HN Explorer

Ask HN: What happened to video progress bars?

9 points by BraverHeart ↗ HN
It seems all notable platforms are deliberately getting rid of this crucial UI, it has become frustrating, especially if you wanted to skip parts of the video or rewind to a specific point in the video, which are reasonable user behaviors.

I find myself downloading videos to "solve" this.

10 comments

[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 89.0 ms ] thread
BraverHeart
I'd like to also point that many content creators end up adding an artificial progress bar to the video itself...
jaredsohn
For Facebook some videos require you click on it to get the progress bar and annoyingly you then have to click the unmute button to hear it.

Related - if you search Google for a video and it finds a video on a Youtube /search page it will play it but it pauses when you tab away from it. If you want to listen to it in the background you need to move the tab to another window or open YouTube and probably watch an ad.

badpun
OMG. It seems that tech follow exactly the path of the media (TV, newspapers)- if we were paying customers, the tech would be tailored to our needs. But, since we aren't, the tech is tailored to needs of advertising, which leads to bizzare aberrations such as this one. Similarly, free-to-play/pay-to-win games' design is not about the player getting the best experience, but about compelling them to spend as much on in-game purchases.

It's a shame we are such cheapskates that we prefer to suffer such crappy tactics instead of paying for a decent service or content.

kypro
I think this might be related to autoplay. A video can only auto play if it's muted and I think in some cases browsers require you also interact with the video to play it so they might be forcing a click to get to the progress bar or something.
jaredsohn
Yeah, sounds right. But Facebook could still show progress bars for videos on all of their pages.
dalmo3
They've got TikTokifyied.
gardenhedge
Yeah, but I think TikTok lets you skip to certain parts - Google Shorts do not let you skip to certain parts
Pyrodogg
I consider the lack of ability to scrub through video to be an accessibility problem.

Controlling speed helps but as you say, sometimes you just need to "repeat that bit" and not wait for a whole minute to roll around where you might forget to catch what you're looking for. Or God forbid you do something like open comments and the video restarts.

I haven't pursued downloads yet but started looking for plugins, haven't tried any yet though. Installing plugins in a frustrated mindset didn't seem ideal.

VoodooJuJu
Do not ask questions. Just consume content then get excited for more content.
Nextgrid
You don't "engage" as much if you can skip all the filler content and get right to the interesting bit. Many people use said "engagement" to justify their salaries.