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Browserball

weareinstrument.com

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Re: Browserball

#51

Post by agumonkey »

DonHopkins wrote: post #41
agumonkey wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did I not read your nickname .. :) The pseudo billboard idea is cute, but I wonder how it fares in readability on non HD screen (font rendering in 3D space may impede it, then viewing angles.). I'd love to see it done anyway, it's cute idea. Another 'this is ' rant, we should have way more sensors on usb or i2c and have our laptops integrate with the real world more.

Here are some ideas and discussion about aQuery -- like jQuery for accessibility [1] -- which would be useful for implementing this kind of stuff out of of existing window systems and desktop applications. [1] aQuery: http://donhopkins.com/mediawiki/index.php/AQuery Morgan Dixon's work is truly breathtaking and eye opening, and I would love for that to be a core part of a scriptable hybrid Screen Scraping / Accessibi…

Small temporary answer while I unwind all the linked content, Dixon's target aware pointing is already missing so much. I wonder how on earth nobody in smartphone land thought to implement something similar. I'm already hooked :)

Re: Browserball

#53

Post by DonHopkins »

agumonkey wrote: post #51
DonHopkins wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are some ideas and discussion about aQuery -- like jQuery for accessibility [1] -- which would be useful for implementing this kind of stuff out of of existing window systems and desktop applications. [1] aQuery: http://donhopkins.com/mediawiki/index.php/AQuery Morgan Dixon's work is truly breathtaking and eye opening, and I would love for that to be a core part of a scriptable hybrid Screen Scraping / Accessibi…

Small temporary answer while I unwind all the linked content, Dixon's target aware pointing is already missing so much. I wonder how on earth nobody in smartphone land thought to implement something similar. I'm already hooked :)

It's missing from many contexts where it would be very useful, including mobile. It's related in many ways to those mobile gui, web browser and desktop app testing harnesses. It could be implemented as a smart scriptable "double buffered" VNC server (for maximum efficiency and native Accessibility API access) or client (for maximum flexibility but less efficient).

The way jQuery widgets can encapsulate native and browser specific widgets with a platform agnostic api, you could develop high level aQuery widgets like "video player" that knew how to control and adapt many different video player apps across different platforms (youtube or vimeo in browser, vlc on windows or mac desktop, quicktime on mac, windows media player on windows, etc). Then you can build much higher level apps out of widgets like that.

Target aware pointing is one of many great techniques he shows can be layered on top of existing interfaces, without modifying them.

I'd like to integrating all those capabilities plus the native Accessibility API of each platform into a JavaScript engine, and write jQuery-like selectors for recognizing patterns of pixels and widgets, creating aQuery widgets that tracked input, drew overlays, implemented text to speech and voice control interfaces, etc.

His research statement sums up where it's leading: Imagine wikipedia for sharing gui mods!

Berkeley Systems (the flying toaster screen saver company) made one of the first screen readers for the Mac in 1989 and Windows in 1994. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OutSpoken

Richard Potter, Ben Shneiderman and Ben Benderson wrote a paper called Pixel Data Access for End-User Programming and graphical Macros, that references a lot of earlier work. https://www.cs.umd.edu/~ben/papers/Potter1999Pixel.pdf

Re: Browserball

#54

Post by nommm-nommm »

empath75 wrote: post #39
21 wrote: post #4

What's the reason for allowing web pages to get absolute screen coordinates? This is a privacy leak. I have a 24" screen, and I don't keep the browser window maximized because it would be too big. I presume other people do to, and I'm pretty sure most have a preferred size and position.

Just out of curiosity, what can someone do with this information?

Create a unique fingerprint for your browser used to track you through the web.

Re: Browserball

#55

Post by startling »

empath75 wrote: post #39
21 wrote: post #4

What's the reason for allowing web pages to get absolute screen coordinates? This is a privacy leak. I have a 24" screen, and I don't keep the browser window maximized because it would be too big. I presume other people do to, and I'm pretty sure most have a preferred size and position.

Just out of curiosity, what can someone do with this information?

Correlate your visits across unrelated websites.

Re: Browserball

#56

Post by anc84 »

beeboop wrote: post #44
anc84 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually quite the opposite. Most sites will become lightning fast and distraction free.

I have use NoScript consistently for years and I disagree with you. Essentially the only thing NoScript does is make it so when you haven't visited a website before, it doesn't automatically trust it. For the most part every single website I go to needs to have JS enabled for anything to work beyond just reading content. And even then, I would say 70% of the time, some critical piece of content on a website does not…

> For the most part every single website I go to needs to have JS enabled for anything to work beyond just reading content.

What percentage of websites is that though? Of course it depends on your browsing habits if it is feasible or not. I don't click social media stuff, I participate only if I really want to or if I am part of a community.

The majority of sites I visit are either regular revisits (rules are easily set up then) or random browsing where security & privacy by default is good.

I never used NoScript but am a bit uMatrix fan. There I can easily allow things. NoScript looked super complicated.

Re: Browserball

#57

Post by anc84 »

danielweber wrote: post #50
beeboop wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have use NoScript consistently for years and I disagree with you. Essentially the only thing NoScript does is make it so when you haven't visited a website before, it doesn't automatically trust it. For the most part every single website I go to needs to have JS enabled for anything to work beyond just reading content. And even then, I would say 70% of the time, some critical piece of content on a website does not…

And then starts the crazy hunt for the one thing you need to turn on to make the page work. I was trying many years ago to create a public DB/wiki telling us which things we need to turn on to get the page to work, but it got abandoned before I really started.

That sounds super annoying. I don't know how cumbersome NoScript is but with uMatrix (or even RequestPolicy) things are easy.

Re: Browserball

#58

Post by nommm-nommm »

sleepychu wrote: post #42
Cpoll wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's using window.screenY (and screenX, of course,) which gives absolute coordinates. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/scre... I don't think the method you're describing exists. If you want child coordinates relative to parent coordinates, you would use both the parent and child's absolute coordinates.

Thanks to you (and others who've provided this information), so I guess my question now is what is the privacy leak described. I understand that the browser is confessing information about the machine to the web page but I don't understand why that represents a private piece of information. I feel like the information about where the window is located on the screen is useful for implementation and I can't think what…

Nothing on its own. However it is one of the pieces of information used to create a unique fingerprint for your browser which can be used to track you as you travel across the web. IIRC Tor browser recommends never resizing the window from the browser's default window size.

Re: Browserball

#59

Post by hashmymustache »

catmanjan wrote: post #32
zbjornson wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used it to automatically position auxillary windows adjacent to the main window in a data analysis application. I don't see how it reveals anything private about the user... my screen resolution and window location are not secrets to me.

But they may be unique to you, making you more identifiable/trackable. The TOR browser warns you when resizing the window that it reduces privacy. Personally I don't care either, just thought you might want to know!

But just because it's unique, why does it make it trackable? The overwhelming majority of devices have one of a few common display resolutions, so what's there to link across sessions for identifying users?

Re: Browserball

#60

Post by softawre »

sleepychu wrote: post #42
Cpoll wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's using window.screenY (and screenX, of course,) which gives absolute coordinates. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/scre... I don't think the method you're describing exists. If you want child coordinates relative to parent coordinates, you would use both the parent and child's absolute coordinates.

Thanks to you (and others who've provided this information), so I guess my question now is what is the privacy leak described. I understand that the browser is confessing information about the machine to the web page but I don't understand why that represents a private piece of information. I feel like the information about where the window is located on the screen is useful for implementation and I can't think what…

https://github.com/Valve/fingerprintjs2
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