Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by muxator 788 days ago
> if the user installs an extension that breaks the web

It does not break the web. It may break single sites that were written on naive assumptions; I see a lot of sites break because my extensions do not allow loading analytics libraries. This means their js was dependent on this libraries being actually active.

I'd say this is case a case of _unbreaking_ the web.

2 comments

>It may break single sites that were written on naive assumptions; Google Translate and many other libraries break React based sites if they are using refs.

I don't think that point it falls under "written on naive assumptions"

https://github.com/facebook/react/issues/11538

the issue says closed but you can easily catch it in various sites and use cases.

Still user decides to use crappy extension to break websites.

Some users send me email that they cannot see images on my website. They have adblocker rule where they block all images which contain ad.

So dsa231dfsaade.jpg is blocked. And you say that is website developers fault?

Of course you can decide to not serve those visitors. But if you want to capture as much as possible of your target audience you might want to consider which users can’t see your website - and the OP raises a number of non-obvious ways where JS adoption might affect that.
Sorry, but your comments text contained “target” it is blocked keyword and adblocker removed it.

Can you reword your comment?

Your example is a bit extreme, and it sounds like you are talking about you are talking about your own website which, with all due respect, I doubt anyone else is remotely invested in the success of, so you as a developer have an unusual degree of freedom to be this dismissive.

In the real world, anyone who is as dismissive as you is likely in a position where they’re going to have a boss telling them to pull their head in. The reality is the vast vast majority of users won’t know have a clue how ‘disrespectful’ the browser extension they’ve installed is of ‘the wishes of the developer’ or whatever, and a poor customer experience is a poor customer experience, no matter whose “fault” it is.

It is reality of bad extensions(user skill issue) which break websites.
If the site doesn't work with adblock, I just close the tab instead of using whatever skill it might take to hit disable