Posted by Anyone know how to stop Cricinfo videos from automatically playing?
Action!
In our line of work, we read an awful lot of cricket stories. This sometimes involves opening tens of tabs at a time and we then have to play ‘hunt the video’ when we hear that one or more has started playing automatically. More often than not, a Cricinfo page is the guilty party.
We hate this burgeoning love of video. To be clear, we enjoy the same YouTube rubbish as everyone else and we like video being used correctly where something is added. What we hate – and we mean truly, truly loathe – is the video-instead-of-an-article video where it’s just someone talking to camera.
Videos take too long. You can’t scan them and see what lies ahead. You just have to sit there like a bleeding numbnuts patiently enduring something that may or may not prove to be of interest with no knowledge of what might turn up 12 minutes in. Yeah, you can fast forward, but then you still have to sit and watch for a few seconds to work out what’s going on. We don’t have a few seconds to spare when there’s a whole internet of information accessible to us.
On each of Cricinfo’s videos there is an option to switch autoplay off and then if you click the little sprocket to the right, a ‘save’ option appears. For us at least, this appears to do nothing. As soon as we reload the page – or any other featuring a video – it starts to play.
Any suggestions gratefully accepted.
Also at Cricinfo
And just to underline the fact that we’ve just slagged off one of our employers, our latest piece has just gone up on Page 2. It’s about county cricket monopolising the back pages and smothering other sports.
KP Confidentiel – les secrets de Kevin Pietersen
Kevin Pietersen’s book is out next week. If you know anything about cycling, you’ll be struck that the book has been written by David Walsh, the journalist who hounded Lance Armstrong for so many years.
Walsh is a pretty driven individual himself and some of his interviewees have said they felt that he exploited them to pursue his own agenda. That approach shouldn’t really be relevant in this instance, but it’s worth noting that this is the man KP has in his corner.
Thank you, your Majesty. This is the sort of journalism we need today – the sort that deals with the issues that really matter to the people, and taps into the people’s hive mind to solve them.
I just have my computer on mute when browsing Cricinfo. Bar Polite Inquiries, few of them are worth watching anyway.
I just play death metal at such ear-splitting volume that whatever wittering is about to be foisted upon me has no chance to penetrate the sound of 5 angry young men recording the sounds of their instruments being thrown down the stairs.
I heartily recommend the approach.
It’s rare that valid solutions to a problem range from ‘mute’ to ‘death metal’.
They both work on buskers.
They both work on Jehovah’s witnesses.
They both work on that bleeding dawn chorus.
Both work on incomprehensibly huffy squirrels too. Try it sometime.
Leaving aside Bailout’s sciurine anger management problems, there is much to link Death Metal and cricket. To quote from the Wikipedia page on Death Metal:
“The lyrical themes of Death Metal may invoke slasher film-stylized violence, but may also extend to topics like Satanism, religion, occultism, Lovecraftian horror, nature, mysticism, philosophy, science fiction and cricket. Although these areas may be explored in various other genres as well, Death Metal may elaborate on the details of extreme acts, including mutilation, dissection, torture, cannibalism, front-foot defence and necrophilia.”
Historians of the game are in agreement that the “bestial roar” of Lawrence Elderbrook was a major influence on the vocal style of bands like Deicide, Cannibal Corpse, and Morbid Angel. Elderbrook himself cited the Motörhead song “Killed By Death” as an inspiration (The Disrobed Interviews, 2009 – 2011, Strangeways Prison). While not strictly Death Metal, Alastair Cook sings in the Slayer tribute band “The Alastair Cook Quartet”, and Lancashire chief executive Jim Coombes is apparently trying to arrange a Death Metal festival to coincide with next season’s Championship match against Leicestershire.
Giles Clarke is alleged to prefer Spandau Ballet.
I’ve moved. On, that is. Not house, mountains, or the earth for you darling. As instructed by Giles Clarke, I’ve decided to see KP as just another washed up sports star peddling a retirement plan. He is The Past. He is not The Future. I will not be buying his book.
Having said that, I am rather hoping it contains incontrovertible evidence of the public school childishness of Clarke et al, a world where ties of silk matter more than ties of shared interest. I’m hoping he is overheard calling someone “a little oik”, or “a grammar school boy”. I’m hoping he is quoted using the word “colonies”. Moreover, I am hoping he is photographed wearing an Alastair Cook mask while being fucked up the arse by N Srinivasan during the recent ICC negotiations. All these will presumably be serialised in The Daily Mail.
(Apologies for swearing in the last sentence.)
After the thwocks have run out of power, and the globetrotting T20 gig comes to a sorry end in the backwoods of Bangladesh, I reckon KP would still do a fine job as a different cure to the irate squirrel issue. Once they’ve gone deaf from the death metal, that method’s repellent power will no doubt have waned, and a willow-based solution will become more attractive. Squirrels need a less hearty thwack than leather does, and I feel KP would form an excellent opening partnership with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (a name that truly belongs on an MCC scorecard).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VcfqGhfgxo
An alternative career awaits.
I installed flashblock. That kills the bloody things.
We’ll give that a go. Looks like you can still opt to play things should you so desire, so this might be a winner. Thanks.
What browser are you using?
Firefox usually.
That’s a shame ‘cos I only know how to stop them in Chrome.
Ooh, Bundy, how do you stop them for Chrome?
Why do they exist anyway? No one likes them. Did some email go round about video content being “more engaging” or something? Cos it’s not. They’re shit. Can you have a word KC, I imagine you have a lot of influence over ESPN.
What’s a cricket site to a King?
Get out of my head!
Also, at work, all those videos do is crash. I have to kill the flash player task, which does the job nicely.
Ah, plugin-container. How we’ve missed you since leaving the day job with its shitty old PCs.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, KC, for articulating this irritating phenomenon for us.
We all hate those videos. We all get them kicking off under their own steam for no apparent reason and at the most inopportune time, such as spoiling one of Ludwig Van’s climaxes, interrupting one’s sleep or whatever.
Those videos should be expunged. Make a edict. That should stop them.
Come now Ged, you can surely find a way to combine your sleep and climaxes? I suggest watching the Dilscoop on loop for 37 minutes straight before retiring to bed. That should do it.
With all due respect, DC, some of the finest brains in the country have pondered my sleep and climaxes, so do you really think that no-one had tried deploying the Dilscoop to resolve this matter before?
I’m sure you made your suggestion with the very best and kindest of intentions, but I think the word naive rather sums it up.
This conversation gives a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘Mop up of the day’.