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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

#351

Post by 7786655 »

radarsat1 wrote: post #280
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 don't mind the idea of notifications when I have a web page open in a tab. Like, sure if I receive a message while I'm looking at another tab, let me know! But I was a bit shocked to discover that I was getting notifications from sites that I did not have open, then I realized that when I register for notifications the browser will continuously poll that site in the background, no matter whether I've browsed to tha…

That's not actually how it works. What happens when you subscribe to notifications is that your browser gives the website instructions for it to send notifications to the browser vendor's notification service. Your browser only polls Mozilla's servers or Google's servers or Apple's servers and all notifications are relayed through that.

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#352

Post by gwern »

gwern wrote: post #190
chrfrasco wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like we need prefers-prefers-color-scheme

But then what happens when they forget opting into the opting in?!

In all seriousness, because people keep not realizing or forgetting, we're adding a 'theme switcher' little widget. I dislike the need, but lots of people genuinely like dark mode, and this seems to be the best compromise.

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#353

Post by Ntrails »

untog wrote: post #79
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.

Then you're out of step with what users want these days. Nothing wrong with that! But to take an example, when I hit a share button on a page I want to see the native share box, not some hideous iframed monstrosity that only works with Facebook. So I want Web Share. And I don't want to download an entire native app just so that I can receive a push alert when my food order is on the way, a web site works much better…

> But to take an example, when I hit a share button on a page..

You have already lost me, I do not believe I have ever done this, or wanted to do it

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#354

Post by efreak »

JadeNB wrote: post #243
monkin wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then you're out of step with what users want these days. "Developers" or average Joe's? Most people I know don't know what push notifications are. RSS? "Some kind of gov agency?". Sharing? "Facebook button!". And, no, they aren't idiots, they just don't care and see any of that. ;)

> "Developers" or average Joe's? Most people I know don't know what push notifications are. RSS? "Some kind of gov agency?". Sharing? "Facebook button!". And, no, they aren't idiots, they just don't care and see any of that. ;) I think this leaves out a middle ground. The people who design web pages love this stuff, either business decision-makers (because they think it improves metrics) or programmers (because it's…

It wouldn't surprise me if user control is the problem most services have with RSS

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#355

Post by handedness »

dgellow wrote: post #252
untog wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you're out of step with what users want these days. Nothing wrong with that! But to take an example, when I hit a share button on a page I want to see the native share box, not some hideous iframed monstrosity that only works with Facebook. So I want Web Share. And I don't want to download an entire native app just so that I can receive a push alert when my food order is on the way, a web site works much better…

> Then you're out of step with what users want these days. Two things: 1. The person you respond to is also a user, no reason to dismiss their point of view 2. I don’t think browsers asked users for what they want! It’s a bit disingenuous to say “that’s what users want” when the communication is one way only.

Exactly. Default browser settings ≠ user preference.

Default browser settings = what the browser developer believes will best server the browser developer's interests.

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#356

Post by Nursie »

masswerk wrote: post #178
megablast wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree, I leave a video on, switch tabs to read something else, and now it stops. There is no way to get it to keep playing and switch tabs.

Just open a new window and leave the tab with the video on top of that window. (It hasn't to be always tabs only.)

Doesn't work on mobiles.

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#357

Post by Nursie »

masswerk wrote: post #100
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.

While agree that most of these are highly invasive and certainly not a requirement, the Visibility API is actually a good thing. Apps which are running continuous scripts, like games, etc, may and should detect, when they are hidden (i.e. the tab they are in isn't the front most one) and pause. This is explicitely meant to preserve resources on the client machine and to benefit the user. On the other hand, there isn'…

God no, sites shouldn't be told whether I'm looking at them or not.

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#358

Post by bobthepanda »

XelNika wrote: post #337
bobthepanda wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's no real consensus. Try this site: https://contrastrebellion.com/

Sure, but there's a whole spectrum between slightly darker grey on slightly lighter grey, and straight up #FFF on #000 or vice versa.

If I have to adjust my monitor brightness to be okay with reading something there's a major issue.

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#359

Post by badsectoracula »

austurist wrote: post #329
badsectoracula wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole security angle is an after-the-fact rationalization and the vast majority of users (not developers, users ) never cared much about it - as anyone in the IT department of pretty much every company can tell you (again, users, not developers, not sysops, not admins, but regular end users). The real reason we see so many web apps is that the decision on what technology to use for an application is largely somet…

There is an another interesting property of web applications: the can't be stolen. I guess, this could also be a reason of their ubiquity.

What do you mean with stolen? Someone making something similar or making unlicensed copies? For the former i do not see how web apps prevent that and for the latter that only matters when the developer asks for money for each license, which is extremely rare with web apps anyway (the closest is subscriptions and rentals but that happens with desktop/native applications too, e.g. see Adobe and Autodesk). But even that is really a facet of the heavily developer biased control i mentioned that web apps provide.

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#360

Post by TheBobinator »

What seperates psychological warfare from marketing?

If you pay attention to advertising for a week, you will be marginally educated on what the advertiser wants you to know about their products and services; this has some economic utility as you cannot buy what you don't know exists.

If you pay attention to psychological warfare for a week, first off you at bare minimum will not be happy or content as you are not buying if you are content or happy; they must torture you through mechanisms of persuation and manipulation in order to manufacture a desire. Once that is done, then they try to train you to have desirable habits to them; as a famous example McDonalds happy meals for kids creating obese adult customers 30 years later. If the food didn't have a serious downside (didn't literally injure you and make you depressed) you wouldn't come back to the restaraunt later for your momentary allevation of that depression\for a fix.

Now, Go try to find reliable information on Coronavirus. Which one of those is going on 99% of the time? The sales funnel is really training you to be the product for them.

The web is funded by marketers who engage in pyschological warfare for profit, no feature they will ever impliment is designed to make you happy, and technologists have tremendous profit motive to make up all sorts of excuses as to why this behaivour is acceptable when clearly it is destructive to both themselves and the web.

Browsers today are trying to become an operarting system so they have absolute conrtrol over the user experience and as they do that they are on a slow march towards building an unbelievably bloated application who's philosophy is to confuse, distract, and screw you at every turn all while managing your perception.

Case in point, it would take hours for me to research how to turn off all of those features as I don't need them and there's no mechanism in Firefox or Chrome to backup settings which those browsers reset randomly and intentionally.

So call these things what they are; at best, bloat, at worst, a stock pump and dump scheme combined with a tremendous waste of time.

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