13 ms·

StopTheMadness – Take back your web browser

127 points by sogen 4y ago

jandorn 4y ago
Been using it for years. Awesome app.
lysozyme 4y ago
I’ve tried a lot of ad blockers over the years. Browsing mainstream news on the internet, in particular, highlights the absolute cesspool of pop ups and auto-playing videos that characterize the contemporary web. None, least of all Stop the Madness, have worked as well and on as many devices as this simple bookmarklet, whose author I don’t know but who has saved me countless aggravations javascript:(function%20()%20%7B%20var%20i,%20elements%20=%20document.querySelectorAll('body%20*');%20%20for%20(i%20=%200;%20i%20%3C%20elements.length;%20i++)%20%7B%20if%20(%5B%22sticky%22,%20%22fixed%22%5D.includes(getComputedStyle(elements%5Bi%5D).position))%20%7B%20elements%5Bi%5D.parentNode.removeChild(elements%5Bi%5D);%20%7D%20%7D%20%7D)(); Edit: credit to the original author [1] and thank you! 1. https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/ https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/
- weaksauce 4y ago
  javascript:( function(){ let i, elements = document.querySelectorAll('body *'); for (i = 0; i < elements.length; i++) { if(getComputedStyle(elements[i]).position === 'fixed' || getComputedStyle(elements[i]).position === 'sticky') { elements[i].parentNode.removeChild(elements[i]); } } document.body.style.overflow = "auto"; document.body.style.position = "static"; })() here's the script for people that want to see the stuff without all the url encodings. oh and I added a thing that stops them from stopping your scrolling(think the kind that pop up an ad or something and stop you from scrolling) one of the most useful bookmarklettes that I use many times a day. I got it from the original author too I think
- noodles_nomore 4y ago
  This is great. I just discovered that in firefox you can have bookmarks without a title. So if you put this as the only item and without a title into the "Bookmarks Toolbar" folder, you have a simple button that you can add to your toolbar. This is hacky, but good enough for me.
  - shreyshnaccount 4y ago
    Love it!
- nathanasmith 4y ago
  I’ve had the Kill Sticky bookmarklet handy as the first item in the bookmarks bar of every browser I’ve used for years and it is phenomenal in how simple and useful it is. Works everywhere from my iPad to my desktop and everywhere in between. Really a sanity saver and I can’t recommend it highly enough.
- rd 4y ago
  For the uneducated, what does this actually do?
  - johnthedebs 4y ago
    It searches the page for and removes all elements that have a "sticky" or "fixed" position. Elements positioned in those ways stay in the frame all the time, and are usually used for things like: videos that follow you, persistent chat buttons/windows, headers that stay in view even as you scroll, and page overlays.
- lapcat 4y ago
  StopTheMadness is not an ad blocker. It can run user scripts though.
- freediver 4y ago
  Can you give an example of sites encountered in regular browsing this helps with?
  - leavjenn 4y ago
    For example, the top bar on New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-uk/riding-londons-unexpectedly-fantastic-elizabeth-line https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-uk/riding-lon... . Or a more obviously one, the HUGE top bar on Material Design site: https://material.io https://material.io .
nonrandomstring 4y ago
> The developer of StopTheMadness is Jeff Johnson, famous for solving the Mac OCSP appocalypse. Jeff's other software includes Link Unshortener, a Mac app that expands shortened web links, Tweaks for Twitter, a web browser extension for Mac and iOS that makes Twitter better, and StopTheScript, a Safari extension for iOS that stops all JavaScript on your selected websites. If HCI/UX was a real thing, none of these remedial apps would be necessary, because users would have choice about how to operate the things they bought and paid for. Yet, all of these are solutions to fixing someone else's idea that they've imposed upon users. "Take back X" is slogan we're going to hear more and more of until we finally admit that consumer computing has become a battle between developers and users.
- oneplane 4y ago
  It might be a slogan that gets advertised more, but users don't give a crap about choice when all they want is read misinformation on social media, post personal data in public and watch cat videos on ticktock. The amount of 'taking things back' might only apply to those who 'had' things to begin with, and only a subset of those that still want to 'have' things. I fear most people neither know nor want to know about any of this.
  - pvinis 4y ago
    and that's exactly why we need to "take things back". for them. for those that don't know how it was and how it should be.
    - oneplane 4y ago
      Technically yes, but if you give people a choice between "no instant gratification, click 10 buttons" and "click here to trade yourself for instant gratification" the latter will still be the selected choice and everything is still the same.
      - pvinis 4y ago
        most of them yes. but as captain obvious would point out, not everyone's the same. I'm not one of those users. and you're not one of those users. and I understand "taking back" as "making it possible to be ok for users like me". and I appreciate anyone that does that for whatever thing tgat can be "taken back"
blondin 4y ago
well, i kinda gave up. the problem is not exclusive to browsers at this point. it's the entire OS stack we need to take back. that said, i appreciate the energy put towards making things change. features like protecting copy and paste, and stopping autoplay brought a smile to my face. the fight is right.
- ohCh6zos 4y ago
  We're at the point where both MacOS and Windows have an advertising ID. It can be anonymized, but I can't just turn it off.
  - dynm 4y ago
    Not sure if this is true, but according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identifier_for_Advertisers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identifier_for_Advertisers you can opt out of this on MacOS by choosing the "Limit Ad Tracking" setting.
    - fsflover 4y ago
      Note how it says "limit", not "stop" ad tracking.
      - HWR_14 4y ago
        Yes, it says "limit" because Apple cannot guarantee all 3rd party ad tracking stops in every piece of software. What it does is set your personalized advertising ID to all 0s, making you indistinguishable from 20% of Apple users. That is, it completely opts you out of Apple's tracking ID that the poster was complaining about. I mentioned you can also turn off Windows personalized ID, but for some reason that post (and the instructions) were downvoted. The point remains that the advertising IDs the poster was talking about are optional from both Windows and Apple. Unless you consider the API returning a universal dummy value and not an error to be an issue.
        4y ago
ajsnigrutin 4y ago
Is there a list of settings to change for eg. firefox (in about:config) on linux to achieve the same thing, maybe even without an extension?
flenserboy 4y ago
One of the best additions to browsing I've used on a Mac. Found it via a search engine (remember when search was useful?) when sites began trying to keep users from right-clicking on links / opening links in new tabs. Highly recommended.
gumby 4y ago
Stop the madness is great. Don’t think of it as an ad blocker (it helps with that but I use an ad blocker as well). It removes a lot of madness, like forms that suppress paste (or copy), text selection, auto play etc. Makes it possible to use a web browser.
- registeredcorn 4y ago
  That sounds great, but I wonder, have you run into issues with compatibility? That is, for sites that do incredibly annoying things like that, have you found that it ends up breaking things?
  - gumby 4y ago
    I haven’t noticed any problems and I’ve been using it for years.
    - registeredcorn 4y ago
      That's good to hear! I might have to give it a go, then. Honestly, I'm still a little conflicted in that, I don't know if it's "ethical" for me to block ads, if I myself use ads for one of my businesses to drum up sales. It seems kind of like a way to say "Others have to deal with this, but I don't." You know? Either way, if it makes the browsing experience better, it might be worth it regardless.
      - lapcat 4y ago
        > I'm still a little conflicted in that, I don't know if it's "ethical" for me to block ads StopTheMadness is not an ad blocker, so there's no ethical dilemma in that respect.
ezequiel-garzon 4y ago
From the Apple App Store regarding Safari settings: This extension can read and alter webpages you visit and see your browsing history on all websites. This includes sensitive information from webpages, including passwords, phone numbers, and credit cards. The whole idea sounds great, even reasonably priced but... having to trust another company on all that seems too risky. They should offer a standalone browser instead of a Safari extension, so that the user can easily skip it when dealing with sensitive data.
- saagarjha 4y ago
  Why a standalone browser when you can just disable the extension when you don’t want to use it?
  - ezequiel-garzon 4y ago
    Good point... I guess I’d still be a bit uneasy about it.
    - lapcat 4y ago
      Hi, the company is just me, Jeff. I've been a Mac developer for over 15 years. There's a link to my résumé from the product page, as well as links to reviews of the extension from well-known tech media. This is just the nature of JavaScript, it has the power to do pretty much anything in a web page. My goal is to write "good" JavaScript to counteract the "bad" JavaScript of user-hostile web pages.
savingsPossible 4y ago
anything similar for firefox on linux ? To, say, turn copy-paste back on and do many other little fixes? I really dislike sites that forbid copy-paste (and I suppose there is a simple solution for that particular problem, like turning off some event in about:config), but I love the idea of fixing problems I did not even knew I had :D
braingenious 4y ago
$8 lol
snapplebobapple 4y ago
So does this work on other operating systems or just macos?
- lapcat 4y ago
  Also iOS.

127 points by sogen 4y ago

Been using it for years. Awesome app.

I’ve tried a lot of ad blockers over the years. Browsing mainstream news on the internet, in particular, highlights the absolute cesspool of pop ups and auto-playing videos that characterize the contemporary web. None, least of all Stop the Madness, have worked as well and on as many devices as this simple bookmarklet, whose author I don’t know but who has saved me countless aggravations javascript:(function%20()%20%7B%20var%20i,%20elements%20=%20document.querySelectorAll('body%20*');%20%20for%20(i%20=%200;%20i%20%3C%20elements.length;%20i++)%20%7B%20if%20(%5B%22sticky%22,%20%22fixed%22%5D.includes(getComputedStyle(elements%5Bi%5D).position))%20%7B%20elements%5Bi%5D.parentNode.removeChild(elements%5Bi%5D);%20%7D%20%7D%20%7D)(); Edit: credit to the original author [1] and thank you! 1. https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/ https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/

weaksauce 4y ago
javascript:( function(){ let i, elements = document.querySelectorAll('body *'); for (i = 0; i < elements.length; i++) { if(getComputedStyle(elements[i]).position === 'fixed' || getComputedStyle(elements[i]).position === 'sticky') { elements[i].parentNode.removeChild(elements[i]); } } document.body.style.overflow = "auto"; document.body.style.position = "static"; })() here's the script for people that want to see the stuff without all the url encodings. oh and I added a thing that stops them from stopping your scrolling(think the kind that pop up an ad or something and stop you from scrolling) one of the most useful bookmarklettes that I use many times a day. I got it from the original author too I think
noodles_nomore 4y ago
This is great. I just discovered that in firefox you can have bookmarks without a title. So if you put this as the only item and without a title into the "Bookmarks Toolbar" folder, you have a simple button that you can add to your toolbar. This is hacky, but good enough for me.
- shreyshnaccount 4y ago
  Love it!
nathanasmith 4y ago
I’ve had the Kill Sticky bookmarklet handy as the first item in the bookmarks bar of every browser I’ve used for years and it is phenomenal in how simple and useful it is. Works everywhere from my iPad to my desktop and everywhere in between. Really a sanity saver and I can’t recommend it highly enough.
rd 4y ago
For the uneducated, what does this actually do?
- johnthedebs 4y ago
  It searches the page for and removes all elements that have a "sticky" or "fixed" position. Elements positioned in those ways stay in the frame all the time, and are usually used for things like: videos that follow you, persistent chat buttons/windows, headers that stay in view even as you scroll, and page overlays.
lapcat 4y ago
StopTheMadness is not an ad blocker. It can run user scripts though.
freediver 4y ago
Can you give an example of sites encountered in regular browsing this helps with?
- leavjenn 4y ago
  For example, the top bar on New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-uk/riding-londons-unexpectedly-fantastic-elizabeth-line https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-uk/riding-lon... . Or a more obviously one, the HUGE top bar on Material Design site: https://material.io https://material.io .

nonrandomstring 4y ago

> The developer of StopTheMadness is Jeff Johnson, famous for solving the Mac OCSP appocalypse. Jeff's other software includes Link Unshortener, a Mac app that expands shortened web links, Tweaks for Twitter, a web browser extension for Mac and iOS that makes Twitter better, and StopTheScript, a Safari extension for iOS that stops all JavaScript on your selected websites. If HCI/UX was a real thing, none of these remedial apps would be necessary, because users would have choice about how to operate the things they bought and paid for. Yet, all of these are solutions to fixing someone else's idea that they've imposed upon users. "Take back X" is slogan we're going to hear more and more of until we finally admit that consumer computing has become a battle between developers and users.

oneplane 4y ago
It might be a slogan that gets advertised more, but users don't give a crap about choice when all they want is read misinformation on social media, post personal data in public and watch cat videos on ticktock. The amount of 'taking things back' might only apply to those who 'had' things to begin with, and only a subset of those that still want to 'have' things. I fear most people neither know nor want to know about any of this.
- pvinis 4y ago
  and that's exactly why we need to "take things back". for them. for those that don't know how it was and how it should be.
  - oneplane 4y ago
    Technically yes, but if you give people a choice between "no instant gratification, click 10 buttons" and "click here to trade yourself for instant gratification" the latter will still be the selected choice and everything is still the same.
    - pvinis 4y ago
      most of them yes. but as captain obvious would point out, not everyone's the same. I'm not one of those users. and you're not one of those users. and I understand "taking back" as "making it possible to be ok for users like me". and I appreciate anyone that does that for whatever thing tgat can be "taken back"

blondin 4y ago

well, i kinda gave up. the problem is not exclusive to browsers at this point. it's the entire OS stack we need to take back. that said, i appreciate the energy put towards making things change. features like protecting copy and paste, and stopping autoplay brought a smile to my face. the fight is right.

ohCh6zos 4y ago
We're at the point where both MacOS and Windows have an advertising ID. It can be anonymized, but I can't just turn it off.
- dynm 4y ago
  Not sure if this is true, but according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identifier_for_Advertisers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identifier_for_Advertisers you can opt out of this on MacOS by choosing the "Limit Ad Tracking" setting.
  - fsflover 4y ago
    Note how it says "limit", not "stop" ad tracking.
    - HWR_14 4y ago
      Yes, it says "limit" because Apple cannot guarantee all 3rd party ad tracking stops in every piece of software. What it does is set your personalized advertising ID to all 0s, making you indistinguishable from 20% of Apple users. That is, it completely opts you out of Apple's tracking ID that the poster was complaining about. I mentioned you can also turn off Windows personalized ID, but for some reason that post (and the instructions) were downvoted. The point remains that the advertising IDs the poster was talking about are optional from both Windows and Apple. Unless you consider the API returning a universal dummy value and not an error to be an issue.
      - 4y ago

ajsnigrutin 4y ago

Is there a list of settings to change for eg. firefox (in about:config) on linux to achieve the same thing, maybe even without an extension?

flenserboy 4y ago

One of the best additions to browsing I've used on a Mac. Found it via a search engine (remember when search was useful?) when sites began trying to keep users from right-clicking on links / opening links in new tabs. Highly recommended.

gumby 4y ago

Stop the madness is great. Don’t think of it as an ad blocker (it helps with that but I use an ad blocker as well). It removes a lot of madness, like forms that suppress paste (or copy), text selection, auto play etc. Makes it possible to use a web browser.

registeredcorn 4y ago
That sounds great, but I wonder, have you run into issues with compatibility? That is, for sites that do incredibly annoying things like that, have you found that it ends up breaking things?
- gumby 4y ago
  I haven’t noticed any problems and I’ve been using it for years.
  - registeredcorn 4y ago
    That's good to hear! I might have to give it a go, then. Honestly, I'm still a little conflicted in that, I don't know if it's "ethical" for me to block ads, if I myself use ads for one of my businesses to drum up sales. It seems kind of like a way to say "Others have to deal with this, but I don't." You know? Either way, if it makes the browsing experience better, it might be worth it regardless.
    - lapcat 4y ago
      > I'm still a little conflicted in that, I don't know if it's "ethical" for me to block ads StopTheMadness is not an ad blocker, so there's no ethical dilemma in that respect.

ezequiel-garzon 4y ago

From the Apple App Store regarding Safari settings: This extension can read and alter webpages you visit and see your browsing history on all websites. This includes sensitive information from webpages, including passwords, phone numbers, and credit cards. The whole idea sounds great, even reasonably priced but... having to trust another company on all that seems too risky. They should offer a standalone browser instead of a Safari extension, so that the user can easily skip it when dealing with sensitive data.

saagarjha 4y ago
Why a standalone browser when you can just disable the extension when you don’t want to use it?
- ezequiel-garzon 4y ago
  Good point... I guess I’d still be a bit uneasy about it.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    Hi, the company is just me, Jeff. I've been a Mac developer for over 15 years. There's a link to my résumé from the product page, as well as links to reviews of the extension from well-known tech media. This is just the nature of JavaScript, it has the power to do pretty much anything in a web page. My goal is to write "good" JavaScript to counteract the "bad" JavaScript of user-hostile web pages.

savingsPossible 4y ago

anything similar for firefox on linux ? To, say, turn copy-paste back on and do many other little fixes? I really dislike sites that forbid copy-paste (and I suppose there is a simple solution for that particular problem, like turning off some event in about:config), but I love the idea of fixing problems I did not even knew I had :D

braingenious 4y ago

$8 lol

snapplebobapple 4y ago

So does this work on other operating systems or just macos?

lapcat 4y ago
Also iOS.