[mediaqueries] Discover muted state

[Crissov]

Most media queries are about graphics, video, color and other display characteristics. Since media types have been found to be too broad to be useful, the sound-related speech and aural are among the deprecated ones.

However, even if your styles only cover visual aspects, it can still be useful to know whether the user will hear any sounds on the site at all, e.g. when deciding whether (and how) to show video subtitles automatically. I therefore propose a new media query for that, e.g.:

• sound-volume: mute | quiet | loud | auto

This is different from #3933 and #3821 which deal with the state of media elements, not the browser, window or tab as a whole.

[tabatkins]

Hm, being able to automatically turn on subtitles when the tab is muted does sound like a reasonable use-case.

Do you have a good use-case for distinguishing quiet/load volume level? I can't immediately think of one, and it would definitely make the feature more complex to specify, vs just "capable of playing sound" and "muted".

[Crissov]

Actually no, I have no good use-case for distinguishing quiet/loud volume levels.

[hober]

Hm, being able to automatically turn on subtitles when the tab is muted does sound like a reasonable use-case.

It sounds like behavior that could (or maybe should) be the UA default behavior. If it's a good idea, it's a good idea even on sites where the author hasn't thought of it (which would be the vast majority of sites even in a world with this author-facing feature).

So, while I think the use case is totally legit and worth addressing, I suspect the right path forward is to simply file feature requests on the browsers to adopt this kind of behavior by default.

[tabatkins]

That assumes subtitles are solely coming from the video file, and not rendered outside by a separate script, yeah?

[hober]

That assumes subtitles are solely coming from the video file, and not rendered outside by a separate script, yeah?

Yes, I wasn't thinking of that case.