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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

#301

Post by Cthulhu_ »

shp0ngle wrote: post #282

> Browsers can register push notifications Oh yes I didn't notice EVERY PAGE on the planet asking me for that. (After asking me for e-mail newsletter signup and cookie consent.)

I think this is because there's no rules on the internet (besides GDPR which is implemented with varying properness). Compare with iOS where developers are given clear rules and / or instructions, e.g. how they have to ease the user into notifications instead of just yeet a permissions dialog in their face.

I think a lot of websites have just poorly / sloppily implemented the push notifications. I mean if they were to end an article with a call-to-action to subscribe to notifications and/or the newsletter, it'd be a much more pleasant experience.

As it stands, I've disabled push notifications entirely (https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/3220216?co=GENIE.Pl...) and I've got a bookmarklet that will try and delete all sticky elements (including persistent headers, popups, greyed-out popup backgrounds, cookie banners, etc). One day I might turn that into an addon that automatically does it after a few seconds of loading a webpage, idk.

One day browsers may implement pop-up blockers again as well but this time for the inline ones. I believe Google had an addon where you could report these things.

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#302

Post by Cthulhu_ »

gwern wrote: post #11
_bxg1 wrote: post #6

Worth noting is that "prefers-color-scheme" works in all major OSes at this point, mobile and desktop. If your site already has a dark theme, there is no reason at all not to be integrating it this way. Even if you don't have a dark theme already, it's a huge value-add..... (@dang?)

Yes, it's such an obscure feature that many of the people who enable it don't even realize it... Ever since I added dark mode to gwern.net, I've been getting or seeing complaints about how my website is broken or 'defaults to black-on-white' (it doesn't). :(

I've had a similar thing where people were complaining our app was in English (it was for a Dutch company), apparently people get confused about the preferences they themselves have set.

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#303

Post by jfkebwjsbx »

snazz wrote: post #167
jfkebwjsbx wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False. For starters, browsers can only implement sandboxing thanks to the OS facilities, otherwise it would be impossible. And that is modern ones. 5 years ago some browsers were still a security nightmare with not even multiprocess separation.

Five years ago was 2015. Chrome has had multiprocess and sandboxing for a lot longer than that.

And if you had read carefully I said some browsers.

In 2015 Firefox still did not have multiprocessing. IE did not either, and it was massively used back then.

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#306

Post by Shish2k »

Nursie wrote: post #291
modeless wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If operating systems had ever provided security strong enough to run untrusted code, we wouldn't have needed to. It's really a failing of operating system security. Even today no operating system provides an application sandbox as strong and versatile as the browser. Platforms have fallen back on walled gardens (app stores) with centralized control of all code execution to compensate for the deficiencies of their sec…

> If operating systems had ever provided security strong enough to run untrusted code The browser hasn't either. See all the recent intel bugs and how many can be exploited from javascript.

Sure, running untrusted code will never be 100% safe. But visiting a random website is 99% safe where running random .exe’s is 1% safe. Neither is perfect, but in practice, one is good enough for most situations and the other isn’t.

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#307

Post by worldsayshi »

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'm pretty sure you can set your browser to reject all push notifications.

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#308

Post by imtringued »

zzo38computer wrote: post #232
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.

If you do not need coloured text on your web page (due to coloured diagrams, colour coding, etc) then please do not specify colours at all. (If you do need colours, then ensure that all of the colours are specified.)

I hate it when the font color is set but not the input background. On computers with dark themes this can result in black on black text. There are workarounds in Firefox and I use them but this cost me more time than necessary.

Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020

#310

Post by Nursie »

Shish2k wrote: post #306
Nursie wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If operating systems had ever provided security strong enough to run untrusted code The browser hasn't either. See all the recent intel bugs and how many can be exploited from javascript.

Sure, running untrusted code will never be 100% safe. But visiting a random website is 99% safe where running random .exe’s is 1% safe. Neither is perfect, but in practice, one is good enough for most situations and the other isn’t.

Depends if you dockerise...

I agree, it's better, but the idea that you can just happily run whatever in the browser and it's all fine isn't quite true either.

But it is a lot better now than it used to be.

When it comes down to it - why am I exposed to untrusted code if what I'm trying to do, for the most part, is just browse and read info?

Perhaps we should separate browsers-as-app-platforms from browsers-as-readers.

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