On  bug 482776  I argue we should simply remove "title changed" as a signal for adding a blue dot, and Avi agrees.  That would be technically simpler than implementing this, and fix it as a side effect.

If you also agree, I think we should Just Do This.

Absolutely, I'm happy with that, and much simpler to boot.

The following revision refers to this bug:
  https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/24bf48ae6e1c197c8b73423eed7bdf2e9f7c40ca

commit 24bf48ae6e1c197c8b73423eed7bdf2e9f7c40ca
Author: Avi Drissman <avi@chromium.org>
Date: Wed May 09 21:54:35 2018

Remove dot for pinned tab title change.

Modern web pages have ways of getting the user's attention that
are less distracting than a blue dot. In addition, aggressively
adding blue dots to every pinned tab title change is distracting
users. Remove this behavior.

(Blue dots remain for tabs that need attention due to dialogs.)

BUG= 482776 , 817878 

Change-Id: Ic68baa88c5d87b3022cefaf4c771da7c64b85818
Reviewed-on: https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/1052855
Commit-Queue: Peter Kasting <pkasting@chromium.org>
Reviewed-by: Peter Kasting <pkasting@chromium.org>
Cr-Commit-Position: refs/heads/master@{#557334}
[modify] https://crrev.com/24bf48ae6e1c197c8b73423eed7bdf2e9f7c40ca/chrome/browser/ui/browser.cc
[modify] https://crrev.com/24bf48ae6e1c197c8b73423eed7bdf2e9f7c40ca/chrome/browser/ui/cocoa/browser_window_controller.mm
[modify] https://crrev.com/24bf48ae6e1c197c8b73423eed7bdf2e9f7c40ca/chrome/browser/ui/cocoa/tabs/tab_controller.h
[modify] https://crrev.com/24bf48ae6e1c197c8b73423eed7bdf2e9f7c40ca/chrome/browser/ui/cocoa/tabs/tab_controller.mm
[modify] https://crrev.com/24bf48ae6e1c197c8b73423eed7bdf2e9f7c40ca/chrome/browser/ui/cocoa/tabs/tab_strip_controller.mm
[modify] https://crrev.com/24bf48ae6e1c197c8b73423eed7bdf2e9f7c40ca/chrome/browser/ui/tabs/tab_change_type.h
[modify] https://crrev.com/24bf48ae6e1c197c8b73423eed7bdf2e9f7c40ca/chrome/browser/ui/views/tabs/browser_tab_strip_controller.cc
[modify] https://crrev.com/24bf48ae6e1c197c8b73423eed7bdf2e9f7c40ca/chrome/browser/ui/views/tabs/tab.cc
[modify] https://crrev.com/24bf48ae6e1c197c8b73423eed7bdf2e9f7c40ca/chrome/browser/ui/views/tabs/tab.h
[modify] https://crrev.com/24bf48ae6e1c197c8b73423eed7bdf2e9f7c40ca/chrome/browser/ui/views/tabs/tab_icon.h
[modify] https://crrev.com/24bf48ae6e1c197c8b73423eed7bdf2e9f7c40ca/chrome/browser/ui/views/tabs/tab_strip.cc
[modify] https://crrev.com/24bf48ae6e1c197c8b73423eed7bdf2e9f7c40ca/chrome/browser/ui/views/tabs/tab_strip.h
[modify] https://crrev.com/24bf48ae6e1c197c8b73423eed7bdf2e9f7c40ca/chrome/browser/ui/views/tabs/tab_strip_unittest.cc

Fixed by the commit in comment 6.

Issue 868174 has been merged into this issue.

 Issue 868677  has been merged into this issue.

I'm no longer getting a blue dot in my pinned Gmail and Hangouts tabs, and searching for the cause has lead me here. This change has had a significant negative impact on my chrome usage, as I'm often finding that I miss hangouts messages and new emails.

What is the expected path forward for sites/users which previously relied on this dot? (Particularly given the low investment in Hangouts these days)

As the reporter of  Issue 868677 , I have to say this is disappointing. Fixing the restored tab issue should be simple(ish) so that shouldn't be used as a justification for killing a feature - there are other reasons though, of course. I have dozens of pinned tabs on twitter and various forums and I am very reliant on the tab notification. Without it I have to cycle through 20 tabs just to see if there's been any activity. I end up doing that every 20 minutes if I'm in a heavy reading mode. It's gone from being a superb way to follow those sites to a nightmare. Yes, I know I could probably look at combined feeds or somesuch but I detest that way to ready these sites. OTOH I readily acknowledge that this is a somewhat dubious "feature" because it's behaviour is not well defined or controlled - it may work for some sites, or it may be useless for others.

So... I'm just gonna throw it out there, maybe this could be a per-site setting. I know the settings police will instantly reject that, but for some sites/users it's worth it's weight in gold. For me, I'll consider moving to Firefox, but I really don't want to, so I'll search for other options too.

The expected path is, sites which find this valuable modify favicons (as gmail and Hangouts Chat do), or use notifications; or people build extensions to do this; or someone really dedicated specs an API for WHATWG or similar to control this kind of thing, as has been done with notifications and other similar initiatives in the past.

Your commitment to standards is admirable, but it's nonetheless unfortunate that users are being left in the lurch.

It's not black and white.  Our existing behavior was problematic to a lot of existing users as well, especially some neurodiverse users, and represented an accessibility issue.  We are "leaving users in the lurch" with literally any plan here, so it's about trying to balance tradeoffs.

Btw, you mentioned badged favicons as being supported in gmail and hangouts chat. I found the option in Gmail to turn it on but I'm not seeing anything for Hangouts Chat or Hangouts Classic.

My hangouts chat icon turns from cyan to pink when I have unread messages.  Not sure if I flipped any particular settings for that.

Oh, I see! It was stuck on pink for me because of an old conversation that somehow had a lingering unread message.

 Issue 877017  has been merged into this issue.