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Things you can do with a browser in 2020

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Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#231

Post by superasn »

lbebber wrote: post #49
rkagerer wrote: post #28

As a user, so many of these I wish did NOT exist. E.g: Push Notifications, Banners, Web Share, Contacts, Page Visibility, Badging. Uncertain about USB, Bluetooth, Locks, Keyboard Lock, and Native File System. I don't want my browser doing those things.

I like that push notifications on the browser exist (for e.g. Slack, WhatsApp), I just wish there were no popups for it--just an unintrusive button you could press to enable it.

That's quite easy to do in chrome. Open global settings then set web notifications to block. Then whitelist sites by clicking the lock icon in address bar.

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#232

Post by zzo38computer »

bobthepanda wrote: post #60
_bxg1 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it depends a lot on age and level of eyesight. I've never once felt eye strain from looking at a dark theme, and if a room is even somewhat dark then a blindingly white screen gives me a headache. I can always fiddle with my brightness as needed for different situations, at least on my phone, but that's kind of a pain. On a desktop monitor it's usually a significantly bigger pain.

I've always heard that you should use an off-white or off-black, and that CSS like #000 or #FFF for backgrounds is a no-no.

If you do not need coloured text on your web page (due to coloured diagrams, colour coding, etc) then please do not specify colours at all. (If you do need colours, then ensure that all of the colours are specified.)

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#233

Post by zzo38computer »

duxup wrote: post #20
fenwick67 wrote: post #19

Who seriously thought the Battery Status API was a good idea? Someone thought this was useful enough to write a spec for it...

I suppose you're doing what might be a resource intensive task and want to be sure you don't kill the battery. Granted I get folks might feel a rando website that is resource intensive would be horrific, but maybe we're talking about some specific web app / use case.

Even so, I think battery API is not the proper way to do it. Some sort of interrupt command (like UNIX has) may be better.

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#234

Post by zzo38computer »

CraneWorm wrote: post #73
deadmutex wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has its own set of challenges -- now you have to design your game so that the battery indicator doesn't cover up an important part of the game. Also, what if the OS allows it to be configurable location/size, etc.

> now you have to design your game so that the battery indicator doesn't cover up an important part of the game You should not be able to do that; It's a feature that you cannot do that.

Mostly agreed. However, if the screen is split into the system area and document area, then the battery indicator could go in the system area, and the game need not know where it is; only the size of the document area needs to be known by the game (and not whether or not the system area is present, what it contains, etc).

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#235

Post by badrchoubai »

worble wrote: post #72
_bxg1 wrote: post #6

Worth noting is that "prefers-color-scheme" works in all major OSes at this point, mobile and desktop. If your site already has a dark theme, there is no reason at all not to be integrating it this way. Even if you don't have a dark theme already, it's a huge value-add..... (@dang?)

I'm sure someone will call me a slowpoke on this, but one really cool thing that I didn't know about until recently was that you can also use this in images with srcset's, to display a darker image. For example, if you want to put the "Made with Bulma"[0] tag on your website, they offer a light and dark version, which you could use like this: This will automatically replace with the image src when the srcset criteria…

I hadn’t known exactly what srcset did until reading this, thank you!

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#237

Post by zzo38computer »

rapind wrote: post #216
rkagerer wrote: post #28

As a user, so many of these I wish did NOT exist. E.g: Push Notifications, Banners, Web Share, Contacts, Page Visibility, Badging. Uncertain about USB, Bluetooth, Locks, Keyboard Lock, and Native File System. I don't want my browser doing those things.

Browsers need better and more usable permissions (and less leakage). Every API that's added is another attack vector.

Yes, and not only permissions, but overrides, too. (For example, to specify that the battery level should always be reported as a user-defined constant, rather than the actual level, or to use a file instead of a camera (or vice versa) if the user wants to.)

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#238

Post by tylerl »

rkagerer wrote: post #28

As a user, so many of these I wish did NOT exist. E.g: Push Notifications, Banners, Web Share, Contacts, Page Visibility, Badging. Uncertain about USB, Bluetooth, Locks, Keyboard Lock, and Native File System. I don't want my browser doing those things.

The point is that just because you don't want most sites to use these features doesn't mean that no use exists. I just want to make sure I don't get nag notifications begging me to turn it on every time I visit a news site.

Notifications? I need those from my calendar app and chat app.

Badges? Messaging systems I use rarely but which are important.

Visibility? I want resource intensive apps to "sleep" when not in use.

USB? I want an Arduino web ide to be able to communicate with hardware.

Screen lock? I don't want the machine to go into sleep mode when I'm presenting a slide deck.

Key lock? I don't want the browser intercepting keystrokes in my word processor or SSH session.

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#239

Post by saagarjha »

Nicksil wrote: post #203
saagarjha wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the browser is the main attack vector on mobile Citation needed. Browser-based attacks are difficult to come by, because it's just easier to attack an application instead.

>Citation needed. Browser-based attacks are difficult to come by, because it's just easier to attack an application instead. You require a citation then make an assertion with with no supporting source.

Browsers usually have fairly strong security models, since they are expected to constantly run untrusted code (which has nothing to do with web app security, FWIW). Apps rarely get this kind of scrutiny and often don't (Android) or can't (iOS) employ features that browsers can to do, such as multiple processes.

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#240

Post by hobs »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #184
hobs wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need for ublock, the dev console is called your memory, your network tab is now something the entire os can understand, and you can even opportunistically block specific network calls. Obfuscated javascript running in the console is no better than random apps, and webasm is going to make that even more opaque. You are talking about features that are only needed for websites and why an app doesnt have those feature…

I think the point is that these features are masked from the user (especially on mobile) when performed in a native app vs a website.

On mobile its somewhat more fair, but the dev tools, adblock, and other items on mobile are almost always super compromised and locked down by the device manufacturer.
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