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Google launches new “portal” HTML element

zdnet.com

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Re: Google launches new “portal” HTML element

#191

Post by kermitismyhero »

yellowapple wrote: post #146
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t use an Adblocker due to ethical concerns. (Not trying to convince you to do the same, just explaining.) It’s, uh, really not that bad. I rarely notice banner ads and the like. If a particular site gets really egrigious, I leave the site. I suspect that after using Adblock for years, your brain has forgotten how to ignore them.

My brain shouldn't have to ignore them, though; that's what technology's for :)

Exactly. Technology exists to solve problems. One of the greatest problems in today's world is the metaphorical tsunami of advertising sewage flooding our mental shorelines. Browser-based adblockers neatly solve that problem.

As for the "But how do we pay for all these free things then?" counterargument, I'd suggest voluntary restraint on the part of website creators. I can live with a few modest JPEG-only banner ads hosted directly from the site I'm visiting. If a site promises to not use animated images, streaming video, streaming audio, any sort of trackers, any sort of third-party content, and if they keep the screen-real-estate ratio of ads to content relatively low, then I'll whitelist them in a heartbeat.

Re: Google launches new “portal” HTML element

#192

Post by p4bl0 »

lol768 wrote: post #186

It's not in the list here https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/ and the spec ( https://wicg.github.io/portals/#the-portal-element ) is written solely by folks at Google and doesn't appear to be an actual W3C spec. Why should anybody care about this until it's standardised and implemented by more than one browser vendor? To talk of a browser vendor "launching" a new element is also ridiculous - Google have no…

I agree with most of your comment. However, I don't think the claim that Google is launching a new element is ridiculous (even if I'm sad about it). That's more or less how it worked during the IE vs Netscape war. Remember those fancy and tags for example. Standardization came second.

Re: Google launches new “portal” HTML element

#194

Post by co0nsta »

ddalex wrote: post #166
Spivak wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right but rather than making a seamless transition between pages they made it a subpage of the parent. Having built-in page previews is actually a useful feature but without the other useful feature of "play video" -> "click video to open page" -> "video continues playing while the rest of the real page renders around it" -> "you are now really on the other page with no connection to the previous page" it seems like…

This. It can allow you to see the google results and navigate from them seamlessly without actually leaving the top-level domain. It effectively captures the entire audience. There will be no more Internet, it's going to be a Google portal (like AOL) with Google keywords, and will "borrow" the content from everybody else.

How do you define "actually leaving"? Because after navigating to the portal, it occupies the whole viewport and becomes the main document with your site's URL.

Even if we assume you use AMP, package it with signed exchange, and Google SERP displays it then, yeah, your site could appear with no extra network request to your site. The lack of network requests isn't that different to old school HTTP proxies but with better specs and security. AMP has analytics and stuff so if you want to count visits, go do that.

I think the problem these technologies are meant to solve is making navigating between pages take under a hundred milliseconds and appear much faster by being able to preview/animate them. That would be good.

Yeah, new technology is not without cost and risks but Google turning the web into a walled garden isn't high on my list of risks.

Re: Google launches new “portal” HTML element

#195

Post by EastSmith »

Looks to me as an effort to make any user visiting google.com to not actually leave google.com FOREVER.

Users will get portal-ed to a result page (with the browser's url bar showing foo.com, instead of google.com), but the user will be tracked the entire time from google, since they would be still on google.com.

Re: Google launches new “portal” HTML element

#197

Post by busymom0 »

I honestly don't see the point of this unless it gets widely adopted by other browsers (which is an obvious point). Mobile is already a huge market and on iOS at least, even chrome and safari simply use the iOS built in WKWebView with a UI wrapper around it. So unless Apple decides to include , wouldn't this not work on any iOS browsers? I also use Android but don't use Chrome due to it's lack of extension and content blocker support. So other browsers on Android will also need to adopt this.

Re: Google launches new “portal” HTML element

#198

Post by sixothree »

evv wrote: post #152
strictfp wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good thing is that they are already starting, so that the red flags are risen early.

Have you considered that it is already too late? Just look at Microsoft bending the knee to Chromium

I wonder if Chrome browser could survive if it was spun off from parent company.

Re: Google launches new “portal” HTML element

#199

Post by stevens32 »

burtonator2011 wrote: post #179
prepend wrote: post #142

“Google says portals allow users to navigate inside the content they are embedding --something that iframes do not allow for security reasons.” I love how they gloss over the security issue here. This is the equivalent of “we made a new Ajax that can call from different domains.” Reading through the article, I don’t see the security restriction addressed at all. I expect that this gets worked on when google submits t…

My expectation is that you could only do this for the same domain.

Looks like that's not the case based on the blog post linked in the article https://web.dev/hands-on-portals/

Re: Google launches new “portal” HTML element

#200

Post by Wowfunhappy »

kermitismyhero wrote: post #191
yellowapple wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My brain shouldn't have to ignore them, though; that's what technology's for :)

Exactly. Technology exists to solve problems. One of the greatest problems in today's world is the metaphorical tsunami of advertising sewage flooding our mental shorelines. Browser-based adblockers neatly solve that problem. As for the "But how do we pay for all these free things then?" counterargument, I'd suggest voluntary restraint on the part of website creators. I can live with a few modest JPEG-only banner ads…

> If a site promises to not use animated images, streaming video, streaming audio, any sort of trackers, any sort of third-party content, and if they keep the screen-real-estate ratio of ads to content relatively low, then I'll whitelist them in a heartbeat.

I just don't think this is a workable model for most users. "You want me to do extra work so I can see some (admittedly nonintrusive) ads? No way, figure out your own business." Honestly, if I started using an adblocker I'm not sure I could force myself to make that effort per website.

I really wish uBlock Origin at least had the option to enable a blacklist model—ie, no sites ever have their ads blocked by default, but as soon as a site annoys me, I can go into my adblocker and disable their ads.

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