Autoplay videos on Singeltracks front page

I do not like auto-play videos on a website (not even MTB related)—especially ones with no option nor setting to disable auto-play, but instead require manually stopping the video every time I visit the site. I do not like the distraction. I do not like the waste of the bandwidth that I pay for. There are reasonable places and behaviors for ads in websites; but already playing and masquerading as articles always third from the top on the front page is not one of them. I greatly prefer the video articles that let me choose for myself, based on a brief written introduction, whether or not to play the video—as has been the style on Singletracks.

[ZipHead]

I guess someone has to pay the bills around here 🙂

Why not just disable videos hosted on JW Player in your browser. That oughta do it.

[marvinmartian]

Odd, I have never had a video autoplay on this site… is this a problem?Or even a thing?

Depends on browser and settings.

Microsoft Edge & Internet Explorer: auto-play enabled, no settings to disable auto-play

Firefox: auto-play enabled by default, can be disabled using about:config in the address bar then editing the page the comes up

Chrome, Opera and other browsers based on Chrome: auto-play enabled by default; Flash video auto-play can be disabled by a setting, HTML5 video requires an Add-On to disable auto-play

Apple’s Safari ( I will not test this since I run Windows): defaults to enable auto-play, but can be disabled using the debug mode to change settings.

[29geo]

For Safari go to preferences, and click on websites. Scroll down to autoplay and select your choice.

[Jeff Barber]

Thanks for the feedback drcbrath. We’re trying to keep the video as unobtrusive as possible with no sound (unless you turn it on), and in a fixed spot so you can easily identify it and scroll past. It’s set up to only show MTB videos so let us know if you see something that’s not MTB-related on there. (Maybe it was one of the ads?)

Traditional online ads are a tough sell these days — no one is clicking on banner ads anymore, so we always have to find new ways to keep this place going. (Not to mention, ad blockers are becoming more and more popular.)

Here’s a general question: how much would folks be willing to pay to have an ad-free experience on Singletracks? Put another way, how much is a year of Singletracks articles worth?

[Author]

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