Sometimes much to our annoyance, some websites like to automatically load videos or play music in the background (no, it does not enhance our experience!), and if you’re the type that has multiple tabs open, trying to find that pesky website can be annoying. However Google introduced a feature in Chrome that allowed users to quickly identify websites that are playing audio, and now it looks like the feature is coming to Mozilla’s Firefox browser as well.
Previously the feature was available on Firefox via third-party add-ons and browser extensions, but we suppose having a native and built-in feature is always preferred. Just like the Chrome feature, Firefox will soon be able to display an icon on a tab that is making sounds and will let users mute the playback.
Now for those who are unfamiliar, Chrome has a mute feature as well although this can only be enabled via a hidden options menu and we can’t be sure why since it does seem to be a pretty good idea, but hopefully Firefox’s ability will be more obvious without users having to hunt down instructions or comb through the menus to find out how to do it.
According to Ehsan Akhgari, Web API tech lead at Mozilla who spoke to VentureBeat, “We’re expecting to enable this feature on Firefox when Bug 486262 lands, among other Gecko dependencies. This feature is currently in review but we do not currently have an estimated timeline for it to land.” So we guess until Mozilla launches it officially, Firefox users will just have to keep using whatever extensions or add-ons they have now.