It should be against the law to auto-start video advertisements on web pages. Outside Flash updates that seemingly break everything in sight and renders a page unreadable, there's nothing more hateful than loading up a site and a blast of audio wakes up the sleeping neighbors. It's even worse when you can't locate the fiendishly hidden source.
Google may be out to combat those pesky, deceptive ads by offering a new feature in its Chrome browser. The Next Web reports that the company has introduced in the latest Chromium build a way to identify tabs that are currently playing or recording audio. Users will spot the offending page thanks to an animated audio "throbber" icon located next to the site's name in the tab.
Currently this feature has also made an appearance in the latest Canary build of Google's Chrome desktop browser, so there's a chance the animated icon may change before it goes public. The new audio detection feature also reportedly works with not only HTML5 media, but on sites flooded with Flash video, indicating that Google is actively working to support plugins.
Meanwhile, Chrome 25 for Android has arrived with the ability to play web-based music while the browser runs in the background, and automatic audio pausing for when the phone is in use. Also included in the update is improved scrolling performance, increased responsiveness to pinch-zooming on pages, expanded HTML5 features, and faster interactive pages thanks to the latest version of the V8 JavaScript engine.
"This update also picks up other important stability and performance fixes since the last release, along with some minor UI adjustments," said Jason Kersey from the Google Chrome team. "Interested in other release channels of Chrome for Android? A Beta channel is now available and can be run side by side with Stable."
Chrome 25.0.1364.123 is currently rolling out to Google Play.
