Sound on or off?

Posted December 20, 2007 at 7:48 pm by Anne Janse in General.

An increasingly common phenomenon in public transport and supermarkets: youngsters with tiny speakers who have everybody around them listen to their favourite music. An iPod with accompanying white headset may be a status symbol, it is rather anonymous. He who has the music speak for him, gets noticed more, and apparently that is what some people need.

In the internet there are similar experiences. You click on a link unsuspectingly, and boom, suddenly you are amidst a cacophony of noise. In a panic you can’t decide which window to close first, whether to fade out the volume, or to look for the mute button on the website.

On music sites as MySpace such things are to be expected, and background music can be a fun addition to a site. (Fortunately, days of low quality MIDI background loops are gone!) Recently advertisers also start to realize they can draw attention by using audio, so an internet ad, when moving your mouse across, suddenly becomes audible. For those who want to browse in peace without any fright, this is far from ideal.

I use a Camino browser on my Apple, with complete satisfaction. So I went in search of preferences in my browser audio settings, convinced they would be there. But this turned out to be too ambitious. I then had a look at Firefox, Camino’s slightly bigger brother. I couldn’t find anything there either (not even as an advanced option). Safari, Apple’s standard browser, gave another miss.  So I started to google; surely I couldn’t be the only one with this question?

Google brought me to the Opera browser, still popular with a select group of faithful users. Opera offers the option “enable sound in web pages”, which can be switched off. Trying this option made it clear not to expect too much. Still background music on MySpace! After searching the web some more, it appeared this sound option does not affect plug-in sounds. (Plug-ins are browser tools, for example to play Flash content).

Microsoft Windows has some “hacks” available for certain plug-ins to adjust plug-in sounds (think of FlashMute that adjusts your Flash player, all at your own risk, obviously).

So, tension remains between the site creator, who wants to be in full control of the site experience of a visitor, and the user’s wishes, who sometimes has different ideas and preferences. I expect users will gain more control of their web experience in the near future, and most browsers will have more to offer to meet those wishes.