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Google Chrome IT Technology

Google Chrome 73 To Officially Support Multimedia Keys on Your Keyboard (zdnet.com) 47

Google Chrome 73, scheduled for release next month, will be the first version of Chrome that will officially support the multimedia keys that some users have on their desk and laptop keyboards, ZDNet reports. From the report: Support for multimedia keys will initially be available for Chrome on Chrome OS, macOS, and Windows, while support for Linux will come later (unspecified date). Users will be able to control both audio and video content played in Chrome, including skipping through playlists. Initial support is planned for multimedia keys such as "play," "pause," "previous track," "next track," "seek backward," and "seek forward." Key presses will be supported at the Chrome level, not the tab level, meaning that multimedia buttons will work regardless if the Chrome browser is in the operating system's foreground or background (minimized).
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Google Chrome 73 To Officially Support Multimedia Keys on Your Keyboard

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  • Winamp (Score:4, Interesting)

    by darkain ( 749283 ) on Friday February 08, 2019 @12:10AM (#58087720) Homepage

    I wrote the RMX plugin for Winamp to add multimedia key support there... like 20 years ago. Glad to see that Chome is a "modern" piece of software now!

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Fuck no. This means if you press volume down, both your OS and Chrome will each reduce their audio levels, thus reducing pornhub by twice the amount you wanted. If you have Chrome minimized and a media player open, pressing play will start both the media player and every youtube tab you have open. Pressing next will both switch video files and change the playlists on all those tabs as well.

    WTF is Google smoking? No other piece of software functions like this nor should they. Software is indeed getting

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Volume controls are not included in this API. Only play, pause, seekbackward, seekforward, previoustrack, nexttrack, and skipad.

      https://wicg.github.io/mediasession/

      Still a bad idea to grab the keys for the browser when it doesn't have focus, though.

    • I mean. if I were to press play now and all tabs would capture it - how many fucking ads do you think would start to run simultaneously?

      if I have focused the tab and the browser is focused, fine, whatever, use the buttons just the same as you use space bar, p etc keys.

      but don't fucking tell all the tabs that I just pressed play. it's a bad fucking idea. you would think it's a good idea, but it's not. it's only a good idea if you have spotify on some tab and possibly just some google docs open on other tabs.

      • I hate playlists. I usually open a few tabs with the videos I want to play on YouTube. If they implement this, it will interfere with the way I use YouTube and also with the way I use iTunes.

        Google are making a lot of dumbass decisions lately. I sure hope we can disable this bullshit.

  • by bjwest ( 14070 ) on Friday February 08, 2019 @12:41AM (#58087818)
    I prefer to have the keys adjust the volume on my system unless the player (browser, in this case) is in focus. Seriously, how is this a good thing? The browser shouldn't be intercepting system keystrokes when not in focus, and most definitely shouldn't be overriding my system preferences. Does this mean Chrome now knows every key I type, and is this hook only active if Chrome is running?
    • by Anonymous Coward

      Volume isn't part of this API. Just play, pause, seek, and skip.

      https://wicg.github.io/mediasession/

      But it still shouldn't grab those keys when the browser doesn't have focus. I don't want my pause key to toggle two different apps at the same time.

    • by CODiNE ( 27417 )

      Conspiracy theory time... they want YouTube to take over as a default media player for people over their locally installed media apps.

      • by bjwest ( 14070 )
        Youtube is a web site, not a multimedia application, there is no way it could provide that function. I could see them possibly wanting Chrome to take on such a role, but it'll be a cold day in hell before I'd let that happen on my system. I wouldn't even want Firefox to do that.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      I have the same concern, particularly with regards my MS Natural Ergonomic 4000 keyboard: I use the Mute key all the time for exactly what it does natively on Windows 7 (and did on XP too): mutes all audio on the system. If this functionality is implemented in the browser, what exactly happens? Does it mute the tab (something Chrome 71 already made a mess of [techdows.com])? Does it mute audio in the entire browser? And if it does either of those, is there a way to disable it (say, through chrome://flags)? Because if

  • This is super helpful because I have an IR remote control for my computer that sends these keypresses. The remote has been useless since Microsoft stopped supporting Windows Media Center Edition and I had to move all my streaming services to the browser. 3 years ago, I could turn on my TV with that remote, select a channel like Hulu, Netflix, etc, and pause/play/rewind with it. Fast forward 3 years and Microsoft dropped support for Windows MCE. So I had to go back to a keyboard and mouse to stream.

  • The way the article is written, it sounds like Chrome itself will be responsible for interpreting these keys, which sounds like the correct way to do it.
    Hopefully we can avoid Chrome sending information about your physical keyboard somewhere remote, which could be used for browser fingerprinting, etc.

  • by kbahey ( 102895 ) on Friday February 08, 2019 @01:17PM (#58090264) Homepage

    Chrome is just another example of the inner system syndrome.

    Just like systemd, it becomes bloated and has feature creep as it tries to take over and devour the functions of the platform it is running under.

    Now, wait for Chrome taking more and more features away from the operating system ...

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