A friend sent me a link (here, I'll share it, since I know folks will ask: trunkmonkeyad.com). It is nothing more than a collection of funny car ads. (Actually, pretty darn funny.) Since I was busy, I loaded up the first clip, switched to another Firefox tab and went back to listening to my too-loud trance music.

A few seconds later, I heard something interrupting my music. The video was playing by itself. I could have sworn that I had set my preferences in Quicktime to disable auto-play...

Yep, there is it. On a whim, I did a quick view source and saw...

It looks like Apple decided to overrule the user's preference and auto-play anyway. As a web developer, Apple may think I'd side with them, but I look at more web sites than I develop. And you know what? I think I know better, Apple. If I say I don't want a movie to automatically start, it is probably because I'm in an environment (work) where I don't want video to play. Or maybe I want to listen to music while the video downloads.

Either way - am I alone in this? Or am I just getting cranky. (I've complained before about how few Flash developers bother to put a freaking pause button on their videos, or a mute. Heaven forbid you want to actually pause a video.)