Not long ago, I saw a remark on a website about music on websites, to the effect that web designers hate making pages play music automatically; but it didn't explain why they would. Any ideas?

Because they take pride in their work.

Because they want to make the world better instead of worse.

As a user, if I go on to a website and audio starts automatically (and unexpectedly), I will leave the site. As a developer, it's a big no-no. By all means give the user the controls on a page to play some audio (not necessarily music), but don't start it automatically.

Why? Because personally while I'm surfing, the last thing I want is audio I didn't expect or want booming out at me, whether it be background music or the audio from some automatically played video. It's intrusive and rude. Along the same lines as adverts, pop-ups and flashing images. ;-)

Autoplay is evil.

Don't blink. Ever.

Who says the dislike it? How MANY sites do you go do which autoplay a video? I thank NoScript everyday on this topic.

Only Hydrurga's answer was helpful; most of the other remarks were (variously) unnecessarily aggressive, smug, and rude--as though my question was considered a challenge.

Initially it was hard to say if your original question was for serious discussion versus not. Non-Nix->General is not necessarily a technical forum, it can be open to any subject, however there's also not necessarily a web development forum. Perhaps the Non-Nix->Programming forum might have been an alternate location for this question, now that you've indicated you had some serious concerns.

As you know you can click on the REPORT button to request a moderator move your thread.

Your original statement is rather open ended, "You saw a remark on a website, reference not given, and it said something."

People are free to write any original content they want and it doesn't have to be correct.

What were your particular thoughts on this topic?

My opinion is that they seem to be fine with playing music or videos automatically since they so frequently do exactly that.

And I do not believe that web designers "hate" anything where they get paid to do it, simply put once they know how to do it, they can duplicate that easily and so as a result as a developer for hire, someone asks me to do a task which I know I can do, have done tons of times before, then I just do it and get paid.

To take this one step further, the web designers I know don't give half a thought about what is easy versus difficult, they're not the ones implementing a design, they just write down what they want it to look like and the developers are responsible to make it happen in code.

I frequently have >25 tabs open in my browser. It is very annoying if sound starts coming out of one of them without my having clicked on anything (I'm looking at you mlb.com). Now I have to hunt through the tabs to find it and kill it. Imagine what it would be like if multiple sites did that.

Both Chrome and Firefox do this natively (a little loudspeaker icon appears in the relevant tab), although how visible that would be with >25 tabs open is debatable.

*All* all the answers you received, including mine, were helpful and correct.

It's blatently offensive to play a sound to somebody who just navigated to a web page. If you don't understand that I take it you're fine with every menu. You open in a restaurant playing Closer by NIN or The Teaches Of Peaches?
Really if this is something you do not understand then you should look for some medical help or study more cultures (I know, lots of us do have some issues with culture).

All I know is, I hate to encounter a web site that does this, and will mash the "Back" button on my browser as quickly as I can ... never to re-visit that web site ever again.

To have a web site start blaring out noise unasked is rude and intrusive. Imagine someone who's trying to quietly surf the web at work or while the family is watching television when that website starts to make noise.

The latest trick at certain sites I visit seems to be delayed autoplay. My friend and I will be watching television when suddenly audio starts coming out of the computer when no one has touched it.

Like talking on your cellphone at a funeral, it is pure and simple Not a Nice Thing To Do to Other People.

A colleague had this happen at work, and was unfamiliar with the machine so couldn't see the volume control, panicked and ended up just pulling the battery and mains leads out to get it to stop. OK, so he was being a bit naughty looking at a graphics card comparison website (think that was it) during work hours and he ought to have made himself familiar with the mute switch but, still, it's not like he went to a known video site and not like everyone knows their machines enough to stop these things.