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Ask HN: Do you think Browsers need a volume control?

2 points by al_james ↗ HN
Now that there are more and more ways for video and audio to be used and abused (for advertising) via HTML5/flash, do you think its time for a global volume control and mute button in your browser?

Its highly frustrating when a flash ad starts playing music mixed into what I am listening to on iTunes!

4 comments

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corin_
I agree, would be a great feature.

Windows Vista/7 help, as the audio mixer lets you adjust volumes or mute individual applications, but it's not as useful as a built-in browser setting (for example the browser doesn't show up in the Mixer until after it's started playing the sound, so you can't pre-emptively adjust it).

chipsy
I don't mind the idea other than the fact that it's yet another volume control, and I have a pet peeve about software volume controls because most of them are projected linearly, which forces you to do all your tuning in fractional amounts at the bottom end of the bar.
al_james
But otherwise, how do you, for example, listen to your iTunes but mute your browser?
leff_f
I want a button which stops any sounds from playing when page loads. Flash should ask my permission to run the media when I open a page. It gets really annoying when I open page in background and it starts playing some audio.