Luke Hillman Posted January 16 Share Posted January 16 (edited) On cnet tabs that I've had open for a while, a "pause" icon will inevitably show up next to the title. I gather the site is telling my browser—Firefox—that it's playing a sound (new post notifications, maybe?), but I've never heard a peep. I don't want to block cnet from playing sounds at the browser level because I'll often play embedded videos, but I wonder if anyone knows how to get it to stop this behavior. Edit to add: cnet is the only site I regularly visit that does this. It happens on my other computer too. I generally know what I'm doing and have already turned it off and back on again. Shibboleet! Edit 2: this is likely the same issue as this one—and, zounds, it's interfering with people's bluetooth hearing aids! Edit 3: it's nothing to do with sound. It's the forum software, apparently working as intended. See my next post. Edited January 17 by Luke Hillman Problem is solved. Removed screenshot to save media space. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SIMON GABRIELOW Posted January 16 Share Posted January 16 I haven't had that myself.. could it just be your settings on your phone or computer? Rather than c.net? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveRo Posted January 17 Share Posted January 17 If you right-click on that tab, is there a relevant option - eg Play - which toggles it? If not, can you play something in that tab - eg a YT video - and see if that makes any tab controls operable. You have 2 c.net tabs on your screenshot. What's the difference between them? Is the 'Big list' one bookmarked? Pinned? Cached? Try unpinning, or clearing the browser cache. Failing all that what OS and Fx version? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke Hillman Posted January 17 Author Share Posted January 17 (edited) 15 hours ago, DaveRo said: If you right-click on that tab, is there a relevant option - eg Play - which toggles it? [...] No relevant options in the context menu. And, when I switch to a tab that has the pause icon on it, the pause icon goes away. It's like cnet begins an audiostream (which it can apparently do when the tab doesn't have focus) but can't end it until I focus the tab. It doesn't seem to be anything to do with my OS, version of FF, or cache, because this happens consistently between my macbooks (plural, Monterey and Big Sur) and my Win10 PC. Possibly could have something to do with an extension I've installed; I'll open a few cnet pages in private tabs and see if that does anything. To be honest, I'm not even sure this is related to audio. YouTube and other sites that play a/v content get the word "playing" under the title, and give me the option to mute the tab, but I've never seen pause anywhere else, not even when I open an mp3 file directly in the browser. I suspect it has something in common with what's being described here, and as that was 2019, I've little hope it'll be resolved. Seems like one of those "lol, who uses Firefox anymore, anyway?"-type bugs. I was hoping someone knew of an account setting buried somewhere that would prevent cnet from trying to play notification sounds, but that didn't work on the thread linked above, and anyway, the option seems to be missing from the current version of the forum software we're running. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Edit: the plot thickens! I noticed that if I hover over the (unfocused) tab, the full page title displays in a tooltip. The icon, if it even is an icon (seems kind of chunky to be a pause icon, now that I look closer; maybe it's a pair of unicode characters not rendering correctly?), appears in that tooltip, indicating that it's somehow part of the actual page title. Edit 2: so, the forum software is definitely prepending this to the page title for some reason. If I right-click the unfocused tab and bookmark it, I have the opportunity to copy the page title without focusing the tab, and this is what I get: ❚❚ Why not more "expressive" bellows changes on the English? - Page 3 - General Concertina Discussion - Concertina.net Discussion Forums So... problem diagnosed! But why would it be doing this? * * * Edit 3 (SOLVED): apparently this is something the invision devs implemented on purpose to indicate that the page is no longer polling in the background. I think this is an extremely odd choice, but... okay! (And yes, I edited the title of this thread so you all can see how it looks to me) Edited January 17 by Luke Hillman 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Barnert Posted January 18 Share Posted January 18 5 hours ago, Luke Hillman said: Edit 3 (SOLVED): apparently this is something the invision devs implemented on purpose to indicate that the page is no longer polling in the background. I think this is an extremely odd choice, but... okay! (And yes, I edited the title of this thread so you all can see how it looks to me) Edited 1 hour ago by Luke Hillman So why does it seem Luke is the only one seeing this “feature”? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke Hillman Posted January 18 Author Share Posted January 18 (edited) 3 hours ago, David Barnert said: So why does it seem Luke is the only one seeing this “feature”? It's confounding! But on the off chance others are seeing it, and are annoyed and savvy enough to want to do something about it, I made a Greasemonkey script to keep the page titles from changing. Edited January 18 by Luke Hillman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveRo Posted January 18 Share Posted January 18 So this happens if - you have push notifications on in your c.net account settings (I don't) - you have allowed notifications for c.net in the browser (I haven't) - you background the tab(s) Is that right? That screenshot on the community site is not Firefox, so presumably any browser. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke Hillman Posted January 18 Author Share Posted January 18 Any browser, according to Invision. And nope, I don't have push or browser alerts enabled. It only happens on tabs that have been inactive for a while, but I'm not manually backgrounding anything; perhaps Firefox is more aggressive about this by default. I can't be the only Firefox user in all cnet, can I? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveRo Posted January 18 Share Posted January 18 By 'background' I mean the tab is not in the foreground - you can't see it. Either it was opened in the background, or another tab was opened over it in the foreground. (You can configure new tabs from links to open in either; I'm not sure what the default is now.) A background tab can be active or inactive, depending what it's doing and other factors - eg memory. Here on Firefox for Android tabs can quickly become inactive. The community site says "When you have automatic polling turned on and the tab has been inactive for a while it shows the paused icon." "Yes, the icon indicates that the page is no longer polling for new notifications." If not push alerts, what are these notifications? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke Hillman Posted January 18 Author Share Posted January 18 Oh, I see. Yes, all affected tabs are in the background (unfocused, in my parlance). As I understand push alerts, they're specifically to send OS-level alerts to your device, and they don't require any polling to be done (hence "push"), but I'm not an expert here. Anyway, the only notifications I have enabled are email and "notification list," which shows a count of unread messages on the bell icon in the site header and will occasionally display toasts like "DaveRo has replied" on a thread page. I'm assuming it's the notification list that's doing the polling. There's no explicit setting labeled "automatic polling," and I haven't changed any of the default settings. I suppose I could turn off the notification list notifications, but I actually like them. My script above lets me keep that but prevents the pause icon from showing up. I see now why they added it: when you have notification list enabled, and you receive a notification, it adds the unread count to the page title. So I think the well-intentioned devs wanted to communicate "this count may be inaccurate," but unfortunately without following any established conventions or offering any explanation, folks like me are going to wonder why the site is attempting to play media. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveRo Posted January 18 Share Posted January 18 39 minutes ago, Luke Hillman said: ...unfortunately without following any established conventions... Indeed, Expecially as the pause icon is a 'media control symbol', understood to mean 'click or tap me to stop the video/sound'. Quote ... the Pause symbol having reportedly been invented at Ampex during that decade for use on reel-to-reel audio recorder controls, due to the difficulty of translating the word "pause" into some languages used in foreign markets. From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_control_symbols 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke Hillman Posted January 18 Author Share Posted January 18 Quote The Pause symbol was designed as a combination of the existing square Stop symbol and the caesura [...] Whoa! Learn something new every day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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