You click a link to a news site, to read an article that seems interesting

Post by drdeca » Mon, Dec 06, 2021, 5:04 AM UTC

gruez wrote: post #147

boring_twenties wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> any site that use custom playback controls will break Is that actually a bad thing? I have no idea about video playback controls, but in every other instance I've noticed where sites implement their own custom versions of browser controls, it's been absolutely terrible. Custom scrollbars, or lack thereof. Custom drop-down lists, which never support keyboard input properly. And so on. And even if I'm wrong, and cust…

>why should they be supported for any event except onclick? obvious example would be articles with scrolling effects (eg. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/06/the-secretive-... ), and need to autoplay videos when they scroll into view. That said, even if you restricted it to onclick, I don't imagine it's too hard for a page to receive a stray click (eg. if you're randomly selecting stuff) to trigger playback…

Post by gruez » Mon, Dec 06, 2021, 5:12 AM UTC

danachow wrote: post #155

KennyBlanken wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ohhhh, it's a lot more than that. You're being tracked by your car and phone bluetooth MAC addresses. That's how the "X minutes to exit Y" signboards work. They time how long it takes to see a particular MAC address appear at the next receiver.

You got a cite for that? I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, but that seems horribly overengineered for what has been traditionally accomplished with tracking the average speed of vehicles using radar or vehicle detectors - they have had these signs long before smart devices were common.

Post by waltbosz » Mon, Dec 06, 2021, 5:14 AM UTC

thomascgalvin wrote: post #54

nmstoker wrote: post #30

I 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.

If it was trivially possible, Firefox would already be doing it. But there's always an arms race with stuff like this. Our robot butler would be able to figure out how to parse the web today, but the advertisers would completely change the structure of pages tomorrow. Facebook used to have their ads wrapped in ` `. Now, they're buried a thousand divs deeps, and the ads and content both have nonsensical, non-semantic…

Post by onion2k » Mon, Dec 06, 2021, 5:18 AM UTC

colanderman wrote: post #175

On Firefox on macOS, almost always, the close button for these monstrosities is positioned flush right and sized exactly such that it extends merely 1 pixel left of the scroll bar. So, to close them, you must either aim precisely for this 1 pixel sliver, or move slowly enough that the scroll bar does not appear. These days I just click Reader Mode for almost any news site. I wish I could somehow set domains to always…

Post by onion2k » Mon, Dec 06, 2021, 5:22 AM UTC

grishka wrote: post #153

rstat1 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say the worst part is that Firefox has a feature for blocking auto playing video. But it never works.

I don't understand why there isn't a browser feature that would simply disable all and any support for and elements, or ask you a permission before a website can create any. It's really that simple. No need to try, and fail, to figure out which videos are "safe" to autoplay and which aren't. Let the user decide.