A look at modern news websites. How programmatic ad-tech, huge payloads and hostile architecture destroyed the reading experience.
  • OldQWERTYbastard@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    15 hours ago

    I purchased Ad Guard for my Android phone seven or eight years ago and it’s a game changer. I despise ads and it’s jarring to use someone else’s phone.

  • stoy@lemmy.zipEnglish
    162·
    2 days ago

    I have said it before, and I’ll say it again.

    An adblocker is part on my security suite on my computer.

    Ads can be hijacked to spread malware, and unless the site owner agrees to take both financial and legal liability for the possible dammage caused by their website I will never consider removing my adblocker.

    If they agreed to take on the responsibility, I still wouldn’t remove my adblocker, but I would consider it.

  • bleistift2@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    821·
    2 days ago

    Unless the user is actively navigating, the header is dead weight. The header should hide on scrollDown and reveal on scrollUp. Let the content breathe.

    This one I actually hate. Often I just want to scroll up a few pixels, either to satisfy a mild compulsion or to align the content so I can see most of it. This is completely ruined if the navbar pops back in. Leave it at the top of the page, where it belongs, not at the top of the viewport!

    • MisterFrog@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      I like it at the top of the view-port, but I agree the auto-hiding/showing feature is excruciating.

    • new_world_odor@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      2 days ago

      I feel your pain. The really good ones plan for this, some pop up immediately when you scroll up and that sucks. The proper thing to do (imo) is to wait for the user to scroll 80% of the viewport back up, only then letting it begin to slide in, and have it slide in at a rate 1/2 of the page scroll. I do like having it easily available, but it should feel like it’s trying to stay out of the way.

    • scarabic@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      2 days ago

      The iOS browser has always supported “tap the top of the viewport to scroll all the way up,” which largely allows for what you say: just leave the nav way up there. Last time I looked was years ago, and Android Chrome didn’t did this. Does it now?

        • scarabic@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          2 days ago

          It’s not obscure. It’s core. Apple has this entire UI philosophy called “revealed power” which is about the UI not having a big button for everything necessarily, and letting the user discover added layers of functionality as they go on. This keeps the UI simple in the beginning, or for people who always need simplicity, but allows others to discover more in time. You don’t have to like it but it’s very intentional.

          What’s “discoverable” is also relative. I was on a PC today struggling to figure out how to do something. Eventually I tried double clicking the element in question and that finally worked. I thought wow I don’t use PCs much anymore because double clicking hardly even occurs to me anymore. Can you tell me how any user ever finds out that you need to double click an icon on their desktop? Seems obvious, but there is no label or visible indication that this is what you should do. You’re thinking pshaw that’s obvious, but how did you learn? I’d be very surprised if you can remember.

          • bleistift2@sopuli.xyzEnglish
            2·
            1 day ago

            Can you tell me how any user ever finds out that you need to double click an icon on their desktop?

            I completely agree with you on this. I hate that Windows doesn’t disclose what areas can be clicked anymore. It used to, back when computers where new. Nowadays if you wanted to show a new person how to use a computer, you’d have to very explicitly explain things that would’ve been obvious from the looks just 10 years ago. (Ok, maybe 15.)

            What is a new Apple user supposed to do? Try all of the 30-ish gestures one can make on every side and every corner of every app? That’s just stupid.

            • scarabic@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              1 day ago

              I explained this above but their design philosophy is that a user shouldn’t be overwhelmed with every possible function on day 1, nor will they have advanced needs on day 1 like “how can I more quickly scroll to the top to reveal a navbar.”

              The idea is to make what’s most needed most visible, and tuck more advanced functions out of the way of basic ones. Then users will discover them over time, either by accident, experimentation, from a friend, or reading tip lists off the internet…

              Now if this is a conversation in good faith, you won’t immediately say “so they expect everyone to learn everything by reading tip sheets off the internet??”

    • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zipEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      I have this usercss:

      [data-testid="header"],
[data-mobile-fixed="1"],
[data-remove-fixed="0"] {
  position: absolute !important;
  width: 100%;
}
main { padding-top: 2rem !important; }

      Works well enough on most sites. And on those it doesn’t, you can easily exclude.

      Can likely be expanded, but adding just header broke more than it fixed.

  • chunes@lemmy.worldEnglish
    172·
    2 days ago

    Pretty ironic this blog runs multiple scripts that get blocked by ublock origin

  • Em Adespoton@lemmy.caEnglish
    50·
    2 days ago

    I have to admit, I hadn’t realized it had got this bad. How did this get normalized?

    I browse with most scripts disabled, and have since JS was first introduced to the browser. What I’ve observed is that some pages contain NO actual content, or just the first paragraph, when I load them. I read what’s provided and move on. If the site is hostile to me reading their content they worked so hard to get in front of me, I’m not going to do any extra work to find out what it is.

    • jtrek@startrek.websiteEnglish
      5·
      2 days ago

      How did this get normalized?

      The average user doesn’t know or understand technical details, and don’t believe they have any power to change anything

      Also capitalism means a small number of assholes make most of the decisions for reasons that benefit them

    • vinnymac@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      2 days ago

      Ironically somehow AI is making disabling JS better nowadays, because text/markdown is becoming normalized, so receiving a pure text version of a page is a thing again.

    • Quazatron@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      2 days ago

      Just like the bad old days, when entire sites were made in Flash and Linux users were shafted. Ridiculous.

  • plz1@lemmy.worldEnglish
    221·
    2 days ago

    On the topic of load time, it didn’t even mention the compulsory “prove you are human” Cloudflare gate on practically every website these days. Add 10 seconds to every visit.

  • vext01@feddit.ukEnglish
    241·
    2 days ago

    Let’s go back to gopher?

    Read the guardian over the gopher protocol at my gopher hole:

    gopher://theunixzoo.co.uk/the-guardian

    • notabot@piefed.socialEnglish
      5·
      2 days ago

      Thank you for this, it makes for a nicer reading experience than their own website! Is the code open source by any chance?

      • vext01@feddit.ukEnglish
        3·
        2 days ago

        Good to hear.

        I’ve not released it because I hacked it up very quickly.

  • scarabic@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    2 days ago

    That was a great read. I have worked at companies that lived on display ads and it’s a terrible, desperate business to be in. Personally I think branded display ads have always had zero value (or even negative value) and the better the net has gotten at tracking their value, the more this has come to light, the less advertisers are willing to pay, and therefore the more fuckery publishers engage in to try to survive. It’s extremely hard or impossible to deliver a good user experience under this set of incentives.

    Thinking back to the print news era, a lot of the ads were local, which made them much more valuable. But now the net has snuffed out local retail too, so that model isn’t even there to fall back on if we tried.

    I’m grateful now to be working somewhere that doesn’t survive on display ads, and that may be one of the big reasons I’ve stuck with this employer for almost a decade now.

  • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zipEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    Funny enough, most JS-only sites (those who are empty with JS disabled) display fine on Dillo.

  • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zipEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    Btw, anyone has a example of a tracking canvas in html? Wouldn’t it falsify the results, if you resize it via a userstyle?