Do not autoplay videos in release notes

[skycommand]

Hello, esteemed VSCode team!

Each month, you release a new version, along with a release note. I read each release note from top to bottom. (Example: Version 1.85's release note.) But recently, a simple problem that has a simple solution has deteriorated the reading experience.

Actual behavior

Each release note embed videos. When I open the release note, they start playing all at once. I'm forced to stop each video, rewind it, and watch it from the beginning. Here is screenshot of a video mid-playback.

Expected behavior

However, for optimal viewing experience, they must look like this screenshot. Please note the large play button at the middle.

Solution

The problem is your HTML code.

Instead of this:

<!-- 👎 NOT RECOMMENDED ❌ -->
<video src="/assets/updates/1_85/float_2.mp4" autoplay="" loop="" controls="" muted="" title="Command to Copy Editor into New Window"></video>

Please consider using this:

<!-- 👍 RECOMMENDED ✔ -->
<video src="/assets/updates/1_85/float_2.mp4"                     controls="" muted="" title="Command to Copy Editor into New Window"></video>

All I did was to remove the autoplay="" and loop="" tokens. Please note their presence alone changes the browser behavior. Setting them to 1, 0, true, or false makes no difference.

Thanks in advance. 😊

[vscodenpa]

This feature request is now a candidate for our backlog. The community has 60 days to upvote the issue. If it receives 20 upvotes we will move it to our backlog. If not, we will close it. To learn more about how we handle feature requests, please see our documentation.

Happy Coding!

[starball5]

1. Yes please. I was wondering why my machine was screaming in pain when I was reading the most recent release notes (and realized that this was it but was too lazy to bring it up).

2. Should this not have been posted in https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-docs instead?

3. While at it, might want to add loading="lazy"

[skycommand]

Should this not have been posted in https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-docs instead?

I didn't even know that microsoft/vscode-docs even exists.

I observed an issue in code.visualstudio.com/updates and clicked on its "Report issues" to the right. That link brought me here.

[vscodenpa]

🙂 This feature request received a sufficient number of community upvotes and we moved it to our backlog. To learn more about how we handle feature requests, please see our documentation.

Happy Coding!

[starball5]

This is also affecting the 1.86 release notes.

[connor4312]

This seems to cause the notes to be unreadable to one user at least, we should address it. I'm happy to do the vscode-website part https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1b2d6tw/visual_studio_code_february_2024/ksn5b13/

[skycommand]

@connor4312 Thank you for undertaking this task. Please note that all you need to do is to remove the autoplay="" and loop="" attributes from the video tag. Their presence alone changes the browser behavior. Setting them to 1, 0, true, or false makes no difference.

[connor4312]

Looked into this a bit. Seems like on Safari, Chrome, and Edge the videos already only start playing when they're in the videoport and stop when they're outside it. Which I think is good behavior and what I was going to do.

@skycommand what browser are you using?