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How I Experience Web Today (2021)

(how-i-experience-web-today.com)
450 points airstrike | 5 comments | 14 Oct 24 19:22 UTC | HN request time: 0.55s | source
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judah ◴[14 Oct 24 21:04 UTC] No.41841982[source]▶
This is great. I see:

- Cookie acceptance overlay

- Email prompt when switching away from tab

- Push notification custom UI prompt

- Push notification browser prompt

- Subscribe to our newsletter prompt

- Ad blocker detected modal

- Please subscribe overlay

- Continue reading overlay

- Ratings prompt

- Floating feedback button

- "How can I help you?" chat popup

- Email prompt when scrolling

- Create an account footer

- Interstitial ads

- Social media share buttons

- Click to play video overlay (one that isn't available in your country)

- Tab closing prompt

Thinking about this problem technically, most of these obscenities are vying for top level. In the early days, browsers could detect when a popup was trying to launch and block them. Could we do something similar but for top level DOM?

Alternately, could a browser have a quiet mode? No prompts, banners, overlays, etc.

Just thinking out loud.

replies(1): >>41842392 #
1. staplers ◴[14 Oct 24 21:50 UTC] No.41842392[source]▶

  Could we do something similar but for top level DOM?
It's called "reader mode" on most browsers.
replies(4): >>41842688 #>>41842728 #>>41842941 #>>41849660 #
2. ravenstine ◴[14 Oct 24 22:18 UTC] No.41842688[source]▶
Sadly, development of reader mode seems to be stagnant for both Firefox and Chrome. While it works for a substantial number of pages, I was hoping that more pages would work as years go by. Too bad that doesn't appear to have happened.
3. judah ◴[14 Oct 24 22:22 UTC] No.41842728[source]▶
Yeah, but it doesn't work for 90% of the sites I try it on. And some sites, especially news sites, deliberately break it.

Seems to me reader mode is a great idea but needs some dynamic behavior so sites can't break it.

4. neilv ◴[14 Oct 24 22:41 UTC] No.41842941[source]▶
Unfortunately, Firefox Reader Mode bypasses your uBlock Origin, so you get violated by trackers.

IIRC, this `about:config` setting is how I disable Firefox Reader Mode: `reader.parse-on-load.enabled` = false

5. graypegg ◴[15 Oct 24 15:35 UTC] No.41849660[source]▶
One interesting thing I noticed after updating to iOS 18 specifically, is the removal of reader mode as a "mode". It's now OFFERED to you in the new view menu based on some heuristic about the page that Apple has determined, but it's not a mode you can turn on regardless of if Apple thinks you're on a "readable" document or not.

Frustrating since their "remove distracting elements" feature was a great value-add, done in the same update.