Firefox 3.5 Sounds

The 3.5 release of firefox has enabled sounds for an alert message. Everytime javascript decides to generate an alert() my speakers go "DING!". Bugs have been filed, and complaints made on many forums. The firefox devs seem to think that their sound scheme is now "doing the right thing".

I beg to differ.



In that bug report, the firefox devs say to just turn off the system bell in gnome (similarly in KDE). I don't run gnome. I don't run KDE. I tried installing gnome just to turn off sound. Nope. I tried installing KDE just to turn off sound. Nope.

Here's what I ended up doing:

emerge --unmerge sound-theme-freedesktop
USE=-sound emerge gnome-media

The second was to prevent gnome-media from pulling in the freedesktop sound again. Presumably now, if I did use gnome, I'd have no sounds at all.

Hey Firefox, how about a config:option. I shouldn't have to neuter my system. Stop interfering with system-level alerts.