Facebook is pretty bad too... I was just watching a video, lowered the volume and scrolled down... then it popped up an always-on-screen video player... I close it and it reverts back to playing the one that is offscreen, and the volume gets reset to maximum level.
You click a link to a news site, to read an article that seems interesting
121–130 of 318 posts
Re: You click a link to a news site, to read an article that seems interesting
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How about an extension that disables video elements until you click on them ... Like how Internet Explorer treated Java applets towards the end on their days. No. Short MP4 files should replace GIFs. MP4 files are more efficient than the terrible compression GIF files have. I've made a few video game pages where auto-playing MP4s were essential at giving the right message... discussion of tactics and "movement" of…
> I've made a few video game pages where auto-playing MP4s were essential at giving the right message No. What you say is simply factually inaccurate. I've looked at the web page in your URL and it would be much better without distracting auto-playing video. The video should play then the user wants it to play. Is that really so hard to understand?
If the video is short, such as anything 20-seconds or shorter (even 5-second videos), the click is too much in my experience.
Perhaps its "meme culture" or Tik-Tock culture. But there's a style of super-short 5-second to 20-second video where looping makes far more sense than clicking.
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In either case, I've solicited feedback of this style in a variety of gaming forums from different communities. They mostly have had positive-experiences with tutorials / short videos written in this manner. Awesomenauts, Factorio, and Puyo Puyo. Three very different communities, three times they seemed to like the content and video/writing style of merged text + video.
Call it "Tumblr style", or "Tik-tok" style.
Re: You click a link to a news site, to read an article that seems interesting
#123If they can trigger a "video fired" message in the analytics, that's one more "Person viewed our video" they can show to a potential advertiser. That's all it's about, not the end user's experience.
Yes, but unlikely.
Its usually a deal with a 3rd-party that gives the guaranteed revenue based on views per week/month.
Re: You click a link to a news site, to read an article that seems interesting
#124Let's face it : the modern web is a nightmare without an adblocker and annoyance blocklists.
And most web creators aren't even aware because they use these tools themselves.
No wonder why normal people like walled gardens, the UI is more streamlined and (mostly) more respectful.
Re: You click a link to a news site, to read an article that seems interesting
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I've made a few video game pages where auto-playing MP4s were essential at giving the right message No. What you say is simply factually inaccurate. I've looked at the web page in your URL and it would be much better without distracting auto-playing video. The video should play then the user wants it to play. Is that really so hard to understand?
I agree completely. When there's a looping video below the fold, I'd rather start it with a click, instead of having to watch it up to twice just to see the clip from beginning to end.
Then click the button to replay the clip from the beginning if that really is your problem.
But you won't. Because the clips are 5 to 20 seconds long. So its faster to just wait for the loop than even to move your hand to the mouse.
Re: You click a link to a news site, to read an article that seems interesting
#126I feel browsing the web is long overdue having a robot butler to do it for us and come back with the things we wanted, leaving the "People in Norwich are using this genius trick"-style nonsense on the cutting room floor. It ought to be trivially possible, going on from things like grease monkey and ad blocking scripts to add a bit of user intent guessing / content filtering / simplified view logic.
Isn't this what Web 3.0 was supposed to be before crypto-fans stole the term?
> I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A "Semantic Web", which makes this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The "intelligent agents" people have touted for ages will finally materialize.
- Tim Berners Lee
Re: You click a link to a news site, to read an article that seems interesting
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
>How exactly do you ban a browser extension? browser vendors can blacklist it. >How do you consider legitimate traffic illegal? It's fairly obvious that sending traffic for the sake of generating traffic isn't "legitimate" by any means. Your excuse is flimsier as websites that sell ddos services as "stress testing" services.
> browser vendors can blacklist it. How would they do that? They can remove them from their list of extensions, but I can just download it from elsewhere and add it manually, right?
Installing AdNausiam into Chrome is remarkably difficult. You need developer mode on, repackage the addon manually and then dismiss the dev mode popup every time you start the browser.
In other browsers you need your addons to be signed. Firefox implemented this because of the terrible malware that got installed with adware installers. With administrator access, they kept changing every setting Firefox added to get the addon to load, so they made the entire loading system dependent on signatures. Luckily, adware developers aren't smart enough to load code into the signed binaries to work around this limitation.
You could do it, but it's more of a hassle than you'd expect.
Re: You click a link to a news site, to read an article that seems interesting
#128> Inexplicably, it was not blocked by your ad-blocker. This is the real problem. Why wasn't it blocked? We must fix that!
I think because technically, it's not an ad. But you can surely block the zone. Or, more simply, just disable javascript for the whole site. If it breaks the site, you know you don't want to come back.
uBlock Origin has an annoyances filter list, these autoplaying videos fall in that category. I agree with you on Javascript.
Re: You click a link to a news site, to read an article that seems interesting
#129How about an extension that disables video elements until you click on them ... Like how Internet Explorer treated Java applets towards the end on their days. You could add a whitelist feature to the extension for YouTube et al. Sure, it would be nice if websites didn't do shitty UX, but as others have said, don't visit those sites. The other extension idea I had was one which would reference a database of sites know…
You know, Firefox has that option right at the settings window. And if there's audio, it blocks by default.
Websites still find their way around this setting. I think they put an overlay on the page and intercept the first mouse event they can, and use that to start playing the video.
I usually just blacklist these websites in my Pihole.
Re: You click a link to a news site, to read an article that seems interesting
#130Not just news sites, either. A lot of fandom wikis run on the same platform, fandom.com. That site is a pain in the absolute fucking ass to use on any mobile device, specifically because of the autoplaying video that takes up half the screen on every page load . Weirdly, desktop is fine; no autoplaying videos or any such nonsense. It's only on mobile that Fandom has seemingly made a deliberate effort to make the user…
I'd say the worst part is that Firefox has a feature for blocking auto playing video. But it never works.
With some ad blocking I can at least get the videos to stop playing. The black rectangles are only slightly less annoying, though.