Items we can safely block (user feedback & suggestions)

[GitCurious]

I haven`t actually blocked anything yet as I am not sure where to start (just testing) Please report your experience of blocking items...

Which items have you blocked ? Was it blocked globally ? Did it break anything ? ... ?

Maybe we can figure out which items should be left alone and which are quite safe (to block annoyances or tracking etc)

[gbaptista]

@GitCurious Great initiative, this can help a lot!

I believe that getting some personal challenges can be very helpful in figuring out what we can block.

Example: Choose some event and block it for all sites in default rules. We could try:

• 1 day without mousemove?
• 1 day without scroll?
• 1 week without dragstart?

Some events I recommend for someone to start:

• copy (why do you want to see what I'm copying?)
• paste
• beforeunload (I'm leaving, stop tormenting me!)
• dragstart (many websites start this but we never actually drag anything, waste of resources)
• mouse[anything]
• scroll
• wheel
• key[anything]

I will try to spend a week without some of them to report my experience.

[GitCurious]

Thanks, I will test those suggestions immediately.

Question:

As an example, I do not see "Copy" or "Wheel" on the default page - how can I know in which section I should add them to ?

WebAPIs, handleEvent or addEventListener ?

[gbaptista]

@GitCurious Short answer: handleEvent (it's easier to unblock and test without reloading the page when you suspect something is broken).

List of common events (see Most Common Categories): https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Events.

Warning: currently the settings are case sensitive, so "mousemove" is different from "Mousemove".

I also recommend you adjust the settings of "badge counter" to see in the counter the blocked executions.

I'm going to write a guide explaining the differences between WebAPIs, handleEvent, and addEventListener.

[GitCurious]

General Information:

mouseup, mousedown & mouseover break 'jwplayer' (embedded media player)

[gbaptista]

@GitCurious:

I'm going to write a guide explaining the differences between WebAPIs, handleEvent, and addEventListener.

Done: What is detected?

[GitCurious]

A stupid question:

Should we always block an item in both sections ?

Example: Must we block 'blur' in handleEvent AND in the addEventListener section also ?

[gbaptista]

@GitCurious No, just in one of them.

If you block at the handleEvent, you can still see all attempts to detect the event. (you can also unblock without reloading the page).

If you block at the addEventListener you will not see any attempts to detect the event, since it will not be allowed to register. This can help improve navigation performance since blocked events are not triggered. (in this case, you need to reload the page if you decide to unblock something).

Either one is enough to block an event. You can block both, but it is not necessary.

[GitCurious]

Thanks...that explains a lot

"This can help improve navigation performance..."

This is a side effect of blocking that I was hoping was true depending on how the blocking was done - enhancing privacy AND performance.

[jawz101]

If you block at the handleEvent, you can still see all attempts to detect the event. (you can also unblock without reloading the page).

If you block at the addEventListener you will not see any attempts to detect the event, since it will not be allowed to register. This can help improve navigation performance since blocked events are not triggered. (in this case, you need to reload the page if you decide to unblock something).

Either one is enough to block an event. You can block both, but it is not necessary.

Can you put this explanation in the wiki somewhere?

[jawz101]

... or perhaps in the ui of the app settings screen directly? Seems important

[jawz101]

training data set source Top 500 http://www.alexa.com/topsites Top 1000000 http://s3.amazonaws.com/alexa-static/top-1m.csv.zip Others http://aws.amazon.com/alexa-top-sites/

https://support.alexa.com/hc/en-us/sections/200063274-Top-Sites

[Atavic]

@jawz101 the list is trimmed down unless you pay. Looking at wikipedia List_of_most_popular_websites gives a little longer list.

Here is a free top 500 list.

[gbaptista]

@GitCurious @jawz101 @Atavic I believe this is strongly related to this issue:

• [WIP] Take a Note Experiment #92

Feel free to comment and help evolve the idea!