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Comment by mproud | Hacker News Reader

All these cursors moving around the page, sometimes highlighting text… was way too distracting. Thank goodness for Reader Mode.

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I think it is awesome. Definitely glad every page isn't like this, but it is cool, and goes with the vibe of the blog.

Unfortunately leaving the tab and returning seems to make it crash. But I'll take this over another striver blog.

I don’t understand what the cursors and highlights are supposed to show us.

Maybe they could just put in flashing text plus a flashing background plus a microwave attack on the reader.

The only highlights I saw were links.

Presumably it’s live mouse locations of others on the site with flags of their country right? Didn’t look at the inspector to see if they were real but it’s a neat idea. Wildly distracting and weird but neat.

> Maybe they could just put in flashing text plus a flashing background plus a microwave attack on the reader.

And a fast moving image where if you click on it you get a prize. Call it punch the chimp or something..

Just from a cursory (ha) glance, I see Websockets in dev console. Wouldn't be surprised if this is other viewers on the page.

EDIT: It's a web component on the page that does exactly this.

https://github.com/partykit/sketch-disco

Author here

Good find! That's a slightly older version that I'm moving. Here's a better version, complete with instructions on how to embed it in your own site

https://github.com/genmon/interconnected-cursor-party

It's a fork of the upstream PartyKit versions (I've added shared text highlights)

https://github.com/partykit/cursor-party

PartyKit is genuinely the best way to build real-time super scalable apps in very little code, multiplayer included. I have a contract here rn but I was a fan and user first. It's my go-to for most projects now:

https://www.partykit.io

Please don't do this! I want to read your article but I can't stand to look at it with all these flags and cursors.

It wouldn't surprise me if this were his way of highlighting how JavaScript does user-hostile things. This site uses JS only to irritate the user, but other sites' JS might be malicious.

I still hate it though. I'm not disabling JavaScript. Reader mode saves the day.

Well that is an interesting way to filter your audience. Select for your user base by adding Javascript which only serves to make the page unusable. But make sure the page is perfectly usable without it enabled.

I see this stuff more and more, maybe like four times in the last week just from links I have clicked from the HN frontpage. Other visitors, doing their thing. I really dislike it.

Install NoScript. Makes the web way better. All that cutesy JS crap is disabled by default, and for badly written websites that require JS, you can go whitelist just enough to get the page functional.

You can do this in uBlock Origin too, saves needing to install another extension (as I assume most of us already have it installed)

It's like the view counter from the early web updated for the 2020s, what's not to like?

1990's web was a whacky place

Whenever someone on HN starts whining how the internet used to be better I just mutter "pop ups".

Someone invented ad blockers for a reason 25 or so years ago.

ya this made it unreadable for me.

What cursors? I don't see anything on Firefox, even on Windows, with uBlock Origin turned off.

It was the lines and colors for me.

I'm disappointed this feature doesn't load for me in Firefox.

The / key also conflicts with its quick-search feature.

throwback to 2000 and angelfire

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