ads are embedded into a page, so there is no reliable objective way of telling if that content is an advert or not, for instance attempting to implement a generic-global click to play WebGL content is just as likely to target your primary content as it is an ad.

        It's reasonable to argue how

  • >2015 >still not making click-to-play the default for all elements of all plugins Every browser is still exactly like IE6

  • I see Dice is prepared for this change. That's why their stinkin' Video Blights are in the middle of the page. It's a short step to have them play on load.

    • Ad block plus. I didn't even know there were advertisements on slashdot until recently. And today I learned that there's a thing called Video Blights somewhere on the pages too.

  • ... don't run *ANY* flash content on a page until a user has expressly allowed it to run.

    Which I believe is what adblock does. Pretty good at halting those annoying "autoplay" videos.

    Now if only they would just make a similar feature that could always strip the autoplay attribute from the html5 video tag unless you want to allow it for a page, that would be perfect.

  • I had this for ages (Score:4, Insightful)

    by penguinoid ( 724646 ) on Friday June 05, 2015 @10:20AM (#49848455) Homepage Journal

    AdBlock permanantly pauses Flash content that isn't "central to the webpage" while keeping central content playing without interruption.

    • I wish they'd do the same with animated gifs, they've come back in full force for ads. (Or perhaps this is already done but not in Safari?)

  • For any of my favourite sites that I see using Flash for video or audio, I feedback to them asking when they are moving to the HTML5 tags. If more people did that, maybe they would get the message?

    With the HTML5 video & audio tags, in addition to the WebAudio API, there is less and less reason to use Flash. Certainly there are obscure uses for Flash, but maybe obscure enough that not all of us will miss the plugin.

    • For any of my favourite sites that I see using Flash for video or audio, I feedback to them asking when they are moving to the HTML5 tags.

      I asked The Escapist a similar question, and the reply was to the effect "Subscribers have access to our entire library in high-quality HTML5. We accept major credit cards. Adobe Flash Player is required only for free viewing." (Source [escapistmagazine.com])

      • Odd that they would spread their resources between two technologies? May they just haven't updated their free site, since it didn't make financial sense?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tepples ( 727027 )

          Odd that they would spread their resources between two technologies?

          It sounded to me more like they consider Flash as a "secure" stream, priced like a stream, and HTML5 as a premium download, priced like a download.

  • According to a test by The Verge, this was pretty sorely needed: "The native Safari made the new Retina machine look good: 13 hours and 18 minutes. Google’s Chrome, on the other hand, forced the laptop to tap out at 9 hours and 45 minutes."

    http://www.theverge.com/2015/4... [theverge.com]

  • I guess they finally caught up to the idea that Progressive Insurance FMV in the sidebar equals dead battery and customer complaints.
  • Entering new terms and pressing the ENTER key used to work, now you have to move the mouse and click on the spyglass icon [imgur.com].

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by DescX ( 4012275 )

      I've noticed this as well. I can't be arsed to reproduce the behaviour, but killing my ad blocker and reloading the offending page did the trick -- on two separate google pages -- when keystrokes weren't registering at all. I expect there's a rule in my config that's a bit too aggressive about a JS resource; YMMV :).

  • Doesn't this violate Net Neutrality? Who is Chrome to say what's "less important"? Time for the FCC to kick in some doors and extract multi-million dollar settlements over this outrage.
  • i have tried this and it works perfectly if selecting the option. But what if the advertisers suffer, when Google blocks the flash contents [rtoz.org]?

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