One by one, the Chrome engineers continue to chip away at the techniques in The Annoying Site https://theannoyingsite.com (warning: open in a secondary browser).
One by one, the Chrome engineers continue to chip away at the techniques in The Annoying Site https://theannoyingsite.com (warning: open in a secondary browser).
Darn, this thing is nasty. And I'm surprised that all the huge sites in https://theannoyingsite.com/index.js L107 ff have XSRF/replay protection in their logout URLs...
That sums up pretty nicely, why I don't use Firefox. On Safari it only managed to spam my history and download cat images periodically, but I could easily close the window and it didn't spawn any additional windows.
To repeat my comment from last time this came up: in Firefox, this site is almost entirely neutered (but still a bit annoying) if you turn on the option that forces all popups into tabs rather than new windows. It's especially easy to shut if you open the site in its own window in the first place or use tree style tabs (so you can easily close the tab and all its descendants). I find this behaviour nicer anyway, even for non-malicious popups. I believe there is no such capability in Chrome.
I believe closing gmail browser window while composing a message would show a popup.
I use it in an app where editing an item locks it for everyone else and to unlock it, one needs to save or cancel the edit. So closing the browser tab while editing shows a warning.
Edit: I was corrected by the comment below. Had in mind a different function.
I taught retired people how to use computers for 5 years, I met and saw around 100 retirees interacting with a computer and talked with them about it. It's a very good proxy. You could see it immediately - they can handle good UX with good defaults, but a computer literally scares them and definitely NOT just lightly, I had people that nearly started crying when they thought they broke it - and the failure was that wallpaper was black but they expected a picture; I saw people literally screaming because a popup window or a dialog opened and they (in case of error) thought the computer is broken forever - I wish you saw their surprise when I clicked OK. Teaching them what is a button took at least 3 lessons - and that was in Windows 2000 to Windows XP times when a button actually looked like a button.
They are seriously afraid to even use it normally. Expecting them to change configuration is utter bullshit.
For any given product there is an expected demographic and a reasonable projected demographic going forward.
Older people are not a special case of a class of people incapable of becoming proficient with technology.
Current older people are in the position of having grown up before computers.
For any given tech product the computer incapable are probably not your biggest segment and that segment will shrink over time.
All of our 80 year old grandparents who mostly don't use technology now will use even less in whatever afterlife awaits and pretty soon we will have 50 year olds who encountered computers in their teens and grew comfortable with them.
Actually we have a rapidly increasing number of teens that have no idea how to use a computer due to smartphones and it's normal in Asia (especially Japan) to not even own a computer as a household. I've seen teens who don't know what a folder is.
When suddenly everybody went to the internet and not just experts.
Seriously, people can configure things. But on their level.
So a ordinary person is able to configure popups yes no and might understand the consequences - but if this setting is next to experimental new webgl module which might crash your browswr - and hundreds of other very technical ones, then clearly no.
And firefox about config is lile that.
Yes, a giant table filled with hundreds of rows like "network.auth.subresource-img-cross-origin-http-auth-allow default boolean false" is in fact arcane.
I've always thought it weird that Firefox's about:config UI is not much better than editing a flat configuration file. Clearly there wasn't much effort put into it. Even IE's configuration is far better organised than that, grouping everything into hierarchical categories.
Uhh, Firefox does have the a proper GUI settings area. about:config is for experiments, internal flags automatically set according to the user's system configuration, or niche features not useful to most users (and so not promoted to a spot on one of the graphical panels).
With the "user.js" feature [0], you can actually control them from a flat configuration file.
What does being helpless have to do with anything?
If a behavior makes sense and no one would reasonably not want it (like blocking popups during page unload), why does it need to be an option? Why isn't it just "the way the browser works"? What other "unbreak my browser" options are buried under there?
Nobody has actually mentioned a way to block pop-ups on unload with about:config in the first place. Not having ever seen a popup on unload it may actually already work like this.
The option discussed was forcing new windows into tabs.
I don't think that is a difference: for the feature my comment was about (popups in tabs), the chances of Firefox and Chrome rolling this out to all users by default (not in a config, arcane or otherwise) seems roughly equal to me. That is: neither currently shows any indication, and I can't imagine why!
I case I was unclear, the setting I'm talking about is totally different from the bug report linked by OP. For that: I have never seen a popup appear when closing a tab in Firefox so I suspect it was already fixed long before Chrome (and I haven't changed anything related to that in about: config)! But I haven't been about to find any definitive source about it.
The Annoying Site doesn't do anything if viewed without JavaScript --- showing that JS is responsible for the majority of annoyances. Unfortunately a lot of users are reluctant to use whitelist-based JS enabling, but IMHO it is extremely effective and well suited to those who mainly use the Internet as a hyperlinked document library.
(I discovered the effects of turning off JS a long time ago, and have been whitelisting since. It makes using the Internet much less irritating.)
Fascinating. Chrome on an iPad killed all the annoyances a few milliseconds after they started and redirected to a harmless page with a picture of a cat (like the original but without anything interactive).
They could realistically prevent calls to open popups in response to a mouseover event too. It really ought to only be allowed on “affirmative” interactions like a click. Of course, they can just make the close icon do something else.
I don't think removes the ability to have an unload prompt (navigating away will not save your changes are you sure?), it just removes the ability for the page to spam you with a popup in its dying breath.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 78.2 ms ] threadTalk video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFZ-pwErSl4
Source code here: https://theannoyingsite.com/index.js
Well done!
> killall firefox
that's pretty impressive
To change the setting: in about:config change browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction to 0. Source: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1066799
A kiosk at a gov/hospital that needs a browser open on a default page?
Their are probably better sys admin/mgmt tools available though.
I believe closing gmail browser window while composing a message would show a popup.
I use it in an app where editing an item locks it for everyone else and to unlock it, one needs to save or cancel the edit. So closing the browser tab while editing shows a warning.
Edit: I was corrected by the comment below. Had in mind a different function.
They are seriously afraid to even use it normally. Expecting them to change configuration is utter bullshit.
Older people are not a special case of a class of people incapable of becoming proficient with technology.
Current older people are in the position of having grown up before computers.
For any given tech product the computer incapable are probably not your biggest segment and that segment will shrink over time.
All of our 80 year old grandparents who mostly don't use technology now will use even less in whatever afterlife awaits and pretty soon we will have 50 year olds who encountered computers in their teens and grew comfortable with them.
Seriously, people can configure things. But on their level. So a ordinary person is able to configure popups yes no and might understand the consequences - but if this setting is next to experimental new webgl module which might crash your browswr - and hundreds of other very technical ones, then clearly no. And firefox about config is lile that.
With the "user.js" feature [0], you can actually control them from a flat configuration file.
[0] http://kb.mozillazine.org/User.js_file
If a behavior makes sense and no one would reasonably not want it (like blocking popups during page unload), why does it need to be an option? Why isn't it just "the way the browser works"? What other "unbreak my browser" options are buried under there?
The option discussed was forcing new windows into tabs.
I case I was unclear, the setting I'm talking about is totally different from the bug report linked by OP. For that: I have never seen a popup appear when closing a tab in Firefox so I suspect it was already fixed long before Chrome (and I haven't changed anything related to that in about: config)! But I haven't been about to find any definitive source about it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18715008
(I discovered the effects of turning off JS a long time ago, and have been whitelisting since. It makes using the Internet much less irritating.)
It seems like a good candidate for the new Windows Sandbox feature in Windows 10 (https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Windows-Kernel-Intern...).