Videos playing differently lately.

[EarlG]

11. Update on this because I've started noticing it too

It's not a DU thing, it seems to be a change made on iOS related to how all videos are handled, but I haven't really been able to find anything online specifically referencing it.

By way of an explanation, there are a few different ways that interactive elements on a page can be handled in a web browser. For example, if you click a link with your mouse, you'll notice that it doesn't actually trigger the link when you click down on the mouse button (mouse down), but when you lift your finger off the button (mouse up). Try it -- you can click on a link, hold the button, move your mouse off the link, let go, and the link will not activate. This behavior can be manipulated in the page code -- you can adjust links to activate as soon as the mouse button is clicked down, for example. You can also get links to do things when you just hover the mouse over them.

Previously it seems that videos in iOS were activated on "touch up", so if you were scrolling down a page and you touched a video, it wouldn't start playing if you "flicked" it off the screen as you were scrolling down. Now however it seems that videos start playing on "touch down" -- ie. as soon as they are touched. So if you accidentally touch one while scrolling, it will play.

It might have something to do with videos playing "inline" -- that is, playing inside the page they are on, instead of opening up to full screen. This is definitely not DU-specific, I've seen it on a bunch of different sites recently, so I think it's an iOS thing. Like I said, I've had a bit of a hard time finding any discussions of this behavior, so unfortunately I don't know if there's anything that can be done about it at the moment.