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Re:Please Stop Using Grey Text by CraigJPerry on Wednesday May 18, 2022 @07:21AM (#31421394)
>> partly due to janky JS and bloat

Are there any effective browser extensions to intelligently prevent things like a "Subscribe to our newsletter" popover?

I'm trying to think how i could tell uBlock origin to intercept any element with a high z-index which has it's ".display" attribute changed only in response to a timer or a scroll event.

In firefox i have the "I don't care about cookies" plugin and i genuinely forget that noise exists on the web until i use another browser and it all comes flooding back. I'm hoping there's something similar for this endemic cruft the web has been filled with.

Reader mode can be useful. NoScript can be useful but can also be painful.

Re:Please Stop Using Grey Text by paulmooreparks on Wednesday May 18, 2022 @07:49AM (#31421608)
My solution is to close the browser tab whenever a popover appears. I always have plenty of other open tabs to read.
Re:Please Stop Using Grey Text by nkozyra on Wednesday May 18, 2022 @09:47AM (#31422717)
Yeah.

I used to dive into the console and start removing stuff and even went so far as to write a bookmarklet that tries to identify and nuke anything with fixed position and reset the height to auto on body/html but ... if someone's going to be that user hostile it's not worth my time.

When this happens I'll copy the url, close the tab and paste it into archive.is.

Re:Please Stop Using Grey Text by nttl on Wednesday May 18, 2022 @09:03AM (#31422251)
same here. I don't even get mad anymore, just instantly close the page. This includes the cookie popup as well on mobile.
Re:Please Stop Using Grey Text by acomms on Wednesday May 18, 2022 @09:54AM (#31422795)
I tried this method, but i'm finding it impossible to book movie tickets when I keep closing the window on their homepage.
Re:Please Stop Using Grey Text by noisem4ker on Wednesday May 18, 2022 @07:28AM (#31421450)
From the same author as "I don't care about cookies":

https://www.no-thanks-extension.com/

I haven't personally tried it yet, but I'm tempted.

Re:Please Stop Using Grey Text by victorvscn on Wednesday May 18, 2022 @07:58AM (#31421663)
Edit: it's a subscription. No, thanks. I much prefer the crowdsourcing model, which allows the entire world to have it (and contribute to it), and not only those who can pay such prices (that are quite expensive in most of the world, including where I live).
Re:Please Stop Using Grey Text by jamespo on Wednesday May 18, 2022 @08:29AM (#31421935)
The problem I would think is the overlap for this of users who want jank removed from web pages and those who would choose to pay for it if optional is small.
Re:Please Stop Using Grey Text by TuringTest on Wednesday May 18, 2022 @09:51AM (#31422775)
It may be small in proportion, but large enough so that a Kickstarter could raise enough money to create and free the code as opensource.
Re:Please Stop Using Grey Text by Larrikin on Wednesday May 18, 2022 @08:12AM (#31421785)
Another subscription service and software you can't actually buy is much worse than the annoyance of pop overs. Does it atleast keep working without updates after a year?
Re:Please Stop Using Grey Text by okl on Wednesday May 18, 2022 @07:30AM (#31421459)
I'm using uBlock Origin, don't get any of that. Be sure to enable all the "annoyance" filter lists in the settings.
Re:Please Stop Using Grey Text by victorvscn on Wednesday May 18, 2022 @07:52AM (#31421628)
I think it's about the websites you visit. If you only use "tech-y" or smaller niche websites you don't come across them. But if you visit websites like from the big news media or even niche websites that are not in English. There are filters for all major languages but there are certainly fewer skilled filter writers with time and willingness to write them in other languages.

There's also a gap of websites that are big enough to have this corporativist behavior of putting annoying... objects in their webpages, but not big enough that enough people visit to the point where it's likely that one of them will write the script.

Especially because, like, I do write some stuff for userstyles and userscripts sometimes, but I won't publish them unless I think they'll be useful for at least a small group of people, which I never seem to think will happen for websites in my mother tongue for some reason.

Re:Please Stop Using Grey Text by dredmorbius on Wednesday May 18, 2022 @09:04AM (#31422258)
uBlock origin and uMatix combined:

- Globally blacklist malicious JS (and other features) within uMatrix.

- uBlock Origin's "Annoyances" filter is highly effective.

- UBO's element remover tool is also quite good, and permanently removes misfeatures.

For added leverage, on desktop, I use Stylish to write custom CSS rules that assign annoyances the CSS property "display: none !important". This is typically on a site-by-site basis, though there may be some common targets that can be addressed either globally or with a standard stylesheet applied to multiple sites.

All of which is a pain, agreed, but less of one than not doing so.

Re:Please Stop Using Grey Text by BolexNOLA on Wednesday May 18, 2022 @09:05AM (#31422269)
uBlock reminds me every day why I like HN so much with its big fat “0” on my browser border
Re:Please Stop Using Grey Text by schleck8 on Wednesday May 18, 2022 @10:24AM (#31423154)
https://scribe.rip extracts medium text without javascript
Re:Please Stop Using Grey Text by basch on Wednesday May 18, 2022 @09:23AM (#31422450)
It's a little more manual but I like having Behind the Overlay installed. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/behind-the-overlay...

It's a one click removal. It's nice because I dont have to search for the nearly transparent x or tiny no thanks, I can just muscle memory to the same button in the toolbar of my browser every time.

Re:Please Stop Using Grey Text by notorandit on Wednesday May 18, 2022 @10:10AM (#31422990)
Not for mobile...
Re:Please Stop Using Grey Text by BuyMyBitcoins on Wednesday May 18, 2022 @10:22AM (#31423132)
I know that such prompts are not technically pop up windows, but they are in spirit. I really wish the major search engines would penalize sites that use them, or that we would get browsers that started blocking them.
Re:Please Stop Using Grey Text by coldpie on Wednesday May 18, 2022 @08:58AM (#31422185)
Yeah, the best solution is NoScript. It's not too painful as you tune your whitelist. It sucks, but it's better than the frigging popups. Even works well in Firefox for Android, which is a game changer.
Re:Please Stop Using Grey Text by bstar77 on Wednesday May 18, 2022 @08:52AM (#31422117)
Yes. I use tamper monkey to write scripts for sites I visit frequently that have annoying popups, content blocks (like chat) and link-jacking (streaming sports sites).
Re:Please Stop Using Grey Text by kevin_thibedeau on Wednesday May 18, 2022 @11:15AM (#31423840)
When NoScript becomes a pain it's time to close that tab.