Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances • Hacker News Board

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#301

Post by interfixus » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 5:57 PM UTC

zhte415 wrote: post #64

onion2k wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're being sarcastic, but if not and for anyone who isn't aware, setting the width and height on an tag (or it's associated style) will do this.

I think you're also being sarcastic :) Websites did this 15 years ago (miss the HTMLX compliant button at the bottom of the page), and now in large part do not.

I made my first website 22½ years ago. Even as a raw beginner, I knew it was considered sloth and Very Bad Form Indeed not to specify image size in my markup.

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#302

Post by dTal » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 6:00 PM UTC

swebs wrote: post #254

linsomniac wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newegg has been particularly bad with this in the past. Looks like they have fixed it now, but used to be that it would take a 0.5-2 seconds for their advertisement to load above the "search within", "only show newegg products, I'm not looking for an amazon experience", and "sort by" fields. Go to click on those (I always prefer "only newegg" instead of the default "all sellers"), and half the time I'd end up clickin…

>and half the time I'd end up clicking on the advertisement when it loaded. Just as planned

I don't think it's likely to have been "planned" deliberately, as the result is an annoyed user. I think it's the result of naive A/B testing, without examining the deeper reasons for the results. "Oh wow, clicks are up 50% with the new layout!"

Of course, if you did discover the true reason for the increase in your click rates, you'd probably stay quiet about it. So maybe it's a bit of both.

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#303

Post by jimmaswell » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 6:00 PM UTC

benj111 wrote: post #286

jimmaswell wrote: post #271

Slowly but surely the creative potential of the web is eroded until nothing is left but plain text and ads, to thunderous applause. Gross overreaction after gross overreaction and now we're in a state where extensions are a shallow husk of their former glory, you need to jump through legally vague ridiculous hoops to do anything involving user data, a vast trove of great Flash content is no longer accessible to the a…

Staying on the subject at hand, do you not find it annoying trying to find which tab, and where on the tab a video is playing? "I'm saddened that the golden age of the web is probably behind me" Funny, I'd place the golden age before all these things you cite. Out of curiosity what's your favourite website, what most sums up your golden age?

I'm not sure if I'd call it my favorite anymore but I probably use reddit the most.

I'm thinking of golden age in terms of the power available to webpages/browsers. This would be when HTML5/webgl/etc features had just gotten implemented, plugins like Flash and Java were still supported, and Firefox used the old extension system. All of the old web was still there alongside the cool new stuff. Now the old stuff is gone and the new stuff is getting ruined.

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#304

Post by JohnFen » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 6:01 PM UTC

ganeshkrishnan wrote: post #85

freehunter wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be nice if browsers or servers could reserve that space even if it's not loaded? Like "this is going to be a 500x200 image so let's load 500x200 pixels worth of empty space until it's fully loaded" and avoid jumping.

Then the page won't be responsive. The image width and height changes depending on your viewport size.

> Then the page won't be responsive

That's a benefit, in my view.

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#305

Post by JohnFen » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 6:03 PM UTC

andrepd wrote: post #284

ghostly_s wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've pretty much entirely gone back to pirating because of those fucking auto-play trailers they have now (and this is on the Roku app, where Firefox wont' help me).

~~I've~~ A friend of mine has done the same, but only because they require him to install surveillance software on his machine, turn off his VPN, switch to a different browser, and at the end of it all they refuse to serve him video at more than 720p... Two clicks and he's watching the same episode at 4K on any platform he well likes, with no spyware running on his machine.

That's one approach! I took the lazier route -- I just stopped using Netflix.

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#306

Post by mediaman » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 6:06 PM UTC

jimmaswell wrote: post #282

Reposting from the other thread: Slowly but surely the creative potential of the web is eroded until nothing is left but plain text and ads, to thunderous applause. Gross overreaction after gross overreaction and now we're in a state where extensions are a shallow husk of their former glory, you need to jump through legally vague ridiculous hoops to do anything involving user data, a vast trove of great Flash content…

You're advocating for auto-playing videos and sound, proprietary resource-gobbling flash content, and the nonconsensual abuse of user data? Yes, what a golden age that was.

It is a much more persuasive argument that the new controls are simply a reaction to bad actors who corrupted the value the original web provided. Sure, when the internet was a smaller village, nobody needed to lock their door: but then the village turned into the city, and locks became necessary. It seems strange to blame the locks for the reason they are needed.

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#307

Post by benj111 » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 6:06 PM UTC

swebs wrote: post #254

linsomniac wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newegg has been particularly bad with this in the past. Looks like they have fixed it now, but used to be that it would take a 0.5-2 seconds for their advertisement to load above the "search within", "only show newegg products, I'm not looking for an amazon experience", and "sort by" fields. Go to click on those (I always prefer "only newegg" instead of the default "all sellers"), and half the time I'd end up clickin…

>and half the time I'd end up clicking on the advertisement when it loaded. Just as planned

To be fair I find it with the web in general.

That site that you're about to reload because it isn't doing anything? Suddenly loads just as your finger is depressing the mouse button to reload. That JavaScript heavy site that has brought your pc to its knees? Works just as you've elected to kill the process.

I assume its a variant of Sods Law.

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#308

Post by skrebbel » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 6:08 PM UTC

devit wrote: post #249

skrebbel wrote: post #182

My company makes pluggable chat software. I'm sad about this development, because it means that we can't audibly notify users anymore when someone writes a message to them. I wonder whether there's a way around that, but I don't see it.

You are supposed to use the Web Notifications API and let the browser/OS choose whether it should play a sound.

Many browsers don't play a sound when a notification is shown.

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#309

Post by anoncake » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 6:10 PM UTC

apk-d wrote: post #300

dorgo wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I solved it by removing it in stylus: #eobc_1,.r-i4KASL__ToPM,.r-iGs8q6iiSUas{ display:none !important; } I think it was something like "other people also search for..." thing which poped up unexepectedly.

Is there any use in removing these automatically-generated tags? They seem like something that might change the second Google's deployment pipeline pushes a new build (or even sooner).

Ublock origin has the :has and :xpath operators for cases like this.

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Procedural-cosmetic-f...

Re: Firefox 66.0 Aims to Reduce Online Annoyances

#310

Post by glenneroo » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 6:11 PM UTC

dman wrote: post #258

an4rchy wrote: post #159

Does this include Netflix? It's been getting really annoying to have random videos your mouse is on, as you scroll, start playing automatically.

Netflix keeps making their UI worse, to the point where its unbearable now.

You would think by the comments here from Netflix employees that one or two of them would appreciate our feedback and pass some of it on to higher-ups.

Or perhaps management already knows and deliberately makes these decisions based on internal metrics and HN folks are essentially a non-existent blip on their radar...

EDIT: I also regularly leave feedback using the ? button (only available in Watch mode) but it seems to go unread. I don't even get an email "we take your feedback seriously and will look into this" which other sites tend to provide.