Comment by old-gregg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by old-gregg | Hacker News Reader

IMO it doesn't worth the time to discuss appropriate and inappropriate uses of JavaScript. It's way simpler to disable it entirely. I use two browsers: Firefox with "YesScript" extension which keeps the black list of sites where JS is disabled: see a popup? laggy scrolling? sticky headers? Bam! hit the button and you won't see it again.

For work, where web applications like Google suite matter, I use Chrome.

Some time ago browser developers realized that letting Javascript open new windows was a bad idea and every browser now has a setting (on by default) to block pop-ups. IMO now it's time to introduce a few other anti-abuse settings. My candidates are:

  - code execution on "scroll" events
  - CSS animations (web devs, your transitions are NEVER smooth, even of MBP)
  - position:fixed (auto-replace to position:static)

> position:fixed (auto-replace to position:static)

I've gotten pretty good results from a bookmarklet that converts `position: fixed` elements to `display: none`.

Here's mine:

    javascript:for (let e of document.querySelectorAll('*')) if (/fixed|sticky/.test(getComputedStyle(e).position)) e.style.position = 'static';

I use it so many times a day it's not even funny (it's in my bookmarks bar, keyed to ctrl-2). I think it removes (or obscures) an element that I wanted to see in hindsight, way less than 1% of the time. It would be nice if I could just tell the browser to just ignore the `fixed` or `sticky` position properties entirely.

Those are all really good ideas, and I've had some similar thoughts myself.

But, they won't be added to Firefox unless they are first added to Chrome, and they certainly won't be added to Chrome.

Firefox was I believe the first browser to include blocking of popups, and it was said to be irresponsible and harmful to advertisers. But the days of Firefox being at all disruptive are long over.

> Firefox was I believe the first browser to include blocking of popups

No it was Opera. Same for tabbed browsing (can you imagine not having that today? only spawning new windows?).

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