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Is it worth supporting Firefox?

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Re: Is it worth supporting Firefox?

#141

Post by stordoff »

_bxg1 wrote: post #91

When ads stop tracking me, serving malware, and showing fake download buttons, I'll turn off my ad-blocker. Usually if there's a site I visit frequently, I try turning it off to support them. But if the ads are abrasive or misleading, I turn it right back on. Here's an example of a non-skeezy ad provider which would not cause me to turn my ad-blocker back on. https://www.buysellads.com

It can also push _paying_ customers away. There was a site I paid to use for a few years until one of their sister sites (which I only used infrequently so didn't have a paid membership for) started showing large auto-playing video ads in a way that was deliberately hard to block (div ids were 30-odd random characters). I ended up canceling my subscription soon after.

Re: Is it worth supporting Firefox?

#142

Post by realusername »

kevincennis wrote: post #138
realusername wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yes exactly, it's either that, or some random JS feature which is unsupported or does not work as expected.

Re: Is it worth supporting Firefox?

#143

Post by acidburnNSA »

rosege wrote: post #62
pimeys wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

what will you replace Confluence with?

Phabricator is a reasonable alternative for tasks, repos, CI, and a simple wiki. Not as polished on the wiki side as confluence but overall a good free alternative to Atlassian.

Re: Is it worth supporting Firefox?

#144

Post by daemin »

A lot of the comments on the article remind me of the time people put those little gifs on their homepage to note that "optimised for Netscape Navigator" or "optimised for IE". Nice to see that Chrome is today's IE.

Re: Is it worth supporting Firefox?

#146

Post by appleiigs »

fschutt wrote: post #99
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…

This is why I use Firefox on mobile. You can install Ublock Origin, just as on the desktop. Plus it has reader mode, which is a godsend for some websites who don't optimize for mobile.

In reader mode, do videos still download in the background (but just not visible)? I hate it when my mobile data being used up on stupid autoplay videos.

Re: Is it worth supporting Firefox?

#147

Post by lukasLansky »

sowbug wrote: post #92
syntheticnature wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on whether you share the links to others who run without ad blocking in place.

So the site's owners and employees should work for you for free because you're giving them exposure. https://www.reddit.com/r/choosingbeggars would enjoy discussing that proposition.

It really depends on their marginal costs of serving single customer. I would guess that for text content producers, it's costly to produce content and cheap to show it. Then it makes sense to price discriminate (to show ads / ask for subscriptions as much as you can), but not refuse service to anyone able to bring any kind of revenue, even accounting second-order effects such as more exposure.

You can still see cases where publishers choose to not show stuff to anyone, but that's an artifact of imperfect ability of the publisher to discern between customers that would pay and the customer's that wouldn't -- they don't want to make a mistake to disincentivize someone able to pay from paying. You can see when they try and allow access from FB shares for example.

This makes it completely different from asking actual people for free work: person's price of time is expensive and it's rarely useful to give it away.

Re: Is it worth supporting Firefox?

#148

Post by BonesJustice »

mattferderer wrote: post #46
johnchristopher wrote: post #14

> I work for a major publisher. Ad-blockers are starting to hurt our revenue big time. No. What's hurting your edit:employer's revenue is years of blinking GIFs, auto-play videos and misleading links thrown between paragraphs. That's the first reason why I started using ad-blockers 15 years ago. The privacy issue is a recent thing. > We're doing a redesign now. Manager says that we should just discourage the users of…

Agreed. Spend big cash on your UI if you want. I visit most sites in a "Reader Mode" or using the Brave Browser. User Experience Tip: When I go to a site to read your article, I want to read your article. Not the pop up to subscribe to your newsletter. Not the side bar of related click bait articles. Not the ads you've sprinkled in every other paragraph. If you do this, your UI is already poor & not optimized. That's…

And not the floating ‘dickbar’ of social media sharing buttons that I have never, since the dawn of Facebook or Twitter, actually used.

And no, I don’t want to install your frakking app. I will NEVER install it, so please stop asking me on every visit.

User-hostile design pervades online media, and they wonder why people use ad blockers. Hell, ad blocking isn’t even enough. Most of the time, I end up manually hiding all the useless clutter on news sites to make them actually usable.

Re: Is it worth supporting Firefox?

#149

Post by ppeetteerr »

johnchristopher wrote: post #14

> I work for a major publisher. Ad-blockers are starting to hurt our revenue big time. No. What's hurting your edit:employer's revenue is years of blinking GIFs, auto-play videos and misleading links thrown between paragraphs. That's the first reason why I started using ad-blockers 15 years ago. The privacy issue is a recent thing. > We're doing a redesign now. Manager says that we should just discourage the users of…

> No. What's hurting your edit:employer's revenue is years of blinking GIFs, auto-play videos and misleading links thrown between paragraphs. That's the first reason why I started using ad-blockers 15 years ago. The privacy issue is a recent thing.

I don't know what you read, but blinking GIFs and misleading links are only on sketchy or adult-themed sites.

As for the auto-play videos, that was a direct response to the declining value of print ads. If they can get people to play the videos, they can sell video advertising.

Re: Is it worth supporting Firefox?

#150

Post by RestlessMind »

johnchristopher wrote: post #14

> I work for a major publisher. Ad-blockers are starting to hurt our revenue big time. No. What's hurting your edit:employer's revenue is years of blinking GIFs, auto-play videos and misleading links thrown between paragraphs. That's the first reason why I started using ad-blockers 15 years ago. The privacy issue is a recent thing. > We're doing a redesign now. Manager says that we should just discourage the users of…

> That's the first reason why I started using ad-blockers 15 years ago. The privacy issue is a recent thing.

So you are on board with Google's acceptable ads initiative then?

What I find frustrating is that people (in aggregate, not individually) keep moving goalposts. First, it's about annoying ads and how they will accept good ads. When presented with good ads, it becomes about tracking and how they will pay for the subscription. When subscription is available, how it is too heavy handed and they want something more flexible like micropayments. When you get micropayments, it is about how they introduce so much friction and mental overload.

I have came to realize that people (again, in aggregate and not individually) just want stuff as cheap as possible; other reasons just seem like excuses.

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