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I'm not sure if I'd call it my favorite anymore but I probably use reddit the most. I'm thinking of golden age in terms of the power available to webpages/brow

I'm not sure if I'd call it my favorite anymore but I probably use reddit the most. I'm thinking of golden age in terms of the power available to webpages/browsers. This would be when HTML5/webgl/etc features had just gotten implemented, plugins like Flash and Java were still supported, and Firefox used the old extension system. All of the old web was still there alongside the cool new stuff. Now the old stuff is gone and the new stuff is getting ruined.

benj111 8y ago
Reddit, I can see that. Would you want a reddit where every embedded video in a thread auto played though? I'm guessing our disagreement is over who has final say over display of content? I would say the client, you would say the server (or creator)? Is that fair?
- jimmaswell 8y ago
  The user should be able to make the client do whatever they want, but a blacklist for autoplay sounds a lot better to me than a whitelist. It harms the creative potential of things when they're limited by default and most users aren't going to manually add your site to a whitelist. It wouldn't even be so bad if the website could just request autoplay permissions the same as it requests permission to know your location etc. Better would be if the browser heuristically detected the site potentially abusing autoplay and then asked the user if they want to block the site from doing so in the future - at least giving webpages a chance by default instead of being guilty until proven innocent. As a web user I've never been so bothered by autoplaying news videos etc. that I felt it would be fair to stick a wrench in the entire web over them. On the subject of Reddit I do find it unnecessarily burdensome that I have to give Reddit Enhancement Suite permission for every individual domain that it wants to embed stuff from, another place where I feel like browsers went too far locking themselves down.
  - benj111 8y ago
    What about banning autoplay on background tabs, with a blacklist for abusers on the focused tab? The problem with blacklists is that they default to letting bad things through if not maintained. But yeah it would be nice to think that we still have a web where the blacklist would be less unwieldy than the whitelist.

benj111 8y ago

Reddit, I can see that. Would you want a reddit where every embedded video in a thread auto played though? I'm guessing our disagreement is over who has final say over display of content? I would say the client, you would say the server (or creator)? Is that fair?

jimmaswell 8y ago
The user should be able to make the client do whatever they want, but a blacklist for autoplay sounds a lot better to me than a whitelist. It harms the creative potential of things when they're limited by default and most users aren't going to manually add your site to a whitelist. It wouldn't even be so bad if the website could just request autoplay permissions the same as it requests permission to know your location etc. Better would be if the browser heuristically detected the site potentially abusing autoplay and then asked the user if they want to block the site from doing so in the future - at least giving webpages a chance by default instead of being guilty until proven innocent. As a web user I've never been so bothered by autoplaying news videos etc. that I felt it would be fair to stick a wrench in the entire web over them. On the subject of Reddit I do find it unnecessarily burdensome that I have to give Reddit Enhancement Suite permission for every individual domain that it wants to embed stuff from, another place where I feel like browsers went too far locking themselves down.
- benj111 8y ago
  What about banning autoplay on background tabs, with a blacklist for abusers on the focused tab? The problem with blacklists is that they default to letting bad things through if not maintained. But yeah it would be nice to think that we still have a web where the blacklist would be less unwieldy than the whitelist.