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Is it worth supporting Firefox?

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Re: Is it worth supporting Firefox?

#131

Post by crankylinuxuser »

senorjazz wrote: post #120
rgbrenner wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

years of blinking GIFs, auto-play videos and misleading links thrown between paragraphs I put up with this for years because I do believe that websites need a way to support themselves. But then a Forbes ad tried to download a virus.. and then I got another ad like it on WashingtonPost. These are big, dull websites.. the last place I would expect that. I've been on the internet since the 90s. The ads have never been…

I guess you never visited porn sites in the late 90s. I think their model of opening up 100s of new windows was slightly more annoying that flashing gifs :)

Yep. And there was a shock-site run by GNAA called "Last Measure".

Long story short, it uses HTML5 and flash exploits to put a hundred popups of various porn shock images alongside blaring over the speakers "HEY EVERYBODY IM LOOKING AT GAY PORN"

Unless you: ban flash, ban popups, and ban Java; you are going to have a bad time, and necessitate in rebooting to get it to stop.

I consider it a good tool to check for client browser hardening. Just beware, if you do search for it, it's absolutely NSFW. (Will not provide links)

Re: Is it worth supporting Firefox?

#132

Post by Cthulhu_ »

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…

Because that generally implies removing control from the ad networks. Those like to inject the JS so they control what is put in there; the view is put up for auction and whoever wins will get the ad. Second, some longer-living pages like to rotate ads over time.

But yeah, I don't get why things like ads and analytics aren't served via the host server.

Re: Is it worth supporting Firefox?

#133

Post by appleiigs »

mcherm wrote: post #66
_jal wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a datapoint: if you "discourage" my browser, I go away and don't come back. Same with EME - I will not need your efforts in my life. I've yet to find a site so great that I'll disable security or switch browsers to use them. (Work is an exception; somehow there's always some crappy site with needy requirements. But that's my employer's browser/computer, and the sites aren't major publishers.) So I hope your mana…

> if you "discourage" my browser, I go away and don't come back. If the site is supported by ad revenue and you actively refuse to permitany ad revenue is it really a loss to the publisher if you leave?

As mentioned, if they put up ads that aren’t “blinking GIFs, auto-play videos and misleading links thrown between paragraphs” then they could have more traffic.

Even now with an ad blocker many videos autoplay. I bounce immediately once I see a video being loaded.

Re: Is it worth supporting Firefox?

#135

Post by rgbrenner »

senorjazz wrote: post #120
rgbrenner wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

years of blinking GIFs, auto-play videos and misleading links thrown between paragraphs I put up with this for years because I do believe that websites need a way to support themselves. But then a Forbes ad tried to download a virus.. and then I got another ad like it on WashingtonPost. These are big, dull websites.. the last place I would expect that. I've been on the internet since the 90s. The ads have never been…

I guess you never visited porn sites in the late 90s. I think their model of opening up 100s of new windows was slightly more annoying that flashing gifs :)

Thanks.. I forgot about the popup ads. I think that (100s) was a little more rare than common websites opening a handful of popups... by the end of the session, you have a screen full of popups to close.

... and then popup blockers were invented.

Which is a good point -- advertisers abused a privilege (ability to open a window), and internet users adapted, their business model adapted, and they survived it just fine.

The same thing needs to happen again. I really feel it's the advertisers/websites that have once again abused a privilege. If they can't make money, they should look at themselves. No one signs up for internet service to check out the latest ad blockers. Users install them because they have to (just like why they installed popup blockers).

Re: Is it worth supporting Firefox?

#136

Post by leephillips »

I recently switched from uBlock origin to using a hosts file (there are several going around; I got mine from http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/). This seems to work better, overall, although uBlock origin was quite good. Less fuss, smaller resource usage. I'm happy to view self-hosted ads, but don't feel bad about blocking connections to a list of sites that track, invade privacy, or worse.

Re: Is it worth supporting Firefox?

#137

Post by amdavidson »

cesarb wrote: post #108
floatboth wrote: post #98

> And a DRM for website instead of only video DRM that exists, so that user cannot view source code, and no extension can block the ads Good luck with that. You could render an article into a DRM'd video, and utterly destroy SEO, accessibility, readability, and the website's whole reputation. "DRM for news articles" makes zero sense. Movie DRM works because HDCP decrypts the video on the display . ("works" - pirates…

> Movie DRM works because HDCP decrypts the video on the display. No, it doesn't. The movie is decrypted on the player, uncompressed, and encrypted again with HDCP for the display.

> ...encrypted again with HDCP for the display

And after it is encrypted again "for" the display, the display decrypts it, closing the loop, and allowing the DRM to be at least more than trivially functional.

Re: Is it worth supporting Firefox?

#138

Post by kevincennis »

realusername wrote: post #125
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.

Yeah, agreed. I think I run into more issues in Safari than anywhere else these days.

It's always some weird rendering bug that mysteriously vanishes with the old null transform trick.

Re: Is it worth supporting Firefox?

#139

Post by Stephen304 »

stuaxo wrote: post #58

If it's a small fix, just drop it into some other change and don't mention it. Sometimes it's the only way to do the right thing is in spite of management.

I get the feeling that this user is either trolling or not being honest about their position on this. Or both.

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/8hhss1/is_it_worth...

Re: Is it worth supporting Firefox?

#140

Post by carry_bit »

pimeys wrote: post #47
_jal wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a datapoint: if you "discourage" my browser, I go away and don't come back. Same with EME - I will not need your efforts in my life. I've yet to find a site so great that I'll disable security or switch browsers to use them. (Work is an exception; somehow there's always some crappy site with needy requirements. But that's my employer's browser/computer, and the sites aren't major publishers.) So I hope your mana…

Atlassian products such as Confluence and Jira are some of those tools where I need to disable uMatrix completely to not get a crazy redirect loop when I try to login. Luckily we're leaving Atlassian quite soon, their sites have been such a pain to use for many reasons.

Try disabling referrer spoofing; it helped for me.
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