The end of "blink", the beginning of Blink...
May 11, 2013 1:39 AM   Subscribe

The end of blink, the beginning of Blink... The Evolution of the Web, in a Blink
posted by Mister Bijou (61 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
You will have to pry the blink tag out of my cold dead hands, Blink.
posted by Purposeful Grimace at 1:53 AM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]


I am still waiting for that New Yorker page to load. Call me when the future actually works.
posted by EnterTheStory at 2:12 AM on May 11, 2013


Ugh, firefox is getting rid of blink? Fuck them.

They also removed the 'http:' prefix in the URL bar, following chrome for no good reason.
posted by delmoi at 2:18 AM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]


I am certain that blink tag compatibility can be emulated with a simple userscript, anyway, so it'll be there for those who need it.
posted by NMcCoy at 2:18 AM on May 11, 2013 [3 favorites]


OK, page has loaded now. Pleasantly surprised: it's informative and readable (I half expected some high speed flash animation).

Add me to those who love so-called primitive pages. I pefer passionate amateur pages full of actual information to today's slow-loading ad bait.
posted by EnterTheStory at 2:28 AM on May 11, 2013 [6 favorites]


You will have to pry the blink tag out of my cold dead hands, Blink.
posted by Purposeful Grimace



From the Article:
"But just like Chrome is all about minimizing browser chrome and the Pixel is all about not seeing any pixels at all, Blink will never support the blink tag." - Alex Komoroske, a Google product manager

Safari (WebKit) has never supported <Blink>. If you use Chrome, and Opera, you will be switching to Blink as your base (opera had a special implementation of WebKit - with <blink>. Firefox just announced it will stop supporting <blink>.

Unless you are coding for and using some very old web browsers - the choice has been made for you. As the article points out, looking at the Wayback Machine, you'll no longer see the gloriousness of Angelfire.

And now I wonder if staring at old paintings from the greats will someday be rendered to us fundamentally not being able to grasp, see, or interpret some aspect of the color. And by that I mean, was the DaVinci Code really just a <Blink> tag?
posted by Nanukthedog at 2:47 AM on May 11, 2013 [3 favorites]


>I wonder if staring at old paintings from the greats will someday be rendered to us fundamentally not being able to grasp, see, or interpret some aspect of the color

Maxfield Parrish's translucent layering technique for example? I am told they reflect light in a way that a monitor does not. Or Thomas Cole's epics are another example: by filling a wall they fill your field of vision, making your eyes adjust to those colors only. That color experience is lost on a regular monitor. But those losses are unintentional and unavoidable. Contrast the decision to break old web sites (e.g. those archived on the Wayback machine that use blink) merely to make a social point. It is a deliberate act of vandalism, no more or less.
posted by EnterTheStory at 3:19 AM on May 11, 2013 [4 favorites]


It's OK, we just have to move to server-side blink.
posted by Zarkonnen at 3:21 AM on May 11, 2013 [3 favorites]


whatever you do: don't blink.
posted by Mezentian at 3:31 AM on May 11, 2013 [3 favorites]


Ugh, I with I believed that a new browser rendering engine meant innovation. Google has, however, shown they're as shitty as Microsoft about doing things their way and one more bunch of quirks vendor prefixes is not something I am looking forward to.

I'm sure they're doing this because they found one more way of mining user data.

Add me to those who love so-called primitive pages. I pefer passionate amateur pages full of actual information to today's slow-loading ad bait.

Lately I've been really frustrated by how Google has fucked the web. Maybe it would have happened without Google, I done know; but I feel like their absence ushered in the era of bad content bubble to the top, because everyone is trying to game the system. No longer do simple web searches bring you to accurate information, just the information that some unqualified writer spins up from other unreliable sources. And because they have a marketing team that creates links garbage, the drown out real information.

Blink is probably one more way to usher in the downfall of the useful web.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 3:37 AM on May 11, 2013 [6 favorites]


I with I believed that a new browser rendering engine meant innovation. Google has, however, shown they're as shitty as Microsoft about doing things their way

Have you met Unity? It's a disease in the system. Firefox has it, Libreoffice has it.

I am astounded.
posted by Mezentian at 3:40 AM on May 11, 2013


.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:42 AM on May 11, 2013 [8 favorites]


Meh, what use is a fancy, heavy client side library like jquery if you can't reimplement blink for the 21st century?

Just inject this into your geocities copy, (along with jquery itself) and glory in fully animated style.
$("blink").animate({opacity:0},200,"linear",function(){
  $(this).animate({opacity:1},200);
});
You're welcome, future old internet viewing historians. Hope you don't have epilepsy.
posted by ArkhanJG at 3:43 AM on May 11, 2013 [8 favorites]


one more bunch of vendor prefixes is not something I am looking forward to

You're in luck then, there aren't going to be any prefixed features in Blink.
posted by gregjones at 3:49 AM on May 11, 2013 [2 favorites]


Starting with version No. 23 of Firefox, Gecko, Mozilla’s internal rendering engine, will no longer support the element.

Version 23, eh?

If you don't blink, you won't see the fnords.
posted by chavenet at 4:04 AM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]


I just got a Windows 8 tablet, and I like how IE handles the UI. If you are in Metro mode, IE behaves in a tablet-like manner. Simplified UI, touch enhanced, etc. When you are in Desktop mode, it behaves in the full featured way. This is how applications should work. Not the developers making arbitrary decisions and challenging the user to build a plugin to undo their mess.

The time to not support a feature, especially one as innocuous as the blink tag, is when nobody uses it anymore. Is removing blink really going to help anything? No? Then leave it alone.

It's kind of like outlawing face tattoos. We WANT people to be able to do these things, so we know who is a moonbat.
posted by gjc at 4:18 AM on May 11, 2013 [4 favorites]


Contrast the decision to break old web sites (e.g. those archived on the Wayback machine that use blink) merely to make a social point. It is a deliberate act of vandalism, no more or less.

It's not that new browsers or rendering engines break old websites, it's that you are using the wrong tool for the purpose. If you want to see blinking text, downgrade your browser or get a browser with a different rendering engine. It's obviously not practible to only create or enhance browser engines that support whatever came up in the short history of the web (e.g.: Java / Quicktime, which thankfully have been outsourced into plugins). Especially in view of the "new" technologies already there (smartphones) or coming up (wearable computing), where speed is an important factor and the support of useless gimmicks from the past only slow things down.

Which brings me to:
Add me to those who love so-called primitive pages. I pefer passionate amateur pages full of actual information to today's slow-loading ad bait.

You are using your browser wrong or the wrong browser.

Last but not least:
No longer do simple web searches bring you to accurate information, just the information that some unqualified writer spins up from other unreliable sources.

In order to provide better search results for the evergrowing amount of "data" on the web search engines need more input. Mining your data helps. So in order to optimize your search results I would even advise to use more tools from the same source. Google understood that and provides those tools. What's wrong with that?
posted by KMB at 4:25 AM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]


Lately I've been really frustrated by how Google has fucked the web. Maybe it would have happened without Google, I done know; but I feel like their absence ushered in the era of bad content bubble to the top
Here's an example of how google is fucking things up. Do a search, without adblock for "open office". The top two links are to "freedownloads.██.███/OpenOffice" and "open-office.soft██.███/", at least this time. They're ads. Apparently some of the ads that come up when you search for a perfictly safe open source software app are re-packaged 'distributions' that include spyware in the form of browser toolbars.

I discovered this when I was helping someone set up a brand new (Win8) PC, who wasn't all that computer literate. I actually installed Chrome instead of firefox, I told them not to download anything. They did say they were going to install OpenOffice and I thought that would be fine.

The next day I look at the computer and there is already some kind of 'button' in chrome for some super-shady spam... thing, I think they'd altered the default search and home page as well. I look in the installed apps on the system, and there was already some crap-ware B.S. installed.

Looking at the file creation/modification dates everything was installed about 20 minutes after open-office finished downloading.

I had no idea that was happening since I run adblock and don't see ads on Google. That's amazingly irresponsible in my view. It wasn't anything that triggered Win8's built anti-virus, but obviously it could have been a huge privacy issue, as well as hurting performance if you end up with too much junk. I found it really irresponsible on google's part.
posted by delmoi at 4:52 AM on May 11, 2013 [9 favorites]


You're welcome, future old internet viewing historians.

I suspect professional Web historians have already, or are going to have, a few virtual machines at hand, each with a legacy operating system and suitable browsers for their period. Perhaps Windows 95 running Navigator 2, or a big-endian VM running Solaris 2.4 and the same browser, or a System 7.1 emulator running NCSA Mosaic... which original setup in a university lab led to my first glimpse of the WWW. ("Wow, this is way better than WAIS!")

I'll miss the <blink>. There's a Hotwired or such article from 1996 or thereabouts that effectively used the tag as a lead graphic: an ASCII picture in the shape, and color, of a giant blinking neon Vegas casino marquee. Wish I could find it again. At any rate:

.
posted by Jubal Kessler at 4:56 AM on May 11, 2013


.
posted by localroger at 5:01 AM on May 11, 2013 [3 favorites]


Mining your data helps. So in order to optimize your search results I would even advise to use more tools from the same source. Google understood that and provides those tools. What's wrong with that?

What's wrong with that is that, as Google mines more and more personal data, their search results (in my personal experience) have become less and less valuable to my needs.

Google came to own the search market when their results were more along the lines of "Here's what's out there. Enjoy!". Today, the search results are very much along the lines of "Here's what we think you really want." Instead of expanding our experience, a Google search increasingly feels like I'm being gently pushed into a pigeonhole.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:39 AM on May 11, 2013 [6 favorites]


by filling a wall they fill your field of vision, making your eyes adjust to those colors only. That color experience is lost on a regular monitor

Not necessarily.
posted by randomkeystrike at 5:45 AM on May 11, 2013


I think Mozilla is being pretty stupid here, they seem to be just blindly copying everything Google does with chrome. But to me it seems like a lot of the 'innovations' in chrome are as much about benefiting google as they are about benefiting the user. Take removing the 'http' prefix from the URLs in the URL bar. In my view, part of the reason for that is that it further confuses people on the difference between search terms and URLs, and the more confusion people have about it the better it is for google.

So what's the benefit to Mozilla to remove it from Firefox?

In Chrome, you can set a home page that loads in the first browser window you open when you launch it. But you have no control at all over what shows up in new tabs or windows, it's either thumbnails for recent sites, or the 'chrome store', a space google controls.

At some point, firefox also adopted that. Thankfully you can turn it off, through the about:config page in firefox, where you can also turn 'http://' back on. In Chrome, those things are completely impossible, without installing extensions.

But here's the thing, I think for most people Chrome is just a better browser. It's faster, less laggy, and it's developer tools are really nice and much more responsive, other then the annoying things google does what's the reason to use firefox over chrome?

And while I can see the point in copying some things (I really like how you can open private windows in firefox now, like incognito mode in chrome. It means you can read NYT articles a lot more easily :), what exactly is the point of getting rid of blink?

It just seems like a completely pointless kick in the balls of anyone who has any nostalgia for how the web was when it was new and fresh and a blank canvas shared with the whole world.

And the thing is, who the fuck do they think is actually using Firefox? Other then not liking some of the things google is doing, and philosophical open-source reasons why do they think that anyone would pick Firefox over Chrome? It sure as hell isn't because the product is better. Removing things like the <blink> tag and the 'http://' scheme from the URL bar removes reasons people might chose Firefox over Chrome.

There probably aren't that many people out there who care about <blink>. People aren't going to switch to Chrome out of pure spite. But it is going to mean one less reason to use Firefox over Chrome, and as a result it means movement from Firefox to Chrome.

And the thing is, the <blink> tag actually works as a form of 'viral' advertising for firefox, although among a small number of users who recognize it. If you see something blinking you know they're using Firefox, and the effect is only for other FF users. It's a tiny thing, but it's fun. And it's only a tiny number of users, but they're the users who tend to be the people who recommend tech for others.

This is a small thing, but it's a total stick-up-the ass dick move and incredibly obnoxious for a lot of the people who are actively choosing Firefox over Chrome.

Someone needs to setup a change.org petition or something somewhere.

I'm sure someone will come up with some quick javascript you can add to a site to re-enable <blink> at some point, with the bonus that it'll start working on other browsers.
posted by delmoi at 5:57 AM on May 11, 2013 [9 favorites]


delmoi, can't replicate your search results unless I use Bing. Google popped OpenOffice.org to the top result, followed by Wikipedia article on OpenOffice and the CNet download page for the same.

Maybe the problem is Windows?
posted by caution live frogs at 6:23 AM on May 11, 2013


My personal reason for continuing to prefer Firefox over Chrome is that the Chrome version of Adblock Plus makes it harder to install EasyPrivacy+EasyList. Also, I don't appreciate being nagged to sign on to things.
posted by flabdablet at 6:27 AM on May 11, 2013


Re the Open Office search: I can see links for the similar third-party sites at the bottom of my Google results page, with an ad for Microsoft's Office 365 at the top of the results. Both ad sets are in peach boxes and are labelled "Ad related to Open Office" at the top of each box, but this might be too subtle for some newbies.
posted by maudlin at 6:28 AM on May 11, 2013


delmoi, can't replicate your search results unless I use Bing. Google popped OpenOffice.org to the top result, followed by Wikipedia article on OpenOffice and the CNet download page for the same.
here's a screenshot, logged out of google, using an incognito window. Obviously they serve different ads to different people, and it wouldn't make any sense to advertize windows crapware to non-windows users, if advertizes have that option.
Maybe the problem is Windows?
How do you think that would even possible?
posted by delmoi at 6:36 AM on May 11, 2013


The next day I look at the computer and there is already some kind of 'button' in chrome for some super-shady spam... thing, I think they'd altered the default search and home page as well. I look in the installed apps on the system, and there was already some crap-ware B.S. installed.

Looking at the file creation/modification dates everything was installed about 20 minutes after open-office finished downloading.


Might not have been Google's doing. I've stopped using CNet since catching one of their wrapped installers in the act of attempting to install crap like that by default.
posted by flabdablet at 6:45 AM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]


(W.R.T. how one can detect the difference between Windows and non-Windows machines, every time you ask a web server for some data, you are sending it a bit of information called a "user agent" that tells that server a little bit about your machine and browser. Look here if you want to see yours.)
posted by ariel_caliban at 6:48 AM on May 11, 2013


I have a bit of a visual impairment, and I find blink tags monstrously distracting and slightly nauseating. So I find mourning the loss of these things a bit like mourning the eradication of smallpox. On the other hand, I get the internet history angle, so I am conflicted. However, no blink tags seems like an excellent reason to switch to Chrome.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:51 AM on May 11, 2013


I think flabdablet is right. The CNet installers probably install a browser toolbar and change your default search engine. Happened to me as well.
posted by Ad hominem at 6:56 AM on May 11, 2013


I get exactly the same result for open office in google that delmoi did, in FireFox on Windows XP. Not logged into Google, which may be the thing.
posted by localroger at 7:07 AM on May 11, 2013


LIbreOffice is where it's at.
Even though they switched Ctrl-F with Ctrl-H for no reason.
FORK IT.
posted by Mezentian at 7:09 AM on May 11, 2013


Thank goodness that Apple created WebKit ex nihlo. It definitely wasn't a fork of anything.
posted by blue_beetle at 7:13 AM on May 11, 2013 [2 favorites]


In my office we've been using an Access database for approximately ever that makes extensive use of the "blink" function in its interface; this database is a brilliant example of how "Since the rules and best practices for keeping the Internet clean and readable had not been established, they deployed <blink> liberally and recklessly."

Though I will concede that <blink> may have an appropriate use in a web page, it just doesn't work at all as part of a primary user interface screen and in this context is absolutely intolerable. That said, reading this article gives this database interface a certain nostalgia and perhaps even historical significance that in my judginess I was failing to appreciate....It makes me think when the time comes and this database is finally replaced, we should somehow preserve this interface for the web historians of the future. Seriously.
posted by gubenuj at 7:53 AM on May 11, 2013


delmoi: "I think Mozilla is being pretty stupid here, they seem to be just blindly copying everything Google does with chrome. But to me it seems like a lot of the 'innovations' in chrome are as much about benefiting google as they are about benefiting the user. Take removing the 'http' prefix from the URLs in the URL bar. In my view, part of the reason for that is that it further confuses people on the difference between search terms and URLs, and the more confusion people have about it the better it is for google.

So what's the benefit to Mozilla to remove it from Firefox?
"

What is the benefit? Mozilla makes most of its money via search engine requests to google. While the money is paid in order to be the default search, it is not a huge stretch to assume that efforts to drive traffic to Google search would be related.
posted by idiopath at 7:53 AM on May 11, 2013


BTW you don't even need to get javascript involved, the blink tag could easily be re-enabled using CSS Animations; por ejemplo. Though note that CSS Animations are far more general-purpose and powerful than just emulating deprecated HTML tags.
posted by XMLicious at 8:05 AM on May 11, 2013


The CNet installers probably install a browser toolbar and change your default search engine. Happened to me as well.
I don't use CNet, but I did check and downloaded the installer both from CNet and directly from openoffice.org and the files are identical (md5 sum: ad67b5b44952ff08415228823a54815a)

Plus, why else would anyone pay for ads for people to download openoffice?
posted by delmoi at 8:12 AM on May 11, 2013


Plus, why else would anyone pay for ads for people to download openoffice?

This past week I have gone through a re-install.
People do.

If it exists there seems to be an ad-supported version of it.
posted by Mezentian at 8:17 AM on May 11, 2013


why do they think that anyone would pick Firefox over Chrome?

For me, it's because Chrome refuses to implement a master password, stupidly insisting that, since it's not as secure as logging in and out of windows as a separate user, that it has no use. They have a paternalistic belief that they understand my security needs better than I do.
posted by straight at 8:40 AM on May 11, 2013


This past week I have gone through a re-install.

Except without the ads you would simply end up downloading the correct version, from the legitimate site.

If it exists there seems to be an ad-supported version of it.

I don't think you understand what's going on here. OpenOffice (and the offshoot libreoffice) are free, open source office software suites. You can download the official version from their site, for free, with no ads.

Other people can take that software, bundle it with a bunch of toolbars and other crapware, in which case they make money for themselves, and none of that goes to support the actual development of the software. If you download those you're not "supporting" anything except for some parasitic spammers.
posted by delmoi at 8:56 AM on May 11, 2013 [2 favorites]


I did check and downloaded the installer both from CNet and directly from openoffice.org and the files are identical

OK, so CNet isn't offering that particular package wrapped in its own download manager right this instant.

If you ever download something from CNet that you were expecting to be quite substantial, and you find that it's only a few hundred K, that's their wrapper and it will offer you a load of extra crap by default. I have definitely seen browser add-ons that I would personally class as malware offered by that wrapper.

CNet pages where the wrapper is attached to the huge and prominent Download Now button will have a teeny tiny "direct download" link underneath that button, if you can't find what you want anywhere else.
posted by flabdablet at 9:04 AM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]


As long as they still support Comic Sans, we'll know who the moonbats are.
posted by MtDewd at 9:32 AM on May 11, 2013 [2 favorites]


Poom!
posted by homunculus at 10:52 AM on May 11, 2013 [2 favorites]


For those of you involved with the never ending job of family IT work, I'd highly recommend using Ninite, which will install and update most common programs, codecs, and plugins and will do so without spyware. The one notable exception is Flash, but that's because Adobe insisted users get their install / updates from them, so that the bundled toolbar would get installed.
posted by honestcoyote at 11:47 AM on May 11, 2013


They also removed the 'http:' prefix in the URL bar, following chrome for no good reason.

There's an about:config entry to get the prefixes back: browser.urlbar.trimURLs

But yeah, Chrome made the Firefox people stupid. I'm still annoyed with their me-too version numbering scheme.

why do they think that anyone would pick Firefox over Chrome?

I'm relatively happy with Firefox, and I know their focus is the browser. I read somewhere that Google attempted to design Chrome to make ad blocking more difficult, but I haven't looked into that too deeply. I don't really trust them to make the right calls.
posted by cosmic.osmo at 1:23 PM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]


I'm seconding delmoi's report about people taking out ads that bundle open source software with adware. Turn off Adblock and search for Firefox. The first ad is for Firefox "optimized for Yahoo," which once when I was setting up a friends' computer I almost installed because over the years Google has slowly been making it harder to tell ads from search results, and on some screens the faint orange ad background is difficult to spot. The second ad is for installing Firefox from a site called "ez-download.com". Why is Google even allowing these ads*?
posted by JHarris at 1:23 PM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]


Both ad sets are in peach boxes and are labelled "Ad related to Open Office" at the top of each box, but this might be too subtle for some newbies.

When you're setting up a new machine you just want to get it over with QUICKLY so you can get back to work. A couple of times I've clicked on those links, which is easier to do than you think when you're rushing, and when an over-bright monitor drowns out the ad background. It used to be that Google would put a dashed border on the ads, but not these days.
posted by JHarris at 1:27 PM on May 11, 2013


How about we keep blink and get rid of spam?
posted by Cranberry at 1:50 PM on May 11, 2013 [2 favorites]


Always always use Ninite, folks. It's dead easy, and legit. And then you don't have to worry about whether or not Google has shady ads on the search results pages.
posted by neckro23 at 2:11 PM on May 11, 2013 [2 favorites]


straight, if you implement a master password in Chrome than you either have to encrypt all of the user data on disk -- which may be the right answer, but it's quite an undertaking -- or you have to explain carefully that the master password doesn't really "protect" your data, since it's all still unencrypted right there in the file system. Considering how few people read (or understand) any software messages at all, it makes sense to not add a possible source of insecurity for people that don't understand that the "password" doesn't protect against anybody with a SQL browser and a text editor from accessing their data directly from the files themselves.
posted by ariel_caliban at 4:13 PM on May 11, 2013


You're in luck then, there aren't going to be any prefixed features in Blink.

I just read their policy, I'm not sure I'm happy about that either. Vendor prefixes really helped push web development forward from where it had stagnated, and put pressure on ms to get up to speed. Plus their usage allowed for developers to "decide", in a sense, the what to adopt. I also worry their lack of prefixes will lead to what we had before, different browsers behaving/fighting over how CSS should render. In short, a return to browser specific bugs and hacks.

I'm not saying I love vendor prefixes, but they are a necessary evil.


why do they think that anyone would pick Firefox over Chrome?

I begrudgingly switched to chrome over Firefox about two years ago. I didn't want to switch; Firefox had a number of add-ons chrome doesn't, and Firefox was a resource hog. I'm thinking of switching back. Chrome is buggy as shit. It's not just me, in searching for fixes, I'll find bug reports outlining the same issues I'm having. One bug related to @fontface on macs took at least 3 tears to address. The one that is plaguing me now is sometimes pages don't load, or partially load. By sometimes, I mean about half the time. I have to hit reload several times for it to work. Numerous users report this error.

The other fun one is some images don't load. Might be related to above, I don't know. Multiple reloads might or might not fix the problem. I check in Firefox and Safari and the page loads fine.

Oh yeah, then there is the hanging pages.. Sometimes pages just refuse to load, spinning eternally. Restarting chrome is the only way to fix.

All of these have bug reports with pages of complaints. And Google product forums are littered with these complaints.

And before anyone asks, yes, I've removed all extensions, killed my prefs and reinstalled chrome.

I hate the idea of switching browsers again because I've gotten comfortable in Chrome and I'll have to readjust. Plus I have no idea if Firefox is any better than it was before. Or possibly worse. So I stick with chrome, reloading like a mad woman.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 4:43 PM on May 11, 2013


I'm thinking of switching back. Chrome is buggy as shit.

Chrome got its market share over Firefox from being faster and less resource-hungry, but Firefox has made strides to match it, and Chrome has gotten a bit worse lately. Firefox is my main browser at the moment. I've made a couple of attempts to switch to Chrome but I usually come back due to some reason or other.
posted by JHarris at 6:49 PM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]


Oh yeah, then there is the hanging pages.. Sometimes pages just refuse to load, spinning eternally. Restarting chrome is the only way to fix.

Firefox does that too. I suspect it has something to do with pop up blocking. About a quarter of the time, I can fix it by killing the plugin-container.exe.
posted by gjc at 7:28 PM on May 11, 2013


Always always use Ninite, folks. It's dead easy, and legit. And then you don't have to worry about whether or not Google has shady ads on the search results pages.

Ninite does excellent work, but you can't use the free version to install Flash any more - apparently they got a nastygram from Adobe, who would rather force consumers to use Adobe's own installer (which comes with an opt-out advertising toolbar).

Given that Ninite is only a wrapper around installers downloaded from publicly available official sources, I cannot imagine that there's any solid legal basis for Adobe's action there; it looks like straight corporate bullying to me.
posted by flabdablet at 8:23 PM on May 11, 2013 [2 favorites]


Considering how few people read (or understand) any software messages at all, it makes sense to not add a possible source of insecurity for people that don't understand that the "password" doesn't protect against anybody with a SQL browser and a text editor from accessing their data directly from the files themselves.

Which is idiotic considering the tiny, tiny percentage of people for whom that would be an issue, compared to the large number of people who would just like to lock their browser against the casual snooping of a co-worker or family member without having to completely log out of Windows.

And really, I'm not sure there exists even one attacker sophisticated enough to dig into a pseudo-locked browser as you describe, but not sufficiently sophisticated to defeat whatever security Google imagines those clueless people would be using instead with Chrome.
posted by straight at 8:31 PM on May 11, 2013


straight, if you implement a master password in Chrome than you either have to encrypt all of the user data on disk -- which may be the right answer, but it's quite an undertaking
No it's not, it's quite easy.
- or you have to explain carefully that the master password doesn't really "protect" your data ... against anybody with a SQL browser and a text editor from accessing their data directly from the files themselves.
Which is why you encrypt it on disk. How is it difficult? You take the hash of the master password, and use that as the key for a symmetric cipher like AES

What that can't help protect you from would be an application that's hooked into Chrome's memory using the debugging system to extract passwords directly from memory before they're re-encrypted (for https) and sent to the site.

Google is actually trying to get everyone to stop using passwords so they helpfully manage everyone's 'identity' (So in other words your 'master password' will be your gmail password)
posted by delmoi at 8:55 PM on May 11, 2013


Firefox chokes for me on longboat Metafilter posts with all of the Greasemonkey scripts that I use. Chrome will load Palin-level posts in less than 15 seconds with the same scripts enabled. I also use Chrome for replicating browser-specific user issues for work.

I still use Firefox for almost everything else, mostly because I prefer to use OSS whenever possible and because I don't particularly like google's antics of late. It's getting harder and harder for me to convince the 99.9% of people I know who don't care about those things that Firefox is the better choice. Doing silly shit that alienates users like me such as disabling the blink tag and otherwise trying to turn Firefox into a Chrome clone makes me want to stop trying.

I wanted to make a funny comment using the blink tag, but what's the point?
posted by double block and bleed at 9:40 PM on May 11, 2013


Google is actually trying to get everyone to stop using passwords so they helpfully manage everyone's 'identity' (So in other words your 'master password' will be your gmail password)

Fight the power
posted by flabdablet at 9:48 PM on May 11, 2013


Requiem for "blink" over at MuFi. Goodnewsfortheinsane had it on the head seven years ago.

Its you who I'm missing, just like elephants pissing.

My wife heard this song one time and thought it was overly depressing for the kids until I explained it was about a HTML tag.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 9:48 PM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]


delmoi: "How do you think that would even possible?"

Well, it was a throwaway comment really, because Windows tries damn hard to default you to Bing search, and does in IE unless you specifically choose something different. Especially with URL bar searches in the new IE, it's hard to tell.

Looks like it may be logging out of Google, because I don't see that ad block even if AdBlock Plus is disabled. I do see sponsored ads for some searches in Google, but not for that specific search.
posted by caution live frogs at 1:36 PM on May 17, 2013


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