9 ms·

Firefox Bug 111373 - don't allow animated site icons

135 points by vayun 11y ago

mtrycz 11y ago
Yeah, yeah, everyone loves to hate on Firefox. Still, if you're gonna do some shaming, pick something serious, there are some serious things to pick form iirc.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- zxcvcxz 11y ago
  Yeah like the fact that chrome is just generally shitty. It takes 30 seconds to open and then uses half my RAM, but nah, lets hate on FF. OSS is such an easy target too, seeing as most communication is done out in the open. When chrome developers make closed source tools for flash that's fine, "It's all about business and they're a private corporation who can do what they want" but whenever the FF devs make any decision about anything they get criticized, and most of the people doing the criticisms are chrome users and people who swear by chrome for web development, but they seem to be the same people who completely ignore other web browsers as if chrome is all that matters. Back in the day we had to target all major browsers, now there's a group of people who have a major hard-on for chrome and don't give a shit about any other ecosystem and for some reason they think they're "good" programmers.
zitterbewegung 11y ago
This is a sign that Firefox decision making is democratic and actually fair isn't it?
- Xylakant 11y ago
  It's more a sign that a lot of people have an opinion about it but none of those are sufficiently annoyed by the issue to actually fix the problem. There's way more work to go around than time available.
db48x 11y ago
Hmm. How many animated favicons have you noticed? I can't think of any...
- eterm 11y ago
  I thought this too, perhaps they're not popular because IE and Safari don't support them?
- creshal 11y ago
  I like using them on my intranet sites, precisely because they're disruptive eye catchers.
  - mattmanser 11y ago
    And that's precisely why you shouldn't be using them. We developers are some of the worst people at understanding what's actually important and what's not to a user's workflow.
    - creshal 11y ago
      > And that's precisely why you shouldn't be using them. With a userbase of precisely one, I can do whatever I want. :-)
      - JupiterMoon 11y ago
        I assume you are that user-base... I upvoted and then had the horrible thought that you might be making your significant other wade through animated gifs before she can use your Intranet only coffee pot every morning.
      - SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago
        You should have MIDI music on an endless loop too, and that rotating globe GIF... Ooh, ooh, and a guestbook! ;)
- mattmanser 11y ago
dhoe 11y ago
That bug only has 60 comments. Here's one with 600+ comments and 400+ people in CC. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=78414 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=78414
- erikb 11y ago
  I noticed that one too. I think with flash and co dying this won loses intent as well. Nowadays I have nearly zero websites where this is a problem.
dec0dedab0de 11y ago
I have an idea, if you don't like something a site does, stop using it.
- bnegreve 11y ago
  I really don't get that logic. To me what you're saying is equivalent to saying that we should never discuss anything. Something's wrong with the society? If you don't like it, you can just move to a different country. How can we possibly improve anything with that mindset? I know that I'm overreacting here, but I would genuenly like to here comments about that.
  - avodonosov 11y ago
    Your analogy with not discussing anything is incorrect. IMHO the web sites trying to abuse their visitors by showing animated favicons should be banned from Internet. And of course I am not going to visit such a web site myself.
  - mhurron 11y ago
    Not everything has to be dealt with the same way, and not everything exists as the same priority. Using or not using an annoying website doesn't come close to the effects that living in a society that touches every part of your life. I can stop going to a website or a store because of many reasons without impacting anyone around me and getting the same result of not being botherd by them. That is not an option regarding where I live. No I can not just move, it is not that simple. > I know that I'm overreacting here, but I would genuenly like to here comments about that. It would seem you likely already know the answer.
  - WorldWideWayne 11y ago
    I think if people actually moved to a different country or state where they can find more like-minded people, things would be better all around. Different opinions doesn't mean that one group is right and one is wrong. I don't want to live in a cookie cutter society. I'd rather everybody have their own space to do what they want without harming others.
  - 11y ago
kukx 11y ago
I wouldn't blame the Firefox team for not fixing it. It's not that they were doing nothing in the meantime. They actually have their hands full with more meaningful changes. When the web stops developing then they will probably have more time on doing this kind of fixes/changes.
avodonosov 11y ago
The ticket is open so long because a workaround exists: close this tab and never open this web site again.
- thisjepisje 11y ago
  Or rather, a userscript/plugin?
  - avodonosov 11y ago
    what plugin?
    - ytdht 11y ago
      Greasemonkey extension with some script like https://gist.github.com/robbyrussell/46193 https://gist.github.com/robbyrussell/46193 (I didn't test it but it should work)
      - avodonosov 11y ago
        Ah, a script/plugin as a workaround? Maybe, but do the sites with animates favicons deserve so much attention? Do you know any useful web site with animated favicon?
        bad_user 11y ago
        GMail has a cool extension in Labs that changes the favicon to display the number of unread messages. So that's a use-case.
        Vexs 11y ago
        Reddit enhancement suite has a similar setup.
        thijsb 11y ago
        And a useful one at that.
nothrabannosir 11y ago
I didn't read the entire bugreport; did anybody mention non-gif dynamic favicon changes? Like this: https://gist.githack.com/hraban/e669edce68fbb9cd004b/raw/5f87685874594d43666de49a0ca3e8123101d8c6/faviconchanger.html https://gist.githack.com/hraban/e669edce68fbb9cd004b/raw/5f8... (essentially: $('link[rel=icon]')[0].href='...';) Because that's kind of useful for a lot of sites. Then again, if you don't remove that, what's the use of banning gifs?
- realusername 11y ago
  That's interesting, the animation seems to be slower when I'm on another tab, maybe Firefox has some optimisations affecting this.
  - TheCoreh 11y ago
    It has. IIRC the setTimeout and serInterval functions are throttled to 1000ms while the tab is unfocused.
cdnsteve 11y ago
It's a trap Low priority issues can sometimes linger around for a very long time taking away precious focus of developers and creating distractions from adding real-value-features.
brobinson 11y ago
For anyone who hasn't seen it, a favicon-based game: http://www.p01.org/releases/DEFENDER_of_the_favicon/ http://www.p01.org/releases/DEFENDER_of_the_favicon/
- cmdrfred 11y ago
  This is hilarious.
HappyTypist 11y ago
If a browser blocks animated favicons, I can see that blocking sites that dynamically update the favicon with a badge to show unread messages / new updates / etc.
- TheLoneWolfling 11y ago
  Simple. Have a threshold - under <x> updates per day is fine, anything more gets blocked. Maybe with a per-site white/black list.
- pilsetnieks 11y ago
  Am I missing something or are a lot of people confusing animated favicons (animated gif as favicon, as per the linked article) with dynamically setting the favicon?
  - TheLoneWolfling 11y ago
    The problem is that there is no difference. Or rather: you can simulate animated gifs with dynamically setting the favicon. And as such blocking animated gifs wouldn't do anything beyond driving people to use JS to animate them instead. So, realistically, either block both, block dynamically setting it but allow animated gifs, or keep both. But blocking animated gifs but allowing people to dynamically set it won't do much of anything. Personally, I'm for blocking animated gifs (or rather, making it a config option), and throttling dynamically setting the favicon (like how FF already throttles background JS events). Unfortunately, given FF's push towards no options, I very much doubt it's going to happen.
ynak 11y ago
I also hope FireFox would prevent HTML5 YouTube videos form autoplaying and autoloading. They will implement a such feature in the next version, but it doesn't seem to work properly now (It's beta, I know). And it's not clear to stop autoloading, either. Does anyone have a good idea to block autoplay and load HTML5 videos? http://www.ghacks.net/2015/06/11/finally-mozilla-adds-working-html5-video-autoplay-blocking-to-firefox/ http://www.ghacks.net/2015/06/11/finally-mozilla-adds-workin...
- kiiski 11y ago
  I think it would be possible to configure noscript to allow scripts, but require a click to play media (I haven't actually tried it like that, since I just keep almost all scripts blocked anyway).
  - tedks 11y ago
    NoScript has a configuration option allowing you to set HTML5 content as click to play.
    - vixsomnis 11y ago
      I can't find it. Is it not in the options GUI?
      - kiiski 11y ago
        Did you try the "Embeddings -> Forbid <AUDIO> / <VIDEO>".
- NoGravitas 11y ago
  But then how would we Rickroll people?
kw71 11y ago
I noticed recently that firefox no longer stops playing animated gifs when I press the <esc> key. This behavior change, which prevents me from stopping annoying animations, annoys me more than any favicon ever did.
- iolothebard 11y ago
  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/toggle-animated-gifs/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/toggle-animat... shift + esc
  - kw71 11y ago
    Thank you for showing me a workaround for this regression!
donatj 11y ago
At my old job I made one for a client. Their logo would spin once a minute. I thought it was super neat. I guess it was kinda subtle compared to what's possible, it's still the only animated fav icon I've seen.
directionless 11y ago
My "favorite" ancient bug report, is https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=91337 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=91337 (and its duplicate https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=259109 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=259109) It's why I stopped using thunderbird, and mostly gave up on mozilla products. Here we are, about 14 years later.
- aidenn0 11y ago
  I have my double-click speed set so high, I don't imagine I would ever run into that one. However, I stopped using thunderbird a decade ago when it corrupted my mailbox when my homedir ran out of space. Twice. From two different bugs. I hear it's better these days, but I'm so tied to sylpheed-claws now that I don't have a reason to try it again.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  I can't reproduce.
  - jamescostian 11y ago
    Same. I'm waiting for the perfect moment
conradfr 11y ago
This is amusing. There are bugs opened for 10 years that are infuriating though, like https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=307089 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=307089
- bzbarsky 11y ago
  There is no magic. Either the browser stores the source somewhere or the browser refuses to show source or the browser refetches the source from the server when asked to show it. Given that in the setting of that bug report the user has explicitly instructed the browser to not store anything anywhere, and that you don't like the third option (the current behavior), I assume your proposed solution is to put up some sort of error message instead of showing the source in this situation?
  - conradfr 11y ago
    I suggest to do it like Chrome does, show me the source. Maybe it caches the original source, I don't know, but I can't imagine that's expensive (given all that Firefox caches on each tabs ...).
    - bzbarsky 11y ago
      Caching the original source can in fact be pretty expensive in a lot of cases. Which is why Firefox tries to put it on disk, not in memory. But, again, if the user then explicitly turns that off, then Firefox doesn't do it. The key part here is that this bug report is about a situation in which the user explicitly changes the browser's default settings to not store stuff. And then the browser ... doesn't store stuff. Shocking, I know.
petercooper 11y ago
Reminds me of block popup features (not necessarily solely in Firefox). Is it really that hard to prevent ANY new tabs or popups being opened by a page?
RexRollman 11y ago
One nice thing about Firefox is that you can turn off the display of favicons via about:config. This is nice as I personally find them to be annoying and unneeded.
stuaxo 11y ago
> These animated favicons are a huge problem for laptops. I just reduced > Firefox's CPU usage from 21.6% to 2.8% by closing a single background tab > with an animated favicon. why does it use so much CPU ? Something is not optimised here, it should be a lot less.

135 points by vayun 11y ago

Yeah, yeah, everyone loves to hate on Firefox. Still, if you're gonna do some shaming, pick something serious, there are some serious things to pick form iirc.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
zxcvcxz 11y ago
Yeah like the fact that chrome is just generally shitty. It takes 30 seconds to open and then uses half my RAM, but nah, lets hate on FF. OSS is such an easy target too, seeing as most communication is done out in the open. When chrome developers make closed source tools for flash that's fine, "It's all about business and they're a private corporation who can do what they want" but whenever the FF devs make any decision about anything they get criticized, and most of the people doing the criticisms are chrome users and people who swear by chrome for web development, but they seem to be the same people who completely ignore other web browsers as if chrome is all that matters. Back in the day we had to target all major browsers, now there's a group of people who have a major hard-on for chrome and don't give a shit about any other ecosystem and for some reason they think they're "good" programmers.

zitterbewegung 11y ago

This is a sign that Firefox decision making is democratic and actually fair isn't it?

Xylakant 11y ago
It's more a sign that a lot of people have an opinion about it but none of those are sufficiently annoyed by the issue to actually fix the problem. There's way more work to go around than time available.

db48x 11y ago

Hmm. How many animated favicons have you noticed? I can't think of any...

eterm 11y ago
I thought this too, perhaps they're not popular because IE and Safari don't support them?
creshal 11y ago
I like using them on my intranet sites, precisely because they're disruptive eye catchers.
- mattmanser 11y ago
  And that's precisely why you shouldn't be using them. We developers are some of the worst people at understanding what's actually important and what's not to a user's workflow.
  - creshal 11y ago
    > And that's precisely why you shouldn't be using them. With a userbase of precisely one, I can do whatever I want. :-)
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      I assume you are that user-base... I upvoted and then had the horrible thought that you might be making your significant other wade through animated gifs before she can use your Intranet only coffee pot every morning.
    - SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago
      You should have MIDI music on an endless loop too, and that rotating globe GIF... Ooh, ooh, and a guestbook! ;)
mattmanser 11y ago

dhoe 11y ago

That bug only has 60 comments. Here's one with 600+ comments and 400+ people in CC. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=78414 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=78414

erikb 11y ago
I noticed that one too. I think with flash and co dying this won loses intent as well. Nowadays I have nearly zero websites where this is a problem.

dec0dedab0de 11y ago

I have an idea, if you don't like something a site does, stop using it.

bnegreve 11y ago
I really don't get that logic. To me what you're saying is equivalent to saying that we should never discuss anything. Something's wrong with the society? If you don't like it, you can just move to a different country. How can we possibly improve anything with that mindset? I know that I'm overreacting here, but I would genuenly like to here comments about that.
- avodonosov 11y ago
  Your analogy with not discussing anything is incorrect. IMHO the web sites trying to abuse their visitors by showing animated favicons should be banned from Internet. And of course I am not going to visit such a web site myself.
- mhurron 11y ago
  Not everything has to be dealt with the same way, and not everything exists as the same priority. Using or not using an annoying website doesn't come close to the effects that living in a society that touches every part of your life. I can stop going to a website or a store because of many reasons without impacting anyone around me and getting the same result of not being botherd by them. That is not an option regarding where I live. No I can not just move, it is not that simple. > I know that I'm overreacting here, but I would genuenly like to here comments about that. It would seem you likely already know the answer.
- WorldWideWayne 11y ago
  I think if people actually moved to a different country or state where they can find more like-minded people, things would be better all around. Different opinions doesn't mean that one group is right and one is wrong. I don't want to live in a cookie cutter society. I'd rather everybody have their own space to do what they want without harming others.
- 11y ago

kukx 11y ago

I wouldn't blame the Firefox team for not fixing it. It's not that they were doing nothing in the meantime. They actually have their hands full with more meaningful changes. When the web stops developing then they will probably have more time on doing this kind of fixes/changes.

avodonosov 11y ago

The ticket is open so long because a workaround exists: close this tab and never open this web site again.

thisjepisje 11y ago
Or rather, a userscript/plugin?
- avodonosov 11y ago
  what plugin?
  - ytdht 11y ago
    Greasemonkey extension with some script like https://gist.github.com/robbyrussell/46193 https://gist.github.com/robbyrussell/46193 (I didn't test it but it should work)
    - avodonosov 11y ago
      Ah, a script/plugin as a workaround? Maybe, but do the sites with animates favicons deserve so much attention? Do you know any useful web site with animated favicon?
      - bad_user 11y ago
        GMail has a cool extension in Labs that changes the favicon to display the number of unread messages. So that's a use-case.
        Vexs 11y ago
        Reddit enhancement suite has a similar setup.
        thijsb 11y ago
        And a useful one at that.

nothrabannosir 11y ago

I didn't read the entire bugreport; did anybody mention non-gif dynamic favicon changes? Like this: https://gist.githack.com/hraban/e669edce68fbb9cd004b/raw/5f87685874594d43666de49a0ca3e8123101d8c6/faviconchanger.html https://gist.githack.com/hraban/e669edce68fbb9cd004b/raw/5f8... (essentially: $('link[rel=icon]')[0].href='...';) Because that's kind of useful for a lot of sites. Then again, if you don't remove that, what's the use of banning gifs?

realusername 11y ago
That's interesting, the animation seems to be slower when I'm on another tab, maybe Firefox has some optimisations affecting this.
- TheCoreh 11y ago
  It has. IIRC the setTimeout and serInterval functions are throttled to 1000ms while the tab is unfocused.

cdnsteve 11y ago

It's a trap Low priority issues can sometimes linger around for a very long time taking away precious focus of developers and creating distractions from adding real-value-features.

brobinson 11y ago

For anyone who hasn't seen it, a favicon-based game: http://www.p01.org/releases/DEFENDER_of_the_favicon/ http://www.p01.org/releases/DEFENDER_of_the_favicon/

cmdrfred 11y ago
This is hilarious.

HappyTypist 11y ago

If a browser blocks animated favicons, I can see that blocking sites that dynamically update the favicon with a badge to show unread messages / new updates / etc.

TheLoneWolfling 11y ago
Simple. Have a threshold - under <x> updates per day is fine, anything more gets blocked. Maybe with a per-site white/black list.
pilsetnieks 11y ago
Am I missing something or are a lot of people confusing animated favicons (animated gif as favicon, as per the linked article) with dynamically setting the favicon?
- TheLoneWolfling 11y ago
  The problem is that there is no difference. Or rather: you can simulate animated gifs with dynamically setting the favicon. And as such blocking animated gifs wouldn't do anything beyond driving people to use JS to animate them instead. So, realistically, either block both, block dynamically setting it but allow animated gifs, or keep both. But blocking animated gifs but allowing people to dynamically set it won't do much of anything. Personally, I'm for blocking animated gifs (or rather, making it a config option), and throttling dynamically setting the favicon (like how FF already throttles background JS events). Unfortunately, given FF's push towards no options, I very much doubt it's going to happen.

ynak 11y ago

I also hope FireFox would prevent HTML5 YouTube videos form autoplaying and autoloading. They will implement a such feature in the next version, but it doesn't seem to work properly now (It's beta, I know). And it's not clear to stop autoloading, either. Does anyone have a good idea to block autoplay and load HTML5 videos? http://www.ghacks.net/2015/06/11/finally-mozilla-adds-working-html5-video-autoplay-blocking-to-firefox/ http://www.ghacks.net/2015/06/11/finally-mozilla-adds-workin...

kiiski 11y ago
I think it would be possible to configure noscript to allow scripts, but require a click to play media (I haven't actually tried it like that, since I just keep almost all scripts blocked anyway).
- tedks 11y ago
  NoScript has a configuration option allowing you to set HTML5 content as click to play.
  - vixsomnis 11y ago
    I can't find it. Is it not in the options GUI?
    - kiiski 11y ago
      Did you try the "Embeddings -> Forbid <AUDIO> / <VIDEO>".
NoGravitas 11y ago
But then how would we Rickroll people?

kw71 11y ago

I noticed recently that firefox no longer stops playing animated gifs when I press the <esc> key. This behavior change, which prevents me from stopping annoying animations, annoys me more than any favicon ever did.

iolothebard 11y ago
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/toggle-animated-gifs/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/toggle-animat... shift + esc
- kw71 11y ago
  Thank you for showing me a workaround for this regression!

donatj 11y ago

At my old job I made one for a client. Their logo would spin once a minute. I thought it was super neat. I guess it was kinda subtle compared to what's possible, it's still the only animated fav icon I've seen.

directionless 11y ago

My "favorite" ancient bug report, is https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=91337 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=91337 (and its duplicate https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=259109 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=259109) It's why I stopped using thunderbird, and mostly gave up on mozilla products. Here we are, about 14 years later.

aidenn0 11y ago
I have my double-click speed set so high, I don't imagine I would ever run into that one. However, I stopped using thunderbird a decade ago when it corrupted my mailbox when my homedir ran out of space. Twice. From two different bugs. I hear it's better these days, but I'm so tied to sylpheed-claws now that I don't have a reason to try it again.
JupiterMoon 11y ago
I can't reproduce.
- jamescostian 11y ago
  Same. I'm waiting for the perfect moment

conradfr 11y ago

This is amusing. There are bugs opened for 10 years that are infuriating though, like https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=307089 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=307089

bzbarsky 11y ago
There is no magic. Either the browser stores the source somewhere or the browser refuses to show source or the browser refetches the source from the server when asked to show it. Given that in the setting of that bug report the user has explicitly instructed the browser to not store anything anywhere, and that you don't like the third option (the current behavior), I assume your proposed solution is to put up some sort of error message instead of showing the source in this situation?
- conradfr 11y ago
  I suggest to do it like Chrome does, show me the source. Maybe it caches the original source, I don't know, but I can't imagine that's expensive (given all that Firefox caches on each tabs ...).
  - bzbarsky 11y ago
    Caching the original source can in fact be pretty expensive in a lot of cases. Which is why Firefox tries to put it on disk, not in memory. But, again, if the user then explicitly turns that off, then Firefox doesn't do it. The key part here is that this bug report is about a situation in which the user explicitly changes the browser's default settings to not store stuff. And then the browser ... doesn't store stuff. Shocking, I know.

petercooper 11y ago

Reminds me of block popup features (not necessarily solely in Firefox). Is it really that hard to prevent ANY new tabs or popups being opened by a page?

RexRollman 11y ago

One nice thing about Firefox is that you can turn off the display of favicons via about:config. This is nice as I personally find them to be annoying and unneeded.

stuaxo 11y ago

> These animated favicons are a huge problem for laptops. I just reduced > Firefox's CPU usage from 21.6% to 2.8% by closing a single background tab > with an animated favicon. why does it use so much CPU ? Something is not optimised here, it should be a lot less.