
Google Chrome may soon get audio indicators to show you noisy tabs - Lightning
http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/02/25/google-chrome-may-soon-get-audio-indicators-to-show-you-noisy-tabs-keep-them-open-when-memory-runs-out/
======
jaredsohn
I wrote the MuteTab Chrome extension (<http://www.mutetab.com/>) and have been
following the development of this feature in Chrome's bug tracker.

The reason this feature hasn't existed is that Chrome (like all browsers other
than IE) would use just a single instance of Flash for all tabs so the browser
could not control the volumes independently nor tell which Flash instances
were playing sound or might ever play sound. You can read this explanation
from Chrome devs here:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/gdyun/iama_we_are_thre...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/gdyun/iama_we_are_three_members_of_the_google_chrome/c1mvh7c)

My understanding (just from reading comments in the bug tracker) is that
Google was able to get Adobe to cooperate with them and add some hooks so they
could keep track of the sounds for each Flash plug-in separately.

I was able to try this feature out in today's Canary build and it worked for
me on the two sites I tried it on: youtubedoubler.com and homestarrunner.com.

The URL chrome://media-internals is also interesting in that it will show an
entry for each plug-in instance browser-wide. Hopefully they will have a UI
element similar to this or like MuteTab so that a person can find the tab
making sound when they have a huge number of tabs open in multiple windows and
cannot see all of the audio indicators.

~~~
justinschuh
This is one of the benefits of our work to sandbox Flash. In order to support
the sandbox we had to broker out all IO and system access by porting to PPAPI.
So, this means that everything goes through Chrome's stack and we can control
it much like web content content. Unfortunately, this doesn't work for NPAPI
plugins since they don't go through Chrome's stack.

------
simonsarris
This is more exciting than half of the features in HTML5.

~~~
DeepDuh
Only if it works reliably though. I wonder whether they can make it work with
plugins.

Maybe you'd have to get a hook with some platform specific OS API that tells
you when sound is playing (does this even exist though)? You could then match
this to user interactions within the browser - did the user click inside my
browser window when the event started? Then it's probably happening within
that tab and I'm gonna show him that animation. False positives wouldn't be
very harmful here, so you could let that slip.

~~~
pablasso
Safari won't run any flash animation until you actually have the tab active
and is pretty reliable. I'll be happy if they do that.

~~~
sigkill
I've never run Safari and I find this interesting. So if the tab is say, torn
apart and put on a second monitor (which is visible), but you're working on
another tab, does it literally pause the animation halfway?

~~~
Tyr42
I'm pretty sure it's just starting the animation.

~~~
andyhmltn
Can confirm this. It was a good feature when using youtube. I usually search
for something then shift+click about 4-5 links and watch them one by one. In
chrome you have to go into each on of those tabs and pause the video to avoid
a clusterf*ck of different sounds. With safari it seems to do it
automatically.

~~~
sovok
The "Stop Autoplay for Youtube" Extension helps with that:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stop-autoplay-
for-...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stop-autoplay-for-
youtube/lgdfnbpkmkkdhgidgcpdkgpdlfjcgnnh?hl=en-GB)

------
dbcooper
Firefox bug for this:

<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=486262>

~~~
gojomo
I would also love a simple indicator of which tabs are 'busy' consuming cycles
or generating garbage, so I know which tabs to kill first to get back to
acceptable performance. (Perhaps even just a rough indicator of how many
setTimeout()s are originating from a page would be enough.)

~~~
justinschuh
Use the Chrome Task Manager. You can get to it via the Tools menu, or a
keyboard shortcut (shift+esc on Windows).

~~~
gojomo
s/love/love in Firefox/

...as I meant to imply by replying under an FF issue.

But speaking of Chrome, I'd prefer the activity indicator in the tabs
themselves... mapping the Task Manager names to my many tabs distinguishable
only by not-necessarily-unique favicons is a pain.

------
mike_esspe
If you are excited with this feature, you should probably try "click to play"
for plugins.

~~~
k-mcgrady
The main use I have for the new Chrome feature wouldn't be to find out where
audio was playing that I hadn't started, it would be to find out which tab was
playing audio if I had lots of YouTube tabs open and I couldn't remember which
one I had played.

------
speeder
Finally, a way to know what stupid portfolios have automatic music so I can
close them without even looking and thus jot being tempted to hire people that
do that.

~~~
camus
that's why you need to hire me ! i dont.

------
moccajoghurt
I hear a lot of people complaining about that very often. I can't remember the
last time I had sound in my browser without my knowledge. Maybe it's because
most people don't use adblocker?

I have no clue.

------
SmileyKeith
Isn't the fact that we're all so excited by this hampered by the fact that it
sucks that Chrome automatically starts youtube videos when you open the tab
and that's the only reason we need this.

~~~
jaredsohn
Use Chrome's "click to play" feature or extensions such as Flashblock or "Stop
Autoplay" if this is your problem. This feature is more useful generally.

~~~
roryokane
Links to extensions that stop autoplay:

for Chrome – extension “Stop Autoplay for YouTube”
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stop-autoplay-
for-...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stop-autoplay-for-
youtube/lgdfnbpkmkkdhgidgcpdkgpdlfjcgnnh?hl=en-GB)

for Firefox – user script “YouTube Auto Buffer & Auto HD & Remove Ads”
<http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/49366>

~~~
mehrzad
Youtube Center is probably miles ahead of both of those.

------
deepGem
So I wanted to put together some rudimentary search abilities to our
application and I installed solr and all that. I wanted to use dynamic queries
and found a way to get dynamic queries working. All thanks to Google. This
perhaps took less than a day.

However, the search results were not what I was expecting. Searching 'fname +
lname' would return all records with the lname field. No amount of Googling
helped and I'm still stuck. I started googling by using phrases such as
'dynamic query not returning results in solr'. When the results didn't solve
my problem I got more specific. 'Dynamic query solr with relative boosts not
returning results'. No luck. I am learning all about Solr, the schema, eDisMax
query processor and all the other good stuff but am not finding any
resolutions. Also this process is very exhausting.

I have found this kind of learning to be not stick in memory. Meaning -
nothing sits in memory. So tomorrow if an interviewer asks anything about Solr
setup - I'll have no answers, or if I have to setup Solr again - I'll have to
follow the Google route or follow a manual. Not sure if this is effective but
I'd be comfortable having stuff in my memory rather than depend on Google for
a majority of my tasks.

------
preavy
BBC Programme pages with embedded iPlayer change the title of the page to
contain a ▶ (play symbol) when the content is playing.

E.g. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01qrn4y>

Perhaps this is common but I hadn't seen it until recently.

EDIT: wanted to add that this means you can see that the page is 'playing',
but it doesn't work if you pin the tab in Chrome.

------
j45
Great news. An indicator for CPU usage would be great too.

~~~
alan_cx
I would love that too. Blows my mind sometimes how much CPU some pages or
sites use. One of my kids plays Moshi Monsters, and that seems to challenge
the CPU more than even Far cry 3. Which to me is absurd. I suppose that would
be something to do with MM not using the GPU?

So yeah, a CPU indicator in the tab could be handy.

~~~
Aardwolf
Moshi Monsters must use some very realistic monster fur rendering if it's
heavier than Far cry 3 ;)

~~~
alan_cx
Dunno mate. But I do wish I could hunt and skin the little buggers, like in
FC3!!!

------
zitterbewegung
I am excited about this feature. Its really useful when you have tabs that
autoplay some sound and you are hunting around to close that tab. Also, if you
use grooveshark or some other music service and its in the browser.

------
cm3
Firefox alternative I personally prefer: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/suspend-backg...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/suspend-background-tabs/)

------
wavesounds
Thank you google! I was just thinking about this problem the other day and was
even contemplating trying to build something myself but then realized I
probably just shouldn't have so many tabs open.

------
podperson
Good idea but:

How about visual indicators of CPU-burning tabs, especially when in the
background?

How about a ctrl-C that kills all JavaScript executing in the foreground page
(or something)? In my experience Chrome is good for three infinite loops or
similar bugs before it needs to be restarted (manually process killed in
Windows) while Firefox is pretty much dead after one. Isn't Chrome the "one
thread per tab" browser? Why is it so hard to kill JavaScript when debugging?

~~~
bluetidepro
The CPU feature already exists. Check out the Chrome Task Manager:
[http://googlechrometutorial.com/google-chrome-other-
settings...](http://googlechrometutorial.com/google-chrome-other-
settings/Google-chrome-task-manager.html)

------
nsp
I found a chrome extension a few months ago that does a lot of this. It's
called MuteTab and bills itself as 'browser-wide granular sound management for
chrome'. It's not perfect with flash, but makes a huge difference.
<http://www.mutetab.com/>

EDIT: here's the github - <https://github.com/PhilGrayson/MuteTabs>

~~~
jaredsohn
That is not the github. That project is "MuteTabs" which is different than
MuteTab.

------
sp332
If you're curious about the HTML5 version of YouTube, you can opt-in at
<https://youtube.com/html5>

~~~
mattparcher
Definitely worth checking out. Unfortunately, HTML5 YouTube players seem to
start playing automatically, so I can’t just open links to YouTube videos in
background tabs.

I look forward to a setting (or simply changing the default for non-active
windows) to disable autoplay.

~~~
sp332
The Flash version of YouTube auto-plays for me, so it's about the same.

------
fnordfnordfnord
>>This change would presumably also be very useful for instantly recognizing
which tab is annoyingly blaring sound when you have countless tabs open.

Fantastic, I've wanted this feature for years; and counting browser tabs is
easy. FYI, This isn't my feed, just some public one I found.
<https://cosm.com/feeds/63631>

------
jv-
I like the idea but hope that they do not use the current implementation. A
moving "favicon" will add visual clutter.

------
tyroneschiff
Another example of this can be seen in the Web Speech API
(<http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/demos/speech.html>). You will need
Chrome Canary in order to test.

I'm currently building a voice-to-text transcriber using the Web Speech API.

------
ivanhoe
Sounds can be annoying, but the top problem for me in Chrome are still
accidental clicks on close button when there's lot of tabs open. A simple
option to hide the close buttons on all inactive tabs would save a day, but I
guess it's not "challenging" enough feature for Google engineers...

~~~
jaredsohn
This isn't what you asked for, but you can unclose a tab by pressing Ctrl-
Shift-T

~~~
mistercheese
Or in the new tab window in the bottom right there is "Recently Closed" where
you can unclose tabs and groups of tabs.

------
re
Multiple people have pointed out that Chrome has click-to-play for plugins.
Great! But now that new HTML5 features (<video>/<audio>/Web Audio API) are
widely available and ripe for abuse, will we have any options for disabling
autoplay for those?

------
jcomis
Happy to see this. I frequently keep a ton of tabs open and hate being
startled by a random one making noise through an ad. In Fact, about a year ago
I wrote a sticky note to myself to make this as an extension for a side
project. Never did get around to it...

------
rplacd
It's working in Canary for me, even in NaCL Flash (I wonder how many layers of
abstraction implementing _that_ had to break through) - it can tell you when
music's playing and stopped. I'm not sure how far of a leap an EQ display is,
though.

------
primitur
Great, yet another feature that should be being implemented by the OS VENDOR,
intead being implemented in a non-standardized manner by an APP DEVELOPER.

See kids, this is what happens when your OS vendors decide that its more
important to add shiny to their products than it is to fix deep architectural
problems. In this case, that problem is that the AUDIO API's do not already
have a native way to add this indicator, anywhere in the OS ..

IF there were a real Digital Audio Mixer implemented in your average Consumer
OS, then we'd have per-app audio controls natively being included in such a
Mixer interface .. however, the OS vendors have decided its more fun to make
shiny things than actually .. you know .. provide valuable OS services.

Color me grumpy. It sucks that the Google Chrome team are having to implement
this..

~~~
Aardwolf
What do you mean? A browser knows which of its tabs are doing what, the OS has
no idea of the concept of tabs in one browser.

~~~
primitur
Every audio stream in the OS should be backed up with an OS-based Mixer
control, is my point. We had it in BeOS and now it seems .. its finally
possible in Win7 .. but yeah .. these aren't the only OS's around to run
Chrome on ..

~~~
Aardwolf
So if you have 50 tabs open, the OS should expose 50 audio sliders
somewhere??? How will you know which one is for which tab? Also, isn't it
better to be able to CLOSE that tab rather than letting it continue play audio
and just mute it?

~~~
primitur
If you have one channel in the system audio mixer for every channel that the
system is playing then yes: you can just see what channel is active and mute
it. Like on any old mixing desk.

------
crazygringo
I wonder if this has anything to do with the Google version of Flash (called
"Pepper") that Chrome now includes -- if that will be used as a special hook
or something. Or if there's another way to do it.

~~~
justinschuh
For Flash it does. Since Pepper plugins use our system/IO stack we can handle
them much the same way we do normal web content.

------
matt_heimer
While I'll be glad for the audio indicators why not just mute every tab by
default? Any user interaction on a page would unmute that tab.

Can I also get a bandwidth/data transfer rate indicator per tab too?

~~~
pestaa
I often listen to Grooveshark or Youtube on an invisible tab.

------
chj
Sweet. It would be better if we can mute it by a single click.

------
DigitalSea
If this works reliably, what a feature! I've been wondering for years why
browsers didn't show you what tabs were making noise, I'm glad it's a reality
now.

------
ramanujam
<http://www.mutetab.com/> is a chrome extension that solves this problem but
in a different manner.

------
k_bx
Firefox lazy-load is still better. Also, Ubuntu's future integration with
audio-menu also (why wasn't it done on browser-level?).

------
ponyous
I always wondered why they don't integrate Play/pause in tab if you are on
YouTube page - since Google is owner of both.

------
ypeterholmes
Even better would be a play/pause button... or is that not feasible? I'm not
so familiar with browser development.

~~~
president
Perhaps a mute/unmute would be more feasible.

~~~
derefr
Or a per-tab volume control. Volume control for HTML5 videos, games, etc. has
always seemed to me like something that belongs in the browser chrome, not
inside the tab itself.

(Really, this is another way to say, "I'm a lazy HTML5 developer and I think
having to create a 'sound-effects preferences' view on every project I do is a
bit silly, if the browser could just be handling it for me." ;)

~~~
drivebyacct2
PulseAudio, I already get that for free :) The default KMix app in KDE
presents app volume sliders as well as the Master audio slider in the tasktray
icon. One of my absolute favorite linux features, especially since I pass
through my Xbox and I can control it too.

~~~
derefr
Oh, Windows does it too--but that's per _app_ , not per _tab._ Apparently
quite a few people like to listen to music on youtube while playing my game
with the volume off :)

------
tnuc
Fantastic news.

Trying to figure out which page is making noise, was most of the reason for
installing an ad blocker.

------
iamdave
This is pretty great, but I'm dismayed that it's even needed because someone
somewhere started the trend of triggering audio without the user's
interaction.

"CONGRATULATIONS, YOU'RE A WINNER!"

Congratulations, you're a jackass. You do NOT interrupt Black Sabbath.

------
mprovost
Bell in window 0

------
tn13
wonder how it is implemented. How can chrome possibly know if a flash or
silver-light is playing a sound ?

------
sylvinus
That is an incredibly useful feature.

