[HN Gopher] Don't allow animated favicons (2001)
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Don't allow animated favicons (2001)
Author : graderjs
Score : 102 points
Date : 2022-02-04 13:04 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bugzilla.mozilla.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (bugzilla.mozilla.org)
| jansan wrote:
| This thread is incomplete without a link to Defender of the
| Favicon (Defender-linke game in the favicon)
|
| http://www.p01.org/defender_of_the_favicon/
| rzzzt wrote:
| DOOM favicon can not be left out either:
| https://vidferris.github.io/FaviconDoom/favicondoom.html
| zzo38computer wrote:
| I just disable the favicon entirely. (But I agree that if it is
| enabled, it should probably not be animated. I personally still
| would not use it, though.)
| tomxor wrote:
| Only two extremes are proposed, static or fully animated...
|
| There is a middle ground: changeable at a low frequency e.g once
| per 20 secs, allowing useful features such as indicators, counts,
| status changes etc while neutering distracting animations.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I'm sure there are plenty of bugs like this in other browser but
| yeesh...
|
| Unfixed for 20 years because it was an implementation bug no one
| in authority was willing to fix. No other browser even supports
| it!
|
| Ugh.
| yoz-y wrote:
| Feature requests like this is precisely the place when saying
| "it's open source, just do it yourself" is a valid remark.
| Kuinox wrote:
| It took me more than half a day to get the repo cloned & make
| it compile. I won't attempt to contribute to firefox again.
| senkora wrote:
| Fun fact: Firefox was the first program I ever compiled.
| I'd just finished an online Python class and wanted to get
| involved in this open-source thing. Mozilla had some Python
| tasks but they still required a dev build of the browser. I
| was on Windows at the time.
|
| It took me three days to figure out, and thinking about
| cygwin still makes me shudder.
|
| Then I saw that the Linux instructions were just a one-line
| apt command for dependencies and then the build command. It
| looked magical.
|
| This is what convinced me to move to Linux and exposed me
| to so much cool software and ideas. I never did end up
| contributing to Mozilla.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| And then you do it yourself and your patch is never accepted
| because it disagrees with the other developers.
|
| So you try to make an extension which implements the behavior
| you'd like, and it works pretty well for a couple years. But
| then they decide to completely remove their extension API,
| and instead give you one that doesn't even offer 0.1% of the
| hooks that the old extension API offered.
|
| So at the end of the day you're forced to maintain your own
| private fork. Fortunately, the other developers attention is
| focused on other areas of the codebase these days (hopefully
| ones that are irrelevant to you), so you don't have to do a
| lot of conflict resolution.
|
| Eventually, you switch to a source-based distribution where
| you can pile patches upon patches on each of the packages you
| use, and they are auto-reapplied every time you upgrade the
| package.
|
| Such is the life of the "open-source software user with an
| itch" these days. It's still better than the alternative...
| at least on paper.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Don't you first need some kind of consensus where whoever is
| responsible says "Yes, we will accept this"?
|
| I mean these 20-year bugs are a smell where there is
| indecision, I don't think it's a matter of nobody wanting to
| go into the code. Decide if it has to be fixed or changed, or
| explain why you won't, and close the issue.
|
| (on that note, I don't like the "this issue is stale ->
| closed" on GH either, unless the maintainer(s) replied or
| asked for additional information and the OP abandoned the
| issue)
| thesuitonym wrote:
| If your change is good, you can create consent by making
| the patch available. People will install it and eventually
| Mozilla will implement it.
|
| In this case though, I doubt you'd get much traction
| because nobody really cares.
| dathinab wrote:
| Is that even a bug? It's more like a unwanted feature hardly
| anyone uses and as such hardly anyone ends up caring about in
| either direction.
|
| On the other hand changing the icon through JS is something
| people do care about (unread notification indicator) for
| example.
|
| I seen one or two cases from "still icon" -js-> "animated icon"
| -js-> "still icon2" which where ok (or did they just do a lot
| of js refresh??).
|
| I can't remember any side abusing changing or animated icons,
| tbh.
|
| So if I would manage Firefox I probably wouldn't fix it either
| because it's not worth the time investment needed, while on a
| project the size of a browser there are basically always
| relevant issues to fix. (Exception maybe if I have to touch the
| code in question anyway and remember the issue.)
|
| And the age in the end doesn't matter if there are always
| docents of way more relevant bugs, they always will get
| priority. It only would matter if I care about irrelevant
| stats.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| There are plenty old bugs yes but does this one really count as
| a bug? It categories as "enhancement" and I personally agree
| it's more like a feature request.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| kixiQu wrote:
| This is the kind of thing where everyone thinks the right
| behavior is really obvious, but those expectations conflict,
| being drawn from the assumption that one's own preferences and
| habits are normal, and techie narcissism inflates the importance
| of the whole thing to nutty size...
| djbusby wrote:
| Typical Mind Fallacy
|
| https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/typical-mind-fallacy
| burnte wrote:
| Fun fact, I created the first every animated favicon on the web
| for MozillaNews.org. Literally the night the patch landed in
| nightlies for supporting any format image for favicons, I created
| an animated one for MozNews and pushed it live.
|
| A copy of it from the Web Archive:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20040921022312im_/http://mozilla...
|
| (Yes, that date is late in the site's life, because I just wanted
| to grab the image.)
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > I created the first every animated favicon on the web
|
| Did you mean "very first animated favicon" or "first ever
| animated favicon"? Either way, very cool :)
| juancampa wrote:
| How is that a bug if pages can still change, and thus animate,
| the favicon via JS?
| yoz-y wrote:
| As alluded in the comments on that bug, people sometimes
| actually use animated gifs but almost nobody does the animation
| via CSS. That said I can't even remember the last time I saw an
| animated favicon.
| 6510 wrote:
| I made this for a catering service
|
| http://img.go-here.nl/favicon.gif
| jdkjs wrote:
| Hilarious and cute at the same time.
| Wojakmeme wrote:
| wonderful
| dredmorbius wrote:
| JS modifying favicon would be a bug.
|
| AFAIU Faviocon was meant to differentiate browser bookmarks and
| tabs to make it easier to tell which is what.
|
| _In March 1999, Microsoft released Internet Explorer 5, which
| supported favicons for the first time.[4] Originally, the
| favicon was a file called favicon.ico placed in the root
| directory of a website. It was used in Internet Explorer 's
| favorites (bookmarks) and next to the URL in the address bar if
| the page was bookmarked._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favicon#History
|
| The fundamental problem is that tabs are already a misfeature
| of sorts.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/256lxu/tabbed_...
| otras wrote:
| Depending on the browser's favicon parsing, you can do some
| odd things with it by adding a new <icon> element. I was
| looking at this the other day and was able to get a basic
| example of blinking it together (the "What about the
| favicon?" section from
| https://alexanderell.is/posts/attention-javascript/).
| samwillis wrote:
| Safari unfortunately goes too far the other way, it very
| aggressively caches the favicon so it can't be easily updated for
| things like unread counts.
|
| Gmail has a useful feature you can turn where it shows you unread
| email count in the favicon, great for pined tabs. It's completely
| useless in Safari, just gets stuck for days at a time.
|
| https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/339350/safari-12-f...
| capitainenemo wrote:
| That could be a tracking protection feature in Safari?
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26051370
|
| The part where the author files a bug to get caching "fixed" in
| Firefox is also interesting.
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1618257
|
| Edit... Sorry. Actually, I forgot how the abuse worked, it
| relies on persistent caching. So Firefox _doesn 't_ cache,
| preventing bookmark tracking. Safari aggressively caches, so
| would. Any amount of caching would be a problem.
|
| Hm... unless Safari never checks for updates to the Favicon at
| all. That _would_ defeat the exploit as well. So very
| aggressive caching with no check for updates, also good? Ok. I
| stand by my original guess :)
| soperj wrote:
| Classic "that's not a bug that's a feature"
| samwillis wrote:
| If it's to prevent tracking I'm all for it, but I would love
| them to then provide an API to enable favicon overlays for
| badges/notifications (in a tracking abuse free way).
|
| Maybe, just maybe, with the news they are finally
| implementing Web Push Notifications and the suggestion it's
| the first step towards supporting PWAs, they might create a
| icon badge api for both the favicon but also PWA icons.
| SilasX wrote:
| >That could be a tracking protection feature in Safari?
|
| Heh, that feels like the Web in a nutshell:
|
| Devs: "Hey, wouldn't it be convenient if we cached--"
|
| Advertisers: "Aha! Another means to track people!"
| TrueGeek wrote:
| omg, thank you. I've always wondered why my work email count
| was wonky.
| shazron wrote:
| Quoting Apple engineer Brady Eidson: "We (Apple) intentionally
| _do not_ want the ability to script favicons. "
|
| source 1: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=95979 source
| 2: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=75877#c1
| londons_explore wrote:
| This is part of apples model that the web is for static
| reference material, and anything more complex should be an
| app in the apple ecosystem.
|
| Apple goes to great lengths to make sure webapps can't be too
| useful for the user.
| baxuz wrote:
| Yep. And I love how they add in broken behaviour for things
| like still not being able to properly scroll elements which
| have `position: fixed`. Or trying to make the page have a
| static fixed height while scrolling.
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| nefitty wrote:
| Sound is weird on iOS web. Also, they basically
| unilaterally decided to say "nah, we're good" to web
| Bluetooth. I think that could have opened up a lot of
| awesome stuff. As it stands, getting that to work is
| possible but the steps to get there are multiplied ten-
| fold.
| gbear605 wrote:
| Thank god that Apple never implemented web Bluetooth. One
| more thing that I don't have to worry about my web
| browser mucking with. Please keep the browser out of my
| peripherals.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Seriously. Why does _everything_ have to be a web API.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Because distributing apps to iOS isn't commercially
| viable?
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| I could see Bluetooth support maybe making sense for PWAs
| the user has explicitly chosen to add to their Home
| Screen, but I really don't want to see random sites I'm
| visiting prompt for access.
| onion2k wrote:
| I find it weirdly interesting when people argue that a
| browser shouldn't have a feature, rather than the feature
| should be behind a defaults-to-off permission. You're not
| just saying that you don't want it, you're arguing that
| _no one_ should want it. You 're saying that you don't
| believe there is any possible reason for the feature to
| exist, that you will never want it, and that anyone who
| says they'd like it is wrong.
|
| I suppose that's fine. It's your perogative. I just hope
| you respect the opinion of other people when they say
| things you want shouldn't exist.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I totally agree with that, but couldn't the favicons still
| support the same browser caching mechanisms as the HTML
| document? If I can refresh the page and get a new HTML
| response, surely I should at the same time get a new favicon
| if a new one exists.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| Most people probably wouldn't want to refresh an SPA like
| Gmail every time the favicon isn't showing the correct
| unread count. But for infrequent rebranding, I agree with
| you.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Yes, I'm not trying to address the feature of having
| animated favicons or favicons set dynamically using JS.
| I'm just trying to address the problem of favicons
| apparently being _very_ stale. My question is why Apple
| couldn 't fix that problem, which is not at odds with
| Apple's stance against animated or dynamic favicons.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| That would allow websites to override Apple's objection,
| and therefore they can't allow it, even if it will cause
| occasional problems for websites that think they can do a
| total branding pivot including favicon overnight.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Why is that related to Apple's object to animated
| favicons or favicons that are set dynamically by
| JavaScript?
| oauea wrote:
| Another case of apple ignoring standards in favor of their
| own preferences.
| laumars wrote:
| It is but I don't see that as a bad thing on this occasion
| because diversity in rendering engines, even if some are
| opinionated, is better than a Blink monoculture (or Trident
| before it)
| realusername wrote:
| I would not mind if it was possible to switch but a lot
| of people are stuck with safari mobile.
| laumars wrote:
| That's a different issue though. But I agree that's a
| problem.
| Spivak wrote:
| User agents are explicitly allowed to have their own
| preferences, that's the whole point of having multiple
| browsers in the first place. If you want every browser to
| be identical then why even have more than one? Browsers
| don't even have to have display favicons if they don't want
| to.
| samwillis wrote:
| Thank you, I went looking for the bug report but couldn't
| find it.
|
| 2012 is a long time ago in the time of the web, hopefully
| opinions have changed. I think back then Safari didn't have
| the ability to show favicons in the bookmark toolbar where
| this is useful, it does now.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I absolutely agree. Animated favicons would be extremely
| jarring. It's purpose is to identify the site. It does that
| job perfectly.
|
| The web is already a fricking Casino.
| secabeen wrote:
| I find them useful in some cases. I play board games
| online, and both sites I use will update the favicon
| (either with a new color or an animated shape) to tell me
| that it's my turn.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| Sounds like that use case really wants something like
| silent push notifications (no sound, no toast, but it's
| there waiting when you decide to pull down and look for
| updates from all apps in one place). Yes, I said push and
| pull to describe a sort of hybrid model. Android offers
| this, but I'm not sure if desktop OSes do.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I think people would prefer notifications here, but
| Safari doesn't support _that_ either.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Desktop Safari supports notifications, it's only mobile
| Safari that lacks them.
| nvader wrote:
| 'The Web is a Casino' sounds like an amazing title for a
| polemic.
| tjoff wrote:
| Or just use a native application instead of butchering the web
| to do a poor job of it.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| Isn't caching a different issue than playing the animation? The
| Mozilla issue was (initially) focused on stopping ongoing
| distracting animations.
| jobigoud wrote:
| There is something fascinating to me about casual discussions
| that span 20 years or more. One day someone will bump a thread on
| a forum and answer a question that was asked before they were
| born.
| jakub_g wrote:
| IIRC There was some decade-plus Mozilla bug over here on HN a
| few months ago where the newest comment was like "So the OP was
| my dad, and he's now dead. Anyway, here is some additional
| info"
| culi wrote:
| Incredible. 2 months ago I got an email notification for a
| Mozilla bug that I subscribed to years ago. It was based on a
| difference between Chrome and Firefox for one of the first
| web projects I ever worked on. Now I'm thinking of revisiting
| that project
| perihelions wrote:
| That would be a fanciful alternate-reality of the WWW: where
| the forums span millenia and you're writing in comments
| answering other comments whose root commenter died centuries
| ago (if out of curiosity you should scroll up to the very
| beginning...)
| u801e wrote:
| A similar thing happens on usenet with people replying to old
| posts via Google Groups. Though it is interesting to read
| through a discussion thread I've posted in nearly 25 years
| later.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| Animated favicons remind me of _< marquee>_ (and the later even
| more annoying _< marquee behavior="alternate">_).
| caboteria wrote:
| I like that Mozilla doesn't have one of those auto-close bots
| that are so popular these days on Github.
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