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Is it worth supporting Firefox?

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Re: Is it worth supporting Firefox?

#121

Post by yosito »

pritambaral wrote: post #107
yosito wrote: post #83

This discussion makes me wonder why I haven't seen more server side ad solutions that render ads into a page in a way that's harder to detect or block. Of course, advertisers could find ways to abuse that too and then adblockers would have to up their game. I think the best strategy is to render a fallback into your page that looks like an image related to your content and then replace that image on they fly with uno…

There have been attempts to render ads with the page. For example, Facebook and some news sites do it. It's just that it is bad UX to not clearly mark ads as ads. When Facebook launched sponsored ads and posts embedded in its feed, it was only a short while before DOM-manipulating ad blockers could block it because Facebook had to mark those "posts" as "sponsored".

That's a good point. But I think there are some ways around that which aren't too intrusive. If you just render a fallback on the server side with a message asking users to support you in some way, and then replace that fallback with your ads, you can mark the ads as sponsored without having to mark the fallback. And if you have image based ads, you could mark the image itself using server-side processing to add some sort of watermark rather than a DOM-based marker.

Re: Is it worth supporting Firefox?

#122

Post by pritambaral »

phyzome wrote: post #72

> Ad reinsertion solutions exist for Chrome, but they also dont support Firefox. "Ad reinsertion". You're trying to bypass the user's self-determination on the web. Good luck, bozo. > They are even going to approach google and ask them to introduce new API's that allow us to determine if browser really chrome or just chromium, so that we block chromium. And now we see the real question: "Is there some way to lock our…

By "Ad reinsertion", they mean the paid advertisement inclusion programmes of Adblock and Adblock Plus, which is opt-out and pretty shady in the first place.

They think that Adblock and Adblock Plus don't exist on Firefox, and that people who use uBlock Origin on Firefox will not use uBlock Origin on Chrome too if they were somehow forced to use Chrome.

Re: Is it worth supporting Firefox?

#123

Post by chrisseaton »

sevensor wrote: post #103
chrisseaton wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Firefox is a standards-conforming web browser. If some nincompoop puts a web page out there and my browser can't render it, I'm not going back. Well... yeah... that's the point of what they're doing.

I don't think it is. I don't use ad blockers, but I also don't come back to websites where I've had a bad experience. If you do something hostile, like auto-play video, I'm gone and I'm not coming back. It makes for a fairly serene web browsing experience.

It literally says

> Manager says that we should just discourage the users of Firefox (not optimizing for Firefox, and poor UI) from visiting our website as they bring a loss.

Re: Is it worth supporting Firefox?

#124

Post by phicoh »

yosito wrote: post #83

This discussion makes me wonder why I haven't seen more server side ad solutions that render ads into a page in a way that's harder to detect or block. Of course, advertisers could find ways to abuse that too and then adblockers would have to up their game. I think the best strategy is to render a fallback into your page that looks like an image related to your content and then replace that image on they fly with uno…

A problem I can see with that approach is that code that is served from the content server would have to do browser fingerprinting before ads can be auctioned by the ad network.

In the current setup with third part tracking cookies, the ad network sees individual users. If you route everything through the content providers servers, then the ad network may have to work a lot harder to figure out who is who. And the ad networks have no incentive to do so (at the moment)

Re: Is it worth supporting Firefox?

#125

Post by realusername »

kevincennis wrote: post #28

I honestly wonder if this is real, or the whole story. How many websites are actually doing things that require a meaningful amount of extra effort to support Firefox if it already works in Chrome/Safari? For most websites, cross-browser testing is almost an afterthought these days.

> For most websites, cross-browser testing is almost an afterthought these days.

Most of my time involves fixing things for IE11 or mobile Safari, Firefox-only or Chrome-only issues are extremely rare.

Re: Is it worth supporting Firefox?

#126

Post by kibwen »

Note that this is exactly why Firefox has resisted shipping with adblock on by default for years now. It's not just about websites deciding not to support Firefox, it's about websites like this one deciding to go out of their way to break on Firefox.

Re: Is it worth supporting Firefox?

#127

Post by Cthulhu_ »

gwbas1c wrote: post #115

The bigger problem is that publishers are loosing control over their advertisers. The reason why I block ads is that they turn great websites into horrible experiences. Remember, the way ads work today is that the web site is delivered to your browser, and then ad networks' Javscript comes in and mangles the page to insert ads wherever the ad network pleases. In the days of paper, editors laid out where the ads went…

> There weren't obnoxious blinking ads that would move the text around while you were reading it.

No, instead newspapers went for screaming headlines (big text, celebrities in bikinis) and ads went for whatever caught the attention most.

Don't idealize newspapers or newspaper ads, they're in the exact same market and were trying to optimize for maximum exposure and revenue just as much as websites are.

Re: Is it worth supporting Firefox?

#128

Post by adamc »

Here's the reality: Most people won't pay for most sites. I get that. I'm the same. I have subscriptions to a handful of high value sites (e.g., NYT), but most sites just don't deliver enough value to make that viable.

I could live with advertising if it were unobtrusive, useful, and didn't try to track me. Very little advertising is like that, so I block it. Yep, that means marginal sites will die. I can live with that.

It is still possible to sell magazines and other media. No one was promised that the web would be a perfect was to sell media. If it's only a good way to exchange information (for free), that is not a bad thing.

I don't think it is a tragedy if sites collapse that cannot find a viable way to serve me. I don't give a rat's ass about serving advertisers.

Re: Is it worth supporting Firefox?

#129

Post by chrismorgan »

annabellish wrote: post #104
the_af wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I read something on Chrome for Android I cringe. The web on my laptop and the web on my cellphone are completely different universes. One is enjoyable and usable. The other is a nightmare of blinking GIFs and misleading layout-breaking ads. I'm reminded of this fact every time I try to read something while commuting to/from work. If I ever felt any guilt about using ad blockers (hint: I don't), this would…

It is absolutely worth using a different browser on mobile. Firefox Focus makes a great "default browser" for opening random links from apps, as it's always in incognito mode, very lightweight, and supports content blocking. Only real downside for me is that you are still contributing to webkit dominance, as it's chromium-based. Full fat Firefox on android is great too, though. As a fully featured browser which suppo…

Work to move Firefox Focus to Gecko is underway. Not sure of the ETA. (Keywords to search for: klar + geckoview.)

Re: Is it worth supporting Firefox?

#130

Post by criddell »

gwbas1c wrote: post #115

The bigger problem is that publishers are loosing control over their advertisers. The reason why I block ads is that they turn great websites into horrible experiences. Remember, the way ads work today is that the web site is delivered to your browser, and then ad networks' Javscript comes in and mangles the page to insert ads wherever the ad network pleases. In the days of paper, editors laid out where the ads went…

> The bigger problem is that publishers are loosing control over their advertisers.

I've never understood this. There are a lot of magazines that clearly spend considerable resources making their printed page look exactly how they want. Then when they publish that same content online, they apparently don't care at all about the presentation.

Matthew Butterick's great article Bomb in the Garden makes this point very well. It's from 5 years ago but I think it is more relevant today than ever.

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