New Reddit also messes with text selection with unnecessary JS crap. Wherever you select some text, they show an "Embed" button that prevents you from dragging the text to a new tab to perform a web search.

Thankfully this behaviour can be blocked with uBlock Origin by adding these rules:

  www.reddit.com##+js(aeld, mousedown, isSelectionOutOfRange)
  www.reddit.com##+js(aeld, mouseup, shouldShowButton)

> dragging the text to a new tab to perform a web search

I had no idea that this worked. I don't "get" intentionally dragging if there's any alternative.

I feel like one of those people who tells people that frowning takes more muscles than smiling, but: dragging seems like it requires so many more muscles to be engaged than the keyboard shortcuts for copy/newtab/paste and then enter.

The way I see it, it's a feature that exists which some people use and prefer. Breaking it (intentionally or accidentally) just isn't something I want to see.

For sure, I'm not saying any browser should change this behavior. C-x M-c M-butterfly and all that.

Ha, different strokes for different folks I guess.

Usually when I'm reading something, my hands are off the keyboard and I use one hand to scroll with the mouse. In this scenario, it's so much easier to double-click to select a word and drag it to a new tab instead of reaching for the keyboard.

I totally get that. I had to check what my muscle memory would do in that situation. (Apparently) I select text, right-click, and then choose "search for <selected phrase>" from the context menu.

There isn't an alternative that lets you search for the text in a new tab while staying on the current tab.

The worst thing: i.redd.it no longer returns the image alone, but wraps it in a "viewer" page. I can’t even write an uBlock filter for this, because it relies on an Accept HTTP header.

Imgur does the same, but that at least can be remedied by stripping the Referer header. I wonder how long this will last.

I predict Sec-Fetch-* will be abused for the same purpose. It may be already.

Yep. Sometimes reddit has an image that’s either incorrectly cropped or it’s zoomed out so far that it’s unreadable. How many times do I need to click on the image before I can see it properly? I’ve counted as many as 4 taps through various awful image viewer things. Sometimes no about of tapping and zooming will render the image properly. The irony is my browser is great at showing images already - panning and zooming works beautifully.

I miss Apollo. The friction with Reddit’s awful design and coding choices makes me use their site a lot less. I think that might be a good thing in the long run. It leaves me hungry for something better.

This behavior is becoming annoyingly common on various image hosts. Hopefully ad blockers will implement ways around this soon.