Google has removed the option to disable autoplay from Mobile Chrome

Post by octoberfranklin » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 10:01 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #238

octoberfranklin wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a tech geek perspective, Firefox is the "emacs of browsers". They wrote a (lisp/js) interpreter and then wrote the (editor/browser) in that language. Unfortunately using a much more weakly-typed language [to write what is almost an OS of its own] yielded a mass of unmaintainable, constantly-mutating bloatware. They claim to be rewriting the interpreter layer in Rust, which is awesome, but 99% of the browser will…

Not sure where you're getting your information, but the majority of Firefox is written in C++, not Javascript.

Post by ehsankia » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 6:21 PM UTC

dwaltrip wrote: post #109

ehsankia wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Restricting framerate will still download the 100mb GIF. Also, so many parts of websites use gifs and canvas. If you start blocking those, you'll be hiding loading spinners, menus and more. You're adding ton and ton of complexity and going at war after something pretty silly. If a website is abusive and does shitty things, just don't use the website. After some point, it's no longer the browsers job to babysit the we…

Canvas and gifs could be an opt-in feature on a per-website basis, just like notifications and webcam access.

Post by fomine3 » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 2:04 AM UTC

pvg wrote: post #138

userbinator wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then maybe the solution is to also have the option turn off animated GIFs and perhaps frequent canvas repaints too; and not simply give up completely ! In any case, just leaving the option alone so at least it has some effect like it did before, would still be better than essentially a full surrender.

You can turn off GIF animation in Chrome, you are still downloading the giantass GIF. Slowing down canvas repaints if one of your overall goals is web applications that have feature and performance parity with desktop ones is, I think, unlikely. I'm a bit more surprised Google (and all browser vendors) aren't more proactive in just killing off animated GIFs.

Post by freyr » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 11:40 PM UTC

Termious wrote: post #215

freyr wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer with Windows and made it impossible for users to remove it. That's not at all "pretty much the same thing."

Okay, do you care to address the core point of my comment? These are two examples of anti-competitive behavior. The details might differ, but the core idea of what they did and how they did it is the same (abusing their dominant position to anti-competitively disadvantage competitors). Yet Google gets a pass because "capitalism".