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October 26th, 2006
Everyone knows that FireFox has no sound settings. IE has one, but it blocks only HTML sound. The only way to silence Flash is muting Windows sounds. This is not really convenient for the most of people. However for the blind it is a real accessibility problem, since a web page sound may interfere with a screen reader voice. WCAG 2.0 draft (a new
W3C web accessibility standard) features a
requirement to web page sounds.
The solution:
- Open FireFox installation folder. The default path is “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox”.
- Create an empty file in this folder with the name “msacm32.dll”. Use Notepad.
- Close all FireFox windows and open a web page with Flash sound to test it.
- If you wish to return sound back, just rename the file “msacm32.dll”.
The IE recipe is the same with only difference of the installation folder path, which is “C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer” by default.
Simple? Yes, as promised.
How it works.
Flash uses Windows DLL msacm32.dll to play sounds. A Windows application starts searching for DLLs it its own folder. If it does not find a library nearby, it goes to the other places as a system folder (C:\WINDOWS\system32). Flash is an ActiveX control. It works in the context of browser’s process. Flash uses browser’s DLL to play sound. Placing an empty file in the FireFox folder, we prevent a browser from accessing the actual sound DLL. Therefore the sound is disabled.We tested this method, and did not encounter problems. If you find one, please post comments. I’m pondering a piece of software, which will block sounds from any Windows application in a user friendly way. If you really need one, leave your comments.
Do not forget to try Erigami
online checker for web accessibility, privacy, quality and performance.
Read the new acrticle of Vladimir Popov about WCAG 2.0 on
eVolt.
Invented by Alexander Ignatine.
Entry Filed under: Browsers
15 Comments
1. Mike | November 13th, 2006 at 7:13 am
Unfortunately this workaround only works with Windows. Mac OS X users can not use this method.
2. Fidy | January 17th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
Thanks a lot
3. Janak Nirmal | February 10th, 2007 at 1:46 am
Thank you very much for such an informative guidance…..
4. Prakash | February 14th, 2007 at 5:35 am
is there any way we can mute the Windows sounds on page refresh in a browser using javascript?
we have a web-based foreign exchange application. it frequently refresh rates. every time when the page reloads, the refresh event sound plays.
i’m looking for a piece of code, which will block sounds of browser events (say refresh sound).
any help on this is much appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Regards,
PRakash
5. Alexander | February 14th, 2007 at 6:49 am
JavaScript can not control system sounds. If a user chooses to hear sound on a web page refresh, only she can cancel it. Therefore such a JS code does not exist.
Alexander.
6. Dave | February 26th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
I’ve just tried this in IE7 and it doesn’t seem to have worked. I live to be bothered by flash sounds another day!
Incidentally, I use Opera most of the time, just IE7 for MSN games, where these annoying sounds are prevalent.
7. wave | February 27th, 2007 at 10:42 am
Al least it works on my IE7. We did not hear other complains. Submit a URL where it does not work.
8. Zach | May 7th, 2007 at 10:15 pm
Just stumbled upon this…
What a totally slick workaround! I use Flashblock, but will consider this. Thanks for la info.
9. Dodo | May 29th, 2007 at 11:40 am
Doesnt work. Neither with IE7 or Mozilla Firefox.
10. MarSoft | July 19th, 2007 at 11:19 am
Wow such an easy solution. Finally something that really works.. great job!
Thanks
11. Ayrus | August 1st, 2007 at 6:32 pm
Very nice, I play flash games and listen to music at the same time (every now and again). This worked on firefox (just have to restart the browser first) I think that i’ll write a batch file to rename it when I want to enable/disable the sound.
Thanks
12. Saran | August 3rd, 2007 at 5:08 pm
Hey thats great it even worked fine on my IE7.
Thank you guys…….
13. Conco | September 19th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
Works great! I just created two batch files (one for firefox with sound, another for firefox without sound), saves me the hassle of having to rename the file every single time.
14. Scott | October 12th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Works great with FireFix 2.0.0.7
Thanks a lot!
15. GS | October 14th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
Works also with Opera (9.21). Been looking everywere for something like this. Great workaround.
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