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by scastiel 1097 days ago
Wow that’s impressive… and dangerous I guess? I can’t see how this won’t become an antipattern, especially to display ads on websites…
5 comments

It’s already in use at washingtonpost.com. About 4-6 months ago (IIRC) they had some superbright inline ads that made me doubt my eyes - I couldn’t understand how they were so vivid. Now I know how they did that.
This comment makes me wonder why ad companies haven't already used this to show ads. They are notorious for using any technology to grab users' attentions.
I sincerely believe we are witnessing the birth of bright ads, and some eventual “block third party HDR” browser option.
The "brightness war" hence begins, not unlike the "loudness war" pushing the dynamic range of an other medium.
It is already an antipattern, it hurt my eye as it was too bright.

Once again webdevs creating another UX nightmare.

it's useful for QR codes though so they can actually be scanned somewhat reliably from a phone screen
This HDR QR code currently (AFAIK) only works on Apple platforms, where a user already has an option to long-press a QR code in place. Maybe going forward we should spread easy in place interactions instead of spreading a different feature (HDR) and then abusing it?
Lots of apps already do that when you open a QR code. What I don't need is the browser to break expectations and make random images super bright...
Seems like a solution in search of a problem
It works by embedding a video element with a one-frame mp4 file. That would technically turn the ad into a "video ad". I can imagine that video ads already have tighter restrictions in ad networks today. At least I'd hope so...
HDR content still explodes my M1 MacBook. The cursor jumps into the corner of the screen, triggering expose, so I have to move out of the corner and back into it to undo the explosion. Now the HDR video is as bright as the sun while everything else looks washed out. So I close the HDR content and have expose trigger again. I don't know who's fault this is, but I despise HDR content because of that.
Then there's something wrong with your MacBook and maybe you should spend some time troubleshooting..?