Unfortunately I use Firefox with privacy.resistFingerprinting set to true. This disables leaking time zone information, so when javascript tries to query the time of day it gets a time 7 hours ahead of my actual time zone.
In other words, this function would break websites for me, the demo thinks it's night even though I haven't even had dinner yet.
I love resistFingerprinting, but I really wish it had a whitelist for certain data on certain sites. Maybe I want my calendar app to know what time zone I'm in!
I think they work because of the conjunction. If lots of Firefox users give up these options, then they're not distinguishable from each other. Of course I know this is a cat and mouse game. But I'm siding with the mouse.
Trying to define or prescribe a standard sleep schedule for everyone is pointless. There are people sleeping 9pm-5am and others 2am-10am, sometimes in the same household. Some people sleep fewer hours at night and take naps during the day. No single habit is "correct".
Semi-related – I have had so many frustrating experiences with government websites which only operate during business hours.
Interesting how a non-latin Top Level Domain renders in the address bar(.みんな) vs how the author writes it in the <script> tag in his article (.xn--q9jyb4c).
I was going to ask about that domain because when I looked into it ICANN doesn't allow unicode/emoji gTLDs? Which seems to discriminate against non latin languages?
Seriously. Many of us access sites when we can, not necessarily when we want. I know there's a bypass feature, but being greeted by this kind of nannying reminder can come across as annoying, at the least, to a certain nocturnal group of folks (ex. hospital staff, parents of newborns, security guards, etc.).
I don't think this is meant for such sites but I can def see a benefit for social, news, or other "addictive" sites that might be detrimental to people's mental health.
IOS, Android, and at least Macos have the ability to help users restrict the time they spend on an application, but doing so on the web is not as simple. In chrome I'm using "Intention" which is a nice extension that does something similar but for only the sites I've added to a list.
As long as the site has a way to allow me to still browse the site or even give me 15m more or something and then fade to black again I'd welcome this from many sites.
Why would you go to the bother of producing a website and then shut other people out of it just because you're asleep. Even worse is assuming that because it's their bedtime, they have no right to think they can use the website.
So many assumptions. It reminds me of my ethnic mother's command, "I'm cold. Go and put a jumper on."
Aside from being instructed to sleep, which is a little juvenile, there’s something charming about the idea of a website being “closed” for the day. It has the feel of a living, dynamic thing. Definitely not suitable for all types of websites but it’s a neat idea for personal a page. I don’t think I’d ever use a third-party to implement something like this either.
You scared me with the Mon-Fri, but actually irs is mon (morning)--sat (night) and sun (morning)--mon (unless maintenance happens). Which sounds fairly reasonable.
What makes you ask this question? Is it privilege? Ignorance?
We aren't talking about a silly pet project. We're talking about important government websites that need to be available to every citizen of the US, regardless of their work schedules and obligations. Artificially restricting the hours is insane.
I'm still confused. I'm assuming a web frontend to a batch process enqueues things until it's time to run that process. Why can't it enqueue things 24/7?
Updates make some sense, but most situations I see things of that sort it's "X may be down for maintenance during these hours", which it usually isn't most of the time in reality.
B&H is a Jewish electronics store here in NY. From sundown Friday until sundown Saturday you can't place any orders on their site, (though you can still window shop).
I agree, I'd like it better if it was something like "this website it asleep" while keeping a way to access it. Maybe something like "take a peek", because I wouldn't want to make people feel bad for "waking up" the website.
Its open source! Seems like a very simple change, If you are interested I could make a fork. And there is a link to bypass it in the current version, just not with the wording you suggested.
> I wouldn't want to make people feel bad for "waking up" the website.
Great take on user interaction and design.
If someone feels this idea seem far-fetched, think about how applications or sites make you feel when it belittles you for mistakes made in an input, dropp all your progress because you followed the misplaced button, or use the ‘cute but sad animated animal mascot’-dark pattern when you want to cancel an account.
I really, really dislike the 'for your own good' impetus that seems to be a common current design trend.
We're already dealing with information-density loss and the Fisher-Pricification of the GUI, and maybe this is the next step in overwrought 'we know what you want to do better than you'.
I have no ire for the creator of this.
But respect boundaries, people. You are not your user's parents.
You’re probably one of about 100 people in the world who set their device time to UTC. I don’t think it’s reasonable for any designer to cater for this use case.
Part of it is for log file continuity, but the bigger reason is that I actually manage my entire life in UTC. All the clocks, watches, phones, and even rice cooker in my home read UTC.
I tried timezones and DST for a while and hated it, and decided to do away with it.
It’s early…
Nothing we can offer you is more important than your health.
Eat well, run some laps, and we will catch you in the afternoon.
This site will be usable after 100 push ups.
Honestly, I’ll take designers thinking about the well-being of their users, even if it comes across as condescending. The common alternative is to wring as much attention out of the user as possible, pushing their buttons so they keep using the app until every last drop of dopamine has been exploited.
At the same time, if you gear your website's performance towards engagement (e.g. I'd like people to read a bunch of stuff, stay for a while), you may feel an obligation to limit the effect your website has on someone's normal functions.
Take Hacker News, for example. This is not a site that maliciously steals attention for the gain of the owners. It still has the capacity to be a solid time sink. If the admins felt so inclined (and I'm very much not insisting they should), they could say "this could cause harm. Maybe we mitigate that harm by putting an extra barrier?"
And they actually do! Check out "noprocrast". Admittedly this is opt-in instead of opt-out, but websites (and even businesses in general) can sometimes take into account the wellbeing of customers over what measure of "efficiency" they may have.
This isn't a new trick. Some US Gov sites have hours of operation. From memory the IRS has one, and recently I noticed one of the gov sites for LA had "hours" for some parts, so I could only do forms when they were open.
A remark for JavaScript developers: for injecting its content into the body, this script creates a dummy div (it has no attributes and is targeted by no styles), sets its innerHTML, then appends it to the body. That dummy div is actually unnecessary: Element.insertAdjacentHTML lets you achieve the same effect without it:
Don't make assumptions about your users. Maybe it's important to them. Maybe they have insomnia. Maybe they are staying up late. Maybe they work early/late in concert with someone elsewhere in the world. Maybe they're sleep schedule is different from yours
I'll give you an advice I wish I learnt earlier in my life.
Don't think how something does not work, how it will be broken from the get go. Don't come up with negative use cases - its easy.
Do the opposite, its much. much harder. But as the result you can arrive at new ideas (be it business or art). After and only then you can work on workaround for the negatives.
I’m a bit confused by the name, what’s the Japan connection?
The developer seems to be called Masamichi Souzou (正道想像) but doesn’t seem to have any connection to Japan? Is there something I’ve missed? Just seems odd to me.
Fetishization: "This burrito is so amazing I'm going to start using a Cholo accent, drive a low rider, do up my apartment like the inside of an Azteca, and rename my business to some obscure Spanish phrase"
This kind of reminds me of the Wojciech Cejrowski's (Polish TV and YT personality who gradually turned far-right) online shop that is closed on Sunday due to religious reasons [1][2]
Websites can be accessed from anywhere in the world. You don't know that it's nighttime where your users are. I guess you could use geolocation and figure it out, but that is an awful lot of trouble to go to just annoy your users.
Some people work the night shift and sleep during the day. Others have odd schedules. Just don't do this. It's paternalistic, ill-advised, and not helpful.
101 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 172 ms ] threadIn other words, this function would break websites for me, the demo thinks it's night even though I haven't even had dinner yet.
I want to disable Timezone and System Theme anti-fingerprinting but FF gives no option.
Each time?
In an almost...fingerprintly unique fashion?
Semi-related – I have had so many frustrating experiences with government websites which only operate during business hours.
http://domainincite.com/18035-why-you-cant-register-emojis-i...
Emojis are something else though.
IOS, Android, and at least Macos have the ability to help users restrict the time they spend on an application, but doing so on the web is not as simple. In chrome I'm using "Intention" which is a nice extension that does something similar but for only the sites I've added to a list.
As long as the site has a way to allow me to still browse the site or even give me 15m more or something and then fade to black again I'd welcome this from many sites.
It's good in theory, but thankfully lacks the contextual information it would need to be appropriately enabled for a given user's sleep schedule.
This policy is only workable if your country uses a little-used language and takes up only a single timezone.
Dumb idea. Unnecessary complexity in a website.
IP geolocation isn't a good idea either because I often access pages through a VPN in another timezone.
In short, nice thought but no thanks.
I'm sure you can make your substantive points thoughtfully. That will both represent them better and enhance the community rather than damaging it.
So many assumptions. It reminds me of my ethnic mother's command, "I'm cold. Go and put a jumper on."
I like the clean margins and typography there.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/find/HelpCenter/StoreInfo.jsp
That's a lot more than any other business I can think of, but it might not be a majority depending on how you count:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_holidays
(e.g., https://www.irs.gov/payments/view-your-tax-account see the "Hours of availability" section)
What makes you ask this question? Is it privilege? Ignorance?
We aren't talking about a silly pet project. We're talking about important government websites that need to be available to every citizen of the US, regardless of their work schedules and obligations. Artificially restricting the hours is insane.
Updates make some sense, but most situations I see things of that sort it's "X may be down for maintenance during these hours", which it usually isn't most of the time in reality.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com
(Click/tap the cup in the lower right corner if you visit outside opening hours) :-)
There is one.
Great take on user interaction and design.
If someone feels this idea seem far-fetched, think about how applications or sites make you feel when it belittles you for mistakes made in an input, dropp all your progress because you followed the misplaced button, or use the ‘cute but sad animated animal mascot’-dark pattern when you want to cancel an account.
We're already dealing with information-density loss and the Fisher-Pricification of the GUI, and maybe this is the next step in overwrought 'we know what you want to do better than you'.
I have no ire for the creator of this. But respect boundaries, people. You are not your user's parents.
This page which uses device time doesn't work well for me because I use UTC as my device time regardless of where I am in the world.
IP geolocation isn't a good idea either because I often access pages through a VPN in another timezone.
In short, nice thought but no thanks.
Also, great way to get your page downranked if a search engine comes prowling around your website at night.
I tried timezones and DST for a while and hated it, and decided to do away with it.
Only if you have some advanced accessibility features that lets me use the site without my arms, which are now completely limp.
Take Hacker News, for example. This is not a site that maliciously steals attention for the gain of the owners. It still has the capacity to be a solid time sink. If the admins felt so inclined (and I'm very much not insisting they should), they could say "this could cause harm. Maybe we mitigate that harm by putting an extra barrier?"
And they actually do! Check out "noprocrast". Admittedly this is opt-in instead of opt-out, but websites (and even businesses in general) can sometimes take into account the wellbeing of customers over what measure of "efficiency" they may have.
It’s not quite the same as when Mommy tucks me into bed and turns the lights off, but I still find it helpful.
I have more remarks I could make, but I’ll leave it at that one. It’s the most interesting.
Don't make assumptions about your users. Maybe it's important to them. Maybe they have insomnia. Maybe they are staying up late. Maybe they work early/late in concert with someone elsewhere in the world. Maybe they're sleep schedule is different from yours
Or maybe they just work the night shift.
Don't think how something does not work, how it will be broken from the get go. Don't come up with negative use cases - its easy.
Do the opposite, its much. much harder. But as the result you can arrive at new ideas (be it business or art). After and only then you can work on workaround for the negatives.
The developer seems to be called Masamichi Souzou (正道想像) but doesn’t seem to have any connection to Japan? Is there something I’ve missed? Just seems odd to me.
Fetishization: "This burrito is so amazing I'm going to start using a Cholo accent, drive a low rider, do up my apartment like the inside of an Azteca, and rename my business to some obscure Spanish phrase"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11777562
[1] https://www.wykop.pl/wpis/34034367/wchodze-na-strone-cejrows...
[2] https://buzz.gazeta.pl/buzz/7,156947,11419434,zakupy-w-niedz...