This is an archived snapshot of W3C's public bugzilla bug tracker, decommissioned in April 2019. Please see the home page for more details.

Bug 8736 - Decision to playback for media should be left to the user agent
Summary: Decision to playback for media should be left to the user agent
Status: VERIFIED WORKSFORME
Alias: None
Product: HTML WG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: pre-LC1 HTML5 spec (editor: Ian Hickson) (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: PC Windows NT
: P2 normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Ian 'Hixie' Hickson
QA Contact: HTML WG Bugzilla archive list
URL: http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/video.html...
Whiteboard:
Keywords: a11y, media
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2010-01-14 11:05 UTC by Gez Lemon
Modified: 2011-03-08 16:17 UTC (History)
7 users (show)

See Also:

Attachments

Description Gez Lemon 2010-01-14 11:05:49 UTC 
The specification states: "If the media element's Document stops being a fully active document, then the playback will stop until the document is active again."

This implies that it would not be possible for a user to listen to audio in the background or take notes about a video in another application while viewing the video at the same time. Suggest that the decision about what should be done in this case should be left to the user agent.
Comment 1 Philip Jägenstedt 2010-01-14 11:46:03 UTC 
If you follow the reference to http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/browsers.html#fully-active and then some you'll see that "active document" has to do with history navigation, not tabs or anything like this. I reported this same issue perhaps a year ago based on the same misunderstanding.
Comment 2 Philip Jägenstedt 2010-01-15 08:34:10 UTC 
What does this bug even mean? User agents are already free to ignore autoplay if that's what you mean. They are also free to provide features for blocking audio/video on a per-origin basis if they want, and can pretend that the network is down for the DOM API to be in a sane state.
Comment 3 Philip Jägenstedt 2010-01-15 08:35:11 UTC 
(In reply to comment #2)
> What does this bug even mean? User agents are already free to ignore autoplay
> if that's what you mean. They are also free to provide features for blocking
> audio/video on a per-origin basis if they want, and can pretend that the
> network is down for the DOM API to be in a sane state.
> 

Sorry, it's morning and I didn't see my previous reply...
Comment 4 Michael Cooper 2010-02-04 16:39:31 UTC 
HTML Accessibility Task force has decided not to track this.
Comment 5 Michael Cooper 2010-02-04 16:42:44 UTC 
Removing myself from cc list, default on bug edits is to add, but I'm only acting on behalf of HTML A11Y TF which is already cc'd.
Comment 6 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2010-02-14 11:16:58 UTC 
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document:
   http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html

Status: Rejected
Change Description: no spec change
Rationale: As Philip says, a tab not having focus doesn't mean it's not fully active.
Comment 7 Michael Cooper 2011-03-08 16:17:32 UTC 
Bug triage sub-team agrees "worksforme" is ok resolution for this bug.