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Original creator here. I'm super surprised to see this posted here. I can answer any questions people have.

by Conlectus 12y ago

analog31 12y ago
For those of us who don't know Javascript, I'll just ask in broad terms: What is it, how's it work, what's it do?
- amjd 12y ago
  It's a neat little hack to predict your interests among various categories. The hundreds of grey boxes that you see are actually links to sites belonging to different categories like programming, science etc. and the red ones are those that you have visited (based on your browser history). The basic idea here is of using the CSS selector a:visited to highlight visited links in red, and by clicking the red boxes the users themselves reveal the sites they have visited. The website then uses this information to draw a pretty pie chart showing which categories the user is interested in.
  - xmonkee 12y ago
    Apart from making it seem like a game, is there any reason why the user has to click the squares? Is there a way for the browser to report back which elements are currently red?
    - _delirium 12y ago
      That used to be possible by reading the styling in JS, but that was considered a privacy bug, since any website could slurp information from your browser history. Therefore there was an overhaul of what kind of styling could be done based on history, and what could be read back about it in JS: https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2010/03/31/plugging-the-css-history-leak/ https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2010/03/31/plugging-the-cs...
    - dalke 12y ago
      No. Or rather, there isn't supposed to be. About 8 years ago (see http://jeremiahgrossman.blogspot.com/2006/08/i-know-where-youve-been.html http://jeremiahgrossman.blogspot.com/2006/08/i-know-where-yo... for an early demonstration) it was possible. This was considered bad, because it could help malicious sites gain information about the browser history which might help with an attack. The browser developers responded by minimizing what a ":visited" can do, so Javascript shouldn't be able to get direct, or indirect through CSS, access to that information.
  - danielweber 12y ago
    I thought it was going going to be a psychological experiment in how patient I was in clicking the little boxes.
lurkinggrue 12y ago
I'm not incognito mode but it didn't work for me. Kinda weird.

Original creator here. I'm super surprised to see this posted here. I can answer any questions people have.

analog31 12y ago

For those of us who don't know Javascript, I'll just ask in broad terms: What is it, how's it work, what's it do?

amjd 12y ago
It's a neat little hack to predict your interests among various categories. The hundreds of grey boxes that you see are actually links to sites belonging to different categories like programming, science etc. and the red ones are those that you have visited (based on your browser history). The basic idea here is of using the CSS selector a:visited to highlight visited links in red, and by clicking the red boxes the users themselves reveal the sites they have visited. The website then uses this information to draw a pretty pie chart showing which categories the user is interested in.
- xmonkee 12y ago
  Apart from making it seem like a game, is there any reason why the user has to click the squares? Is there a way for the browser to report back which elements are currently red?
  - _delirium 12y ago
    That used to be possible by reading the styling in JS, but that was considered a privacy bug, since any website could slurp information from your browser history. Therefore there was an overhaul of what kind of styling could be done based on history, and what could be read back about it in JS: https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2010/03/31/plugging-the-css-history-leak/ https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2010/03/31/plugging-the-cs...
  - dalke 12y ago
    No. Or rather, there isn't supposed to be. About 8 years ago (see http://jeremiahgrossman.blogspot.com/2006/08/i-know-where-youve-been.html http://jeremiahgrossman.blogspot.com/2006/08/i-know-where-yo... for an early demonstration) it was possible. This was considered bad, because it could help malicious sites gain information about the browser history which might help with an attack. The browser developers responded by minimizing what a ":visited" can do, so Javascript shouldn't be able to get direct, or indirect through CSS, access to that information.
- danielweber 12y ago
  I thought it was going going to be a psychological experiment in how patient I was in clicking the little boxes.

lurkinggrue 12y ago

I'm not incognito mode but it didn't work for me. Kinda weird.