There are several best practices that good sites like Financial Times follow. But there are some indefensible practices too. One such bad web practice is to embed a video that starts running the moment the page downloads on your screen.
You struggle to locate the Stop button. But, the sound continues. You feel foolish if you have opened a page like this in office. People wonder what is wrong with you.
Why do websites do this? What do they gain? Nothing, but ill will.
The purpose becomes even more difficult to understand when respectable sites do it. They publish such great content. But then they also make first time visitors suffer. Do they fear that the visitors will go away if the video does not start playing automatically?
You wonder how their editors feel when they reach a website that plays an embedded video without warning. Do they appreciate this intrusion or do they resent it?
I found it particularly galling when I clicked on a Facebook post that spoke about India’s booming newspaper industry. I expected a news report but I landed on the FT video page. Even before I could decipher what to do, the voiceover started running.
I had expected a text report, not a video story. It therefore took me some time to figure out from where the noise was coming. But there was no joy for me even after locating the Stop button, and shutting off the audio. The website best practices list included automatic resumption after a pre-defined interval.
There was nothing more left for me to do but to exit the page.
I am sure most web users would give thumbs down to such a practice if there was a vote. This is one design aberration that must end.
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