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Tell HN: Blocking images as the default browser behaviour

17 points by Red_Tarsius ↗ HN
I'd like to share a tiny change that has considerably improved my browsing experience. I've recently reflected on the negative impact most web images have on my daily quality of life. Even with adblockers enabled, users are subjected to all sorts of attention-grabbing or shocking imagery. Think about the sheer amount of visual stimuli you're exposing yourself in only one hour. Of course, most of this content is designed to hijack your emotions in some way. I had my last straw when I was scrolling through a safe-for-work page on movies and I caught a glipmse of a gruesome still from a horror flick. It might sound like a minor nuisance but it soured my whole day. That's when I decided to block all images on the browser by default. If I want to view any specific page I have to explicitly give it my permission by putting it on the browser whitelist.

It squares nicely with my other blockers (e.g. all the suggestions/recommended videos from YouTube and the sidebar from most websites) to convey a nicer, smoother browsing experience. I feel silly for never using this feature until now.

10 comments

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comfypotato
An alternative (perhaps less drastic) is what I do: dim all the images. I have my own JavaScript that runs on every page dimming all the images (including the image that videos show before you press play). I originally wanted to introduce functionality that allowed me to un-dim an image if I really wanted to look closely, but I've found that this never happens. I use the style attribute. There is a brightness filter.

Like OP says, it improves my browsing experience. I'm typically here for the text.

gausswho
I'd be interested to try this if you share. Is it just a brightness assignment to all img tags? But this would miss imagery assigned via background image, among other means.
comfypotato
I tried to paste the code and it doesn't translate well at all.

Basically I made a "dim" function and set it to run every second. It attaches the brightness filter (if it hasn't already been attached (don't forget to check this, otherwise it will add to the style tag every second)) and makes it !important.

It attaches the filter to every img element, and every div that has "background-image" in the style string.

I'm sure there are other gotchas, but this has worked well so far.

filter: brightness(50%) !important

When I used Chrome, I just added the "image-dimmer" extension. It does exactly this.

gausswho
Excellent thanks for the elaboration.
Red_Tarsius
Thank you for sharing your alternative approach. I checked it out and image dimming looks like a fitting addition to dark mode and late-night browsing.
comfypotato
Yes! That is how I originally arrived to it. I have had similar experiences to yours where reducing the impact of the images generally improves my browsing experience. Even in a dark environment, the 50% brightness filter that I use makes the images barely visible. I've found that I enjoy the internet better this way as you have suggested.
HanClinto
Which method do you use to do this?

I use Wizmage Image Hider -- that works surprisingly well for the vast majority of images, and it does a great job of keeping content aligned so that it doesn't screw things up too badly. Only very rarely does Javascript nefariousness let an image slip through it -- overall it's a fantastic Chrome extension.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wizmage-image-hide...

I'm curious to hear what method you use?

jonas-w
Not OP, but i use uBlock Origin for blocking images and remote fonts and then whitelist sites where I want to see images or have remote fonts.
Red_Tarsius
Thank you for the recommendation. I'll give that extension a try as soon as I'm back home. So far I'm using the native options of Chrome: chrome://settings/content/images. From that page I can set the default behaviour and the whitelist/blacklist of websites. When I visit a webpage, I can view the images by clicking on the small lock to the left of the url bar. I didn't find the option to unlock only one image, it's all or nothing.
ud0
This is just pointless