Fwd: [blink-dev] Intent to Ship: Plugin Power Saver Poster Images

[Jet Villegas]

We should pick this up too.

--Jet

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jet Villegas W3C <w...@junglecode.net>
Date: Sat, Feb 7, 2015 at 1:36 AM
Subject: Fwd: [blink-dev] Intent to Ship: Plugin Power Saver Poster Images
To: j...@mozilla.com



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <tomm...@chromium.org>
Date: Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 4:35 PM
Subject: [blink-dev] Intent to Ship: Plugin Power Saver Poster Images
To: blin...@chromium.org
Cc: Antoine Labour <pi...@google.com>, Rachel Blum <gr...@google.com>


Sending this because piman@ thought it was a good idea.


*Contact Emails:*
gr...@chromium.org, tomm...@chromium.org

*Spec:*
A specific portion of this design doc:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GQ-B3gWyWYX1cXf_B8mTK2ELSVwHqT-5bAERZqPliCo/edit#heading=h.bea8i8zdwtn7

*Summary:*
Plugin Power Saver "pauses" plugins deemed to be peripheral (small,
cross-origin). This feature is to allow web authors to specify a poster
image to be used in the "paused" state.

Usage:
<object data="http://b.tommycli.com/flash.swf"
type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="400" height="100">
<param name="poster" value="snapshot1.png" />
</object>

*Motivation:*
Without a poster image, Chrome tries to automatically extract an
"interesting" keyframe during a short preroll.

- Plugin start can be deferred if there's a pre-provided poster image.
Better performance for users.
- If Chrome tries to extract a keyframe by analyzing frames, it could
choose mediocre frame to use.
- Keyframe extraction process itself takes up CPU time.

*Link to Intent to Implement:*
I implemented this before I was aware of this process. I sorry. It's behind
a content setting though, so no users will experience it unless they
explicitly opt in.

*Demo link:*
Use Chrome Canary. See http://a.tommycli.com/small_only_poster.html

See here for a video:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-Use9bxumRNZE5Ub2VGYTk0c1E

*Compatibility Risk:*
I think it's minimal. The param tag is already supported. The 'poster'
parameter continues to be passed to the plugin, it's just re-used for a
different purpose. We could call it webkit-poster or something if you guys
are worried, but I'd prefer not to. If we take the feature away, the
browser will just ignore that parameter, and it shouldn't break anything.

*Ongoing technical constraints:*
None that I'm aware of.

*Will this feature be on all platforms?*
Windows, Mac, Linux, ChromeOS. Only the platforms with plugins.

*OWP Tracking bug*
None. Happy to make one if you guys want.

Link to entry on the feature dashboard <http://www.chromestatus.com/>
Also none, but happy to create also if you guys want.

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[Kyle Huey]

Why don't we just click to play everything?

- Kyle

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[Jonathan Kew]

On 7/2/15 10:24, Kyle Huey wrote:
> Why don't we just click to play everything?
>

Yes, we should do that. At least as an option, exposed in Preferences:
something like

[ ] Never auto-play video or audio
or
[ ] Always show a Click to Play control for media

I'd suggest it belongs in Preferences / Content, right along with "Block
pop-up windows". Auto-playing videos (or audio) can be every bit as
irritating as popups.

To quote from a long-time Firefox user's recent blog posting[1]:

# Give me a 'Play' button, and let me decide when (or whether) to click
# it. If you can configure Firefox - or allow me to configure it - so
# that it will never on any site, ever, no not even then or there, play
# a video without waiting for me to click on a button clearly labelled
# with a right-pointing arrow head of some sort... that would be a
# victory.

JK


[1]
http://itreallyisupsidedown.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/an-open-letter-to-mozilla.html

[David Rajchenbach-Teller]

On 07/02/15 11:24, Kyle Huey wrote:
> Why don't we just click to play everything?
>

Well, the poster image could still be used for click-to-play, right?


--
David Rajchenbach-Teller, PhD
Performance Team, Mozilla

[Xidorn Quan]

On Sat, Feb 7, 2015 at 10:44 PM, David Rajchenbach-Teller <
dte...@mozilla.com> wrote:

> On 07/02/15 11:24, Kyle Huey wrote:
> > Why don't we just click to play everything?
> >
>
> Well, the poster image could still be used for click-to-play, right?

+1

But one thing I'm concerned is that it might confuse the user if the author
uses some poster image which doesn't composite well with the click-to-play
ui. I suppose we don't want to totally get rid of that ui. But anyway I
think it should be a good idea to do so.

- Xidorn

[Hubert Figuière]

On 07/02/15 05:24 AM, Kyle Huey wrote:
> Why don't we just click to play everything?

Filed this last year:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=980939

Good to see the idea finally gets traction.

Hub

[Eric Rescorla]

Well, the first step would be to do plugin power saving at all.

-Ekr

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[Aaron Klotz]

+1. Anecdotally I've seen users on reddit who want click-to-play for
flash, but specifically do not want to enable click-to-play for it
because they still want to be able to see a hint of what is in the
video. The poster image would allow for the best of both worlds.

On 2015-02-07 4:44 AM, David Rajchenbach-Teller wrote:

> On 07/02/15 11:24, Kyle Huey wrote:
>> Why don't we just click to play everything?
>>

[Chris Peterson]

Safari on OS X 10.10 also has a "Safari Power Saver" mode for plugins:

"The Safari Power Saver feature recognizes the difference between what
you came to see and the stuff you probably didn’t. If the content is
front and center, it plays as usual. But if it’s off in the margins,
Safari Power Saver pauses it. You’ll see a static preview, and it won’t
run until you click to play it."


Firefox Bug 1120676 - Implement power-saving plugin mode: pause Flash
content that is off screen or inactive


chris

[Benjamin Smedberg]

On 2/7/2015 4:38 AM, Jet Villegas wrote:
> We should pick this up too.

I'm skeptical of the immediate value. We need to focus on Flash hangs
and also the security issues surrounding Flash 0-days especially as
distributed by ad networks. Power saving is not our immediate or
medium-term focus.

It seems that this proposal focuses on authors opting in, and providing
a better experience for per-element click-to-play behavior. What
fraction of existing Flash has a usable poster? By adopting this
proposal, would we also be adopting a per-element click-to-play
approach? If so, is this for all 3rd-party Flash, or just for known
advertising sites, or for all Flash? User studies have shown that
typically users won't understand the difference between Flash and the
browser, and the "extra click" isn't a usable solution for most people.
If we can be confident of limiting this to advertising, that evaluation
might change (because users are used to clicking on advertising already).

Note that if we're talking about something other than poster attributes,
I have more serious concerns: the differences between windowed and
windowless Flash are significant, and our control over windowed Flash is
pretty minimal. In order to do automatic posterization the way Safari
does it, we'd need to ensure that the elements are windowless, *or* we'd
need to invent a pretty complex mechanism for control over windowed
Flash and taking snapshots of windows.

I'd encourage somebody to implement this as an addon or behind a hidden
pref, and see what the experience is like and whether users like it. It
should be possible to implement this as an addon.

--BDS

[Brian Smith]

On Mon, Feb 9, 2015 at 8:03 AM, Benjamin Smedberg <benj...@smedbergs.us> wrote:
> On 2/7/2015 4:38 AM, Jet Villegas wrote:
> I'm skeptical of the immediate value. We need to focus on Flash hangs and
> also the security issues surrounding Flash 0-days especially as distributed
> by ad networks. Power saving is not our immediate or medium-term focus.

Isn't "power saving" mostly a euphemism for "ad blocker" in Safari?

if you click-to-play all Flash-based ads, you've greatly reduced the
Flash hangs and security issues surrounding Flash 0-days especially as
distributed by ad networks.

Cheers,
Brian