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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

I feel I'm getting close to the point where I'm just going to start disabling CSS and JS for normal web browsing, only whitelisting certain sites that 1. I have to use and 2. Simply don't work at all without CSS/JS. IMO browsers have abandoned their role as the "user's agent" and handed over entirely too much control over style, presentation and function to web developers. The fact that you need plugins, extensions, adblocks, bookmarklets, and so on, just to regain this control should be troubling but I guess progress has to march on.

I know I'm in the tiny minority here and firmly in the "yelling at the clouds" territory, but I really wish we could go back to the simpler times of the web being hyperTEXT documents linked together and that's it.

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You're not alone, I use noscript on firefox for exactly that. It makes some websites unusable, but for normal browsing, that's what I use. If the website is unusable after allowing a few scripts, then I don't want to be there. It is horrifying when you see how much JS some websites try to pull in.

Many “content” sites are so annoying to use now that I almost reflexively click the “Reader” view and/or save it to Instapaper. If that doesn’t work, I abandon the site.

Developers: I would pay for a firefox or chrome extension that lets you just toggle the whole browsing session or tab into reader mode

I've regularly wished for a browser that was "reader mode" by default, and had a button for "unreadable mode"

I have reader mode on by default in Brave, but it doesn’t always work and (at least sometimes) doesn’t display images from the article. reader mode is extremely non-trivial to implement

If it can be seamless, as in I don't have to see each page half-rendering before switching to reading mode, I'd definitely throw money at it.

I'm not sure about Firefox, but Safari let's you set reader mode as default for a domain — and since Safari 16, this setting is synced to all your devices.

Same here. I'd love it even more if it was called "Lynx mode" as an homage to the sanest browser ever made.

It's pretty surprising that sites optimized for Lynx first aren't a thing by now among curmudgeonly hackers. Not as a "best viewed in Lynx" joke badge, but a genuine movement. Why shouldn't you be able to provision resources or tweak infrastructure settings by clicking/tabbing around in VS Code's terminal pane, for example?

Sometimes I use Pocket for this purpose, if a site is obnoxious I tend to just click save and head over there to read. It's annoying but I haven't found a better solution for me on the phone yet.

I am already doing that (with NoScript), since browsers started supporting video, but not supporting reliable way to stop autoplay.

OTOH, i see why things like adblocking is extension. That makes browser neutral with regard to content, while different plugins can bring different policies.

Firefox has about:config settings to disable autoplay.

> video, but not supporting reliable way to stop autoplay

It's an almost incredible situation. Firefox and Safari have a setting to stop autoplay, but much of the time it doesn't actually work, and Chrome doesn't even seem to have a setting.

It's also amazing how when enough users decide that they hate some obnoxious web site behavior (pop-up windows, autoplaying video, etc.) enough to block it, the web site designer's response isn't "maybe we should be less obnoxious" but "how can we circumvent the user's preferences?"

user not customer

Recently i found that while basic stop autoplay option in Firefox does not work reliably, if one also sets media.autoplay.blocking_policy = 2, it works much better than the default policy.

But it seems it is still just a heuristic that blocks some JS play commands, while allows them in some context.

I'm very curious about this. It absolutely cannot be halting-problem-tricky for a browser to deduce that it is downloading multiple frames of video/audio and simply stop it. The MIME types alone should be almost a complete answer.

If I may self-promote, my extension is the best in the business at stopping video autoplay, as far as I can tell. I've been refining this feature for several years. https://underpassapp.com/StopTheMadness/

Firefox has never failed to stop autoplay for me. I don't have it set to stop all autoplay, because I watch an extreme amount of Youtube, but any tab that opens in the background or isn't focused has never failed to "Autoplay Blocked"

Just use NoScript. It's designed for exactly that, and it's great. Permanently allowlist the sites you use frequently, temporarily allowlist stuff as needed until the site starts working. It sucks, but leagues it's better than the unfiltered web.

Might wanna check out the gemini protocol[1]. Although while it's a nice place to visit, it I think it takes it a bit too far in the other direction.

[1] https://gemini.circumlunar.space/

Yeah I thought of those guys while reading this comment section.

Gemini site and hubs do have a didactic to flavor; not that different from the old web.

Except the old web was yearning for more bell and whistle. Dynamic element. Gemini made anything not text illegal

Seems kind of pointless. Browsers are basically just virtual machines that run web applications at this point. I can’t even think of any plain text and image websites besides my own.

Hacker News?

There are plenty, you're using the wrong navigational tools ;-)

Exactly. I never understood all these "I don't enable js" comments. You kinda usually don't need to disable js on sites that are usable without js. And if you feel the urge to disable it, it is most likely that without js it's an empty page anyway.

It's difficult to tell whether the site will be usable with js before opening it, so js disabled by default provides better UX: it makes both usable and unusable sites usable. Then after the site proved itself, you can enable js if you know what you miss.

  > I can’t even think of any plain text and
  > image websites besides my own.

Ycombinator has a great news aggregation website that is text only. You can find a link to it from the top of this page.

Most sites are plain text with only a few exceptions like youtube. And even then video doesn't need javascript.

slightly unrelated, but I would really like to be able to block google’s cookies on every website except google. I do not want them tracking me across the web, but they make their site unusable if you block cookies. I tried using different search engines, but was less than impressed by any of them

just use multicontainers for this in firefox. There is no equivalent in safari or chrome though.

uMatrix was good for this as you could block cookies. I do this in uBO, but it is a little more complicated. I block all third party JS with the following line:

  *$script,redirect=noop.js,3p

and then allow google.com for google sites such as google.co.uk with:

  @@||google.*$domain=google.\*

All of this is in my annoyances filter list: https://github.com/aembleton/Arthurs-Annoyances/blob/master/...

I use JS whitelisting but haven't gotten to the point of CSS off by default yet; I suppose on the majority of sites I come across, the CSS hasn't been bad enough to warrant it.

i think it would be cool to start over with a whole new markup language. Probably keep http, but html and css and javascript are out the door. The new "browser" could be more like a container/sandboxed thing that fetches some markup and code and does who knows what.

That's the idea I have. Once abusive web standards are out, it shouldn't be a difficult task to write a browser.

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