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Installed this and it's great. That said, it's embarrassing how many iOS extensions I have installed just to work around today's shitty websites. AdGuard to ma

by dmart 5y ago

Installed this and it's great. That said, it's embarrassing how many iOS extensions I have installed just to work around today's shitty websites. AdGuard to make the web usable, AMPlosion to avoid AMP nonsense, Open in Apollo to avoid mobile Reddit dark pattens, now this (which I installed because YouTube's new embed widget starts playing on touch-start instead of touch-release, so it triggers while scrolling...)

rolleiflex 5y ago
Also bought it and works great. Minor caveat is that it seems to be unable to get a 4K stream, so it’s capped to 1080p. Likely this is a YouTube limitation though.
- LeoPanthera 5y ago
  This is probably because YouTube exclusively uses VP9 for 4K streams, instead of HEVC.
LeoPanthera 5y ago
Don't forget TrackerZapper to strip tracking codes from copied URLs: https://rknight.me/apps/tracker-zapper/ https://rknight.me/apps/tracker-zapper/
jchw 5y ago
Stopthemadness should also help you to avoid AMP, but also does a bunch of other stuff. Might be worth a look.
- drcongo 5y ago
  I had to disable Stopthemadness because while it does do some really useful things, it also caused a lot of problems.
  - jandorn 5y ago
    I run it with recommend options + Show video controls and Stop autoplay and I have no issues other than occasional glitches because those two advanced options. What problems do you have?
    - drcongo 5y ago
      I was struggling to remember when I posted because it's been a while since I turned it off, but one big one that I do remember was how often it would break 2FA forms that split the inputs into number pairs or similar. To be fair, those forms are stupid, but I have to use enough of them that getting a popup telling me it had truncated the paste to just the first two characters, making me close that popup, paste the number somewhere else and then copy them two at a time (or remember it) was enough to drive me insane on its own.
      - jandorn 5y ago
        I started using Apple’s built in 2FA and I have no issues. It’s get filled in automatically. Didn’t had issues before either when I just copied and paste code manually.
musicale 5y ago
> it's embarrassing how many iOS extensions I have installed just to work around today's shitty websites The user-hostile design of web sites in 2021 is appalling. Even simple text articles or blog posts have become horrible. I was just reading a blog post linked from HN which featured 3 different popups: two modals and a modeless sidebar popup that follows you as you scroll. No, I don't want to subscribe to your email newsletter. No, I don't want to sign up for a course or webinar or some service or whatever. No, I don't want to know more about something other than what I'm trying to read on this page while you keep interrupting me and telling me I should be doing something else. (And that was a site that lacked the typical annoying cookie popup – maybe it actually respected the "do not track" feature? That would be a first.) Popups were despised by users to such an extent that web browsers built in an option to block them. The sensible response to such a clear user preference would have been to abandon popups, but instead web designers came up with a way to work around the popup blocking feature by using modal javascript panes and sliding overlays to obscure the page content. Autoplaying video was similarly viewed as obnoxious and battery draining, so web browsers built in a feature to block it; web designers responded by doing their best to defeat that feature as well, and it seems to be an ongoing arms race.
- the8472 5y ago
  > Autoplaying video was similarly viewed as obnoxious and battery draining, so web browsers built in a feature to block it; web designers responded by doing their best to defeat that feature as well, and it seems to be an ongoing arms race. Browser vendors have just given up and let mute videos autoplay because otherwise the websites would show even less efficient gif/apng/canvas animation/manual slideshows instead.
- nicbou 5y ago
  In the current state of things, having a straightforward website is a competitive advantage. There's a reason I prefer StackOverflow links and completely avoid Pinterest. The website I live from counters all of these patterns. Nothing appears above or in the content, only below it. There are no popups, no calls to actions and no GDPR notices. It's just one page of uninterrupted text. Everything else appears under the article. This has worked really well for me. The way I see it, if your business model involves adding friction, you're doing something wrong.
artdigital 5y ago
Super Agent to automatically consent to cookie banners with whatever you set it up with (eg. functional cookies only)
specialist 5y ago
Exactly. My biggest deterrent to trying Vinegar is time spent farting around with all the extensions, not price. eg Figuring out if Vinegar plays nicely with 1Blocker. At some point, browsers will switch strategies from mitigations to scraping. I'd LOVE for an RSS Reader (like NetNewsWire) to prefetch the "reader view" of linked web pages. Instead of malware blockers curating zillions of filters and patches, just create scripts to scrape the top 100 websites. And then allow sharing of user supplied scrapers.

by dmart 5y ago

rolleiflex 5y ago

Also bought it and works great. Minor caveat is that it seems to be unable to get a 4K stream, so it’s capped to 1080p. Likely this is a YouTube limitation though.

LeoPanthera 5y ago
This is probably because YouTube exclusively uses VP9 for 4K streams, instead of HEVC.

LeoPanthera 5y ago

Don't forget TrackerZapper to strip tracking codes from copied URLs: https://rknight.me/apps/tracker-zapper/ https://rknight.me/apps/tracker-zapper/

jchw 5y ago

Stopthemadness should also help you to avoid AMP, but also does a bunch of other stuff. Might be worth a look.

drcongo 5y ago
I had to disable Stopthemadness because while it does do some really useful things, it also caused a lot of problems.
- jandorn 5y ago
  I run it with recommend options + Show video controls and Stop autoplay and I have no issues other than occasional glitches because those two advanced options. What problems do you have?
  - drcongo 5y ago
    I was struggling to remember when I posted because it's been a while since I turned it off, but one big one that I do remember was how often it would break 2FA forms that split the inputs into number pairs or similar. To be fair, those forms are stupid, but I have to use enough of them that getting a popup telling me it had truncated the paste to just the first two characters, making me close that popup, paste the number somewhere else and then copy them two at a time (or remember it) was enough to drive me insane on its own.
    - jandorn 5y ago
      I started using Apple’s built in 2FA and I have no issues. It’s get filled in automatically. Didn’t had issues before either when I just copied and paste code manually.

musicale 5y ago

> it's embarrassing how many iOS extensions I have installed just to work around today's shitty websites The user-hostile design of web sites in 2021 is appalling. Even simple text articles or blog posts have become horrible. I was just reading a blog post linked from HN which featured 3 different popups: two modals and a modeless sidebar popup that follows you as you scroll. No, I don't want to subscribe to your email newsletter. No, I don't want to sign up for a course or webinar or some service or whatever. No, I don't want to know more about something other than what I'm trying to read on this page while you keep interrupting me and telling me I should be doing something else. (And that was a site that lacked the typical annoying cookie popup – maybe it actually respected the "do not track" feature? That would be a first.) Popups were despised by users to such an extent that web browsers built in an option to block them. The sensible response to such a clear user preference would have been to abandon popups, but instead web designers came up with a way to work around the popup blocking feature by using modal javascript panes and sliding overlays to obscure the page content. Autoplaying video was similarly viewed as obnoxious and battery draining, so web browsers built in a feature to block it; web designers responded by doing their best to defeat that feature as well, and it seems to be an ongoing arms race.

the8472 5y ago
> Autoplaying video was similarly viewed as obnoxious and battery draining, so web browsers built in a feature to block it; web designers responded by doing their best to defeat that feature as well, and it seems to be an ongoing arms race. Browser vendors have just given up and let mute videos autoplay because otherwise the websites would show even less efficient gif/apng/canvas animation/manual slideshows instead.
nicbou 5y ago
In the current state of things, having a straightforward website is a competitive advantage. There's a reason I prefer StackOverflow links and completely avoid Pinterest. The website I live from counters all of these patterns. Nothing appears above or in the content, only below it. There are no popups, no calls to actions and no GDPR notices. It's just one page of uninterrupted text. Everything else appears under the article. This has worked really well for me. The way I see it, if your business model involves adding friction, you're doing something wrong.

artdigital 5y ago

Super Agent to automatically consent to cookie banners with whatever you set it up with (eg. functional cookies only)

specialist 5y ago

Exactly. My biggest deterrent to trying Vinegar is time spent farting around with all the extensions, not price. eg Figuring out if Vinegar plays nicely with 1Blocker. At some point, browsers will switch strategies from mitigations to scraping. I'd LOVE for an RSS Reader (like NetNewsWire) to prefetch the "reader view" of linked web pages. Instead of malware blockers curating zillions of filters and patches, just create scripts to scrape the top 100 websites. And then allow sharing of user supplied scrapers.