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

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

#91

Post by scrose »

northwest65 wrote: post #16

How about an opt in botnet extension for your browser that focuses it's energy on sites with this sort of dark pattern behaviour. i.e. You install the extension, when you come across a site like this you vote it for getting punishment, once the site gets enough vote the botnet occasionally focusses it's energy on the site in question when the participants browser is otherwise sitting idle. The punishment could potent…

Legality aside(on both sides), you assume a media site will take an increase in ‘impressions’ on their site as negative on its own. A lot of these places just care about making it look like there’s eyeballs looking at their stuff so they can sell that ad space at a premium, not whether there actually is. Ie. The places that put these auto play videos.

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

#92

Post by dragontamer »

waltbosz wrote: post #88

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. 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…

> 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 dynamic video game stuff is pretty common. (Any game requires the player to gain instincts that "predict the future", and short GIFs and/or MP4 files really help show off key moments).

Factorio thing I wrote a while back:

https://factorioguide.nfshost.com/backpressure.html

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

#93

Post by wyager »

waltbosz wrote: post #88

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. 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…

I swear Safari used to block autoplay-with-audio, and it recently stopped blocking it. I remember this because I specifically needed to set audio to disabled to get a video clip to autoplay on my blog (basically just a more efficient GIF).

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

#94

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

dragontamer wrote: post #92
waltbosz wrote: post #88

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. 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…

> 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…

> auto-playing MP4s were essential

I never want auto playing videos. Ever. It is my personal preference and i should be able to express that in my browser, overriding your preference, as the author of the web page.

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

#95

Post by notfed »

dragontamer wrote: post #92
waltbosz wrote: post #88

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. 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…

> 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…

Great so the extension should disable gif animations as well, good point.

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

#96

Post by throwaway81523 »

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…

> If it was trivially possible, Firefox would already be doing it.

Sorry but Firefox is mostly on the dark side these days. That shouldn't be too surprising since most of its money comes from google.

It does have a setting to stop embedded video from playing sound unless you send an event, but it is too easy for obnoxious pages to evade and play sound against your wishes.

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

#97

Post by Fnoord »

dragontamer wrote: post #92
waltbosz wrote: post #88

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. 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…

> 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…

Its too much abused.

Just like gif was in 90s.

The client has two important values: attention/time and battery. Your preference screws both.

There's a couple of solutions to that (such as only looping once or for X seconds or not showing it).

Either way, you think too much from content creator PoV, IMO.

The web was made in such a way that clients are able to (massively) modify the content or the way it is shown. If you don't fancy that then you don't fancy one of the core foundations of the web. I use all kind of extensions to modify my web experience. If your PoV would become dominant, I simply would not use WWW anymore.

Default experience matters because most people don't use extensions, or not the same ones (power users do) so you get your way anyway. And I don't get my way on Firefox Mobile because they decided to axe a lot of extensions, and I don't get my way on work Citrix because admins decided which extensions are worthwhile (they block all video stuff, btw).

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

#98

Post by nightpool »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #94
dragontamer wrote: post #92

Earlier 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…

> auto-playing MP4s were essential I never want auto playing videos. Ever. It is my personal preference and i should be able to express that in my browser, overriding your preference, as the author of the web page.

Do you have the same preference for auto-playing GIFs? If so then yes, we agree—users should be able to customize their user agent to serve their needs. If you don't, then I'd be interested to hear why. I don't believe any browser should treat GIFs and muted videos differently, and that was the crux of the GP's claim.

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

#99

Post by sroussey »

dragontamer wrote: post #92
waltbosz wrote: post #88

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. 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…

> 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…

Not sure why you are downvoted. Animated gifs are huge in comparison.

One thing to note, however, is that it must be without sound. Auto playing sound of any sort is complete garbage.

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

#100

Post by throwaway81523 »

keyle wrote: post #6

I'm surprised there isn't an extension for some kind of white-list only video stream content. I too find these sites despicable. But usually, by the time the video play you've already been fighting some popup about joining, dismissed a browser native window saying this site is asking to send you notifications in the future, and GRDP @#$%^$%^& "we care about your privacy so here is a booklet about our privacy policy,…

You know the old joke about the prison where all the prisoners all knew the same jokes, so instead of bothering to tell them at dinnertime, they would just call out a number? Seems like the interweb is like that, except it's XKCD comics instead of joke numbers. There is one for every occasion. With that in mind: 624.
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