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Show HN: Grayscale the Web – A Chrome extension to help avoid mindless browsing

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Re: Show HN: Grayscale the Web – A Chrome extension to help avoid mindless browsing

#31

Seems very useful, thanks. Curious how it affects cpu usage. Would be cool if you can explain how it works. I can see even the gifs and videos(which I think makes this even more useful) are rendered black & white.

Potentially there's power savings on a mobile device by restricting the color palette to grayscale? If so this could be incorporated into one's phone's battery saver mode.

Re: Show HN: Grayscale the Web – A Chrome extension to help avoid mindless browsing

#32
post #26

I love this idea, but sadly it's not for me. I tried this on my phone (going grayscale) and turned it off after 1/2 a day. Too many apps rely on color to differentiate different parts of the app. It definitely gave me a greater appreciation for the plight of the colorblind, and it's why for my own company's products, we always test in B&W, to make sure no functionality is lost. Relatedly, does anyone have any links t…

I feel you. I tried to make it easy to toggle on and off in case you needed to check something in color, but it's a bit of a double edged sword in that it can be too easy to turn it off and leave it off. That's a big part of why I added the saved/excluded sites functionality, so you could add it for sites that are usually time wasters like reddit or facebook, or exclude sites from being gray that you need for work.

This is a good point. On the phone it was all or nothing. Here I can choose. So maybe I will give it another try!

Re: Show HN: Grayscale the Web – A Chrome extension to help avoid mindless browsing

#33

This extension should be one CSS line, why does it load 3 libraries as content scripts? :root {filter: grayscale(1) !important; background: #fff} I wish extensions had a native way to whitelist/blacklist websites. Until then, you're better off adding that line to Stylish.

Do you mean three separate js files? Two of them are plugin specific files I separated out to make managing the different features easier.

The only library I'm loading is tinycolor.js, which I added for the togglable feature where it checks the site background colors and adds an appropriate gray for it. You'll find that making the background always be white doesn't actually work some of the time, especially for sites with darker backgrounds.

The extension is (god forbid) more than one line of code because I wanted to add features and controls I didn't see in other plugins, like:

* setting it for specific tabs

* setting it for all sites

* being able to save sites to always be gray

* being able to exclude sites from being gray when the "tab" or "all sites" settings are on

I too wish extensions had the built in functionality to add/remove saved sites, tabs, etc, but as that's not the case today, I had to do it myself with the chrome extension APIs.

Re: Show HN: Grayscale the Web – A Chrome extension to help avoid mindless browsing

#35
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel you. I tried to make it easy to toggle on and off in case you needed to check something in color, but it's a bit of a double edged sword in that it can be too easy to turn it off and leave it off. That's a big part of why I added the saved/excluded sites functionality, so you could add it for sites that are usually time wasters like reddit or facebook, or exclude sites from being gray that you need for work.

This is a good point. On the phone it was all or nothing. Here I can choose. So maybe I will give it another try!

I'm not sure what kind of phone you have, but on an iPhone you can set your phone to toggle B&W and normal color by triple clicking the home button.

Re: Show HN: Grayscale the Web – A Chrome extension to help avoid mindless browsing

#36
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel you. I tried to make it easy to toggle on and off in case you needed to check something in color, but it's a bit of a double edged sword in that it can be too easy to turn it off and leave it off. That's a big part of why I added the saved/excluded sites functionality, so you could add it for sites that are usually time wasters like reddit or facebook, or exclude sites from being gray that you need for work.

This is a good point. On the phone it was all or nothing. Here I can choose. So maybe I will give it another try!

Newer Android phones allow you to set an accessibility menu shortcut. If you only have one menu item selected, the shortcut just toggles that menu item. I press vol-up & power to toggle greyscale.

Re: Show HN: Grayscale the Web – A Chrome extension to help avoid mindless browsing

#37
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good point. On the phone it was all or nothing. Here I can choose. So maybe I will give it another try!

I'm not sure what kind of phone you have, but on an iPhone you can set your phone to toggle B&W and normal color by triple clicking the home button.

I have an iPhone and didn't realize this. Thanks!

Re: Show HN: Grayscale the Web – A Chrome extension to help avoid mindless browsing

#38
post #9

Anything similar for Firefox?

Yeah, I think this should work: https://userstyles.org/styles/160346/greyscale-4206969 Just try it out and let me know if it doesn't.

This is just perfect - thank you!

Re: Show HN: Grayscale the Web – A Chrome extension to help avoid mindless browsing

#39
post #26

I love this idea, but sadly it's not for me. I tried this on my phone (going grayscale) and turned it off after 1/2 a day. Too many apps rely on color to differentiate different parts of the app. It definitely gave me a greater appreciation for the plight of the colorblind, and it's why for my own company's products, we always test in B&W, to make sure no functionality is lost. Relatedly, does anyone have any links t…

I just installed it and liking it so far.

I had the same issue with the all-or-nothing phone experience because of maps that I use everyday for traffic.

I'm liking this so far.

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