Hacker News Reader

Comment by ailox | Hacker News Reader

This site pulls in 6750,83 KB of data assets and scripts. It has disables the shortcut for the developer tools, and fullscreen-prompts me to give them an email address to read the article. without the option to skip, of course.

I am convinced this is not good web design either.

View on HN

It disables most other shortcuts too. No fullscreen (F11), no "new tab" (Ctrl+T), no tab-jumping between links and input elements. I usually browse without using a mouse and suddenly got trapped inside this article, since they also disabled "close tab" (Ctrl+W)

I absolutely detest the fact that browsers allow overriding core keyboard shortcuts.

It's necessary for some things like games and certain web apps. I made a javascript game awhile ago, about guessing the next character in source code, which required disabling Tab.

I detest the fact that the browser uses the F-keys for its own shortcuts. We have an a web-app ported from a mainframe app that uses the F-keys for functions the _user_ carries out and users love being able to press F1 through F12 to activate buttons and other page elements. Familiar users can navigate throughout a complex app without the mouse and without continuous, repetitive tabbing.

Overriding the browser should absolutely be allowed.

For some things, sure. No excuse for being able to override to the extent that you can't leave a site without plugging a mouse in. Maybe, maybe, that could be allowed with an up-front confirmation dialog, but definitely not forced.

It comes down to use. The behavior you describe is infuriating and bad-practice. I think we are both right.

It should be something you have to opt into, with one cancellation button not overridable, similar to fullscreen mode.

It also prompted me to install the app, which is always nice.

Didn't Google work out that 'get the app' modals result 70%of the time in immediate tab closure, in the general population, not just among us angry HN nerds?

People complain that the Firefox NoScript extension is hard to use and breaks sites, and I see threads like this and think 'time to re-evaluate'.

The site with FF + NoScript loads perfectly. Everything I need to read the article and use my keyboard shortcuts works fine, no tampering with my preferences. 20 requests, about 1.5kB and loads in just a hair over one second for me - perfect.

It really is an improvement over the defaults that most websites deliver. It's true that some sites completely break without JavaScript but these are not the norm, and if they are worthy you can always choose to whitelist them temporarily or permanently. I've used the extension for about ten years and have only needed to whitelist a few dozen sites total.

Do yourselves a favor and give it a try if you haven't already. I can't guarantee you will love it immediately but as your 'cut through all the bullshit' option it truly excels.

Not to mention their massive navbar obscuring the view, and the inability to put text into their images ;)

http://cl.ly/2x3m091s3U0D

It doesn't do any of those things to me (using Chrome). Has the submission been changed to point to a different site?

(Currently linking to [1])

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/05...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com