I'm taking a break in an office environment. I scan various sites for interesting stories which I open in new tabs, then I read the stories of interest.
During the scan-and-open process, I started to hear bizarre enviro-music and was wondering who was being so inconsiderate.
Fortunately, this page was one of the first I'd opened, so it didn't take too long for my obnoxious self to stop bothering everyone.
(Just ranting about sites with autoplay sound, it's only been a bad idea since day one.)
As more of an art project that is trying to play on the user's emotions, I think it's appropriate. There has to be section of the web which is allowed to engage people outside of the cubicle. The specific context of your office sounds like a great chance to apply the mute function.
No, it is still an issue. Those icons are fairly small, if I have many tabs open it can take a moment for my eyes to scan across the tabs to locate the playing icon.
What chrome should do is take the capability that lets them know if a tab is playing sound and use it to mute that sound, unless the user requests otherwise or perhaps unless the tab is actually being displayed to the user.
What web developers should do is stop autoplaying things with sound. Unless your website is dedicated to things with sound and your user already knows that (read: unless your site is youtube, or vimeo) then autoplaying sound is always the wrong thing to do.
During the scan-and-open process, I started to hear bizarre enviro-music and was wondering who was being so inconsiderate.
Fortunately, this page was one of the first I'd opened, so it didn't take too long for my obnoxious self to stop bothering everyone.
(Just ranting about sites with autoplay sound, it's only been a bad idea since day one.)