[whatwg] Proposal for a tab visibility API

[Markus Ernst]

Am 09.12.2010 07:12 schrieb Boris Zbarsky:
>> 2) There is some potential for abuse (e.g. putting up dialogs to make
>> yourself the active tab if you determine that you aren't, though
>> perhaps this is a quality of implementation issue). I can
>> particularly see things like ads doing this so you don't just
>> switch to a different tab while they're running.
>
> I'd really appreciate some comment on this. I'm pretty worried about
> adding features that we then have to start working around people abusing
> almost immediately...

I assume that the abuse potential here is about the same as for onunload.

Regarding ads, I assume that providing some kind of visibility API could 
also lead to "better" ads. Ad authors could make their ads stop 
executing when invisible. One main annoyance about ads is their resource 
consumption, thus ad blockers could provide a setting "Block content 
from ad providers who don't stop the execution of hidden ads". Which 
would allow their users to block annoying resource consumers, while not 
blocking "good" ads, which their favorite websites might depend on.