Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this

e4tmyl33t

Ars Staff / Feb 6, 2019 / Tech

With experimental “Never slow mode,” Chrome tries to stop Web devs making it slow

There's just one small downside: It breaks the Web.

Looks like Chrome's experimenting with a "break all the SPAs that rely on constantly-running Javascript" mode for Chrome.

I imagine that our lovely forums (and 's...litterbox) won't respond too well to this.

HardwareGeek

@e4tmyl33t
I like this comment:

Jim Z Ars Legatus Legioniset Subscriptor reply about 23 hours ago Reader Fav
Can they come up with an experimental "don't gobble up 3+ GB of memory after being open for more than a few hours" mode?

mott555

I think I could get behind this, if it gets rid of the crapton of barely-functional websites loaded with crappy front-end JavaScript that loads everything from NPM eight times over while failing to do basic website functions, and returns us to server-rendered pages with postbacks and very minimal client processing.

Or maybe it's just nostalgia. Idk.

TimeBandit

@mott555 said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

Or maybe it's just nostalgia

I don't think wanting to have webpages that work without using all your CPU and memory is something I would call nostalgia

dkf

@e4tmyl33t said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

Looks like Chrome's experimenting with a "break all the SPAs that rely on constantly-running Javascript" mode for Chrome.

I think I can get behind this move. Closing off document.write() will break lots of code… especially, the badly written advertising network code that is the cause of so much slowdown right now.

It'll probably break some stuff of mine. I don't care too much.

DogsB

@dkf said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

the badly written advertising network code that is the cause of so much slowdown right now

Not to mention that it's commonly malware ridden too.

kazitor

Of course, if it breaks any websites at all, no matter how little, the majority of users will never enable it. And that's assuming they even know about it and don't avoid it.

And when nobody enables it, nobody tries to develop in a way that works without it.

bjolling

@e4tmyl33t Looks more like a feature to assist developers in building fast and responsive websites. A team could use this mode during development and testing as a kind a validation that their site will be fast and light-weight.
For the time being, there is no reason for an end-user to enable this mode until most of the popular sites have adapted the approach and then Google can make it the de facto standard.

topspin

@kazitor said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

any websites at all, no matter how little, the majority of users will never enable it. And that's assuming they even know about it and don't avoid it.
And when nobody enables it, nobody tries to develop in a way that works

Google is the new MS in terms of browser monopoly. They will roll it out in a few versions from now, websites will have to adapt, and you will like it.

Atazhaia

So Google is one of the leaders in developing shitty JavaScript-based SPAs and then to their own browser adds functionality to break shitty JavaScript-based SPAs? Hmm...

anonymous234

The exact design and rationale of Never Slow Mode aren't public

Something about Embracing and Extending, probably...

izzion

@Atazhaia
The AdBlock Plus business model... "oh, we can whitelist your site, just follow these acceptable JavaScript guidelines and pay us $100/mo + 10% of your gross for us to verify that you're in compliance". And if it just so happens that Google's sites all wind up whitelisted from day 0, well, that's just a happy coincidence!

anonymous234

@Atazhaia said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

So Google is one of the leaders in developing shitty JavaScript-based SPAs and then to their own browser adds functionality to break shitty JavaScript-based SPAs? Hmm...

That's what bothers me too. Google has been the one pushing for all these 2MB javascript libraries that make the modern web slow, now they're pushing for "fast web" standards of their own like AMP or this... it definitely smells fishy.

Zerosquare

They're playing an interesting game... They probably think they can strongarm Web developers because so many people use Chrome. But it could also backfire and make Chrome known as "the browser that doesn't work right with plenty of sites".

"Alexa? Order popcorn."

mott555

@Zerosquare said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

They're playing an interesting game... They probably think they can strongarm Web developers because so many people use Chrome. But it could also backfire and make Chrome known as "the browser that doesn't work right with plenty of sites".

"Alexa? Order popcorn."

Microsoft is switching to Chromium and now Google is switching to IE6.

TimeBandit

@thegoryone said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

Any error output from PHP

The Real is having PHP output errors on a production server.

hungrier

@dkf said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

Closing off document.write() will break lots of code… especially, the badly written advertising network code that is the cause of so much slowdown right now.

Really? I thought document.write was a relic from the 90s that nobody used any more.

izzion

@TimeBandit
Do you know how much space alien shooting time you lose trying to navigate to and sift through server logs for PHP errors? Just output them all and let the hackers sort them out!

TimeBandit

@izzion said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

Do you know how much space alien shooting time you lose trying to navigate to and sift through server logs for PHP errors?

No, I don't

PleegWat

@thegoryone said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

Any error output from PHP is (obviously) pushed into the body tags of a webpage.

Fix your server configuration and make it go to the server logs.

DogsB

@PleegWat said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

@thegoryone said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

Any error output from PHP is (obviously) pushed into the body tags of a webpage.

Fix your server configuration and make it go to the server logs.

Too easy for hackers to find. Send them to the browser in base64 encoding and print them on the console there.

kt_

@anonymous234 said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

@Atazhaia said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

So Google is one of the leaders in developing shitty JavaScript-based SPAs and then to their own browser adds functionality to break shitty JavaScript-based SPAs? Hmm...

That's what bothers me too. Google has been the one pushing for all these 2MB javascript libraries that make the modern web slow, now they're pushing for "fast web" standards of their own like AMP or this... it definitely smells fishy.

What did you say? 2MB?

This is how much a Jira task view page weighs:

Seriously.

I know, there are also images there and shit, but hey, seriously? 40 MB?

topspin

@Atazhaia said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

So Google is one of the leaders in developing shitty JavaScript-based SPAs and then to their own browser adds functionality to break shitty JavaScript-based SPAs? Hmm...

My ass-pulled assumption is too many people notice the web is becoming unusably sluggish and ad-blockers partly fix this. Google doesn’t want you to block ads (or better for their monopoly: block ads if and only if they’re not from Google), so they fight the sluggishness to prevent too many people becoming aware of ad-block.

Or some EEE long game, who knows.

Lorne Kates

Back to Community Server it is.

TimeBandit

@Lorne-Kates said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

Back to Community Server it is.

The Nope thread is

loopback0

@Lorne-Kates said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

Back to Community Server it is.

We must be due an other migration soon.

TimeBandit

@loopback0 said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

We must be due an other migration soon.

The next one will be to GitHub.

Threads will be repos
To comment you'll have to git pull, add your comment then git push
Your commit comment will have to be useless, of course.

Conflicts? Just git push --force

Threads derailment will be forked.

I'm sure it will work fine

boomzilla

@Lorne-Kates said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

Back to Community Server it is.

FUCKING HELL WHY DOES IT DELETE TWO POSTS

boomzilla

@TimeBandit said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

@loopback0 said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

We must be due an other migration soon.

The next one will be to GitHub.

Threads will be repos
To comment you'll have to git pull, add your comment then git push
Your commit comment will have to be useless, of course.

Conflicts? Just git push --force

Threads derailment will be forked.

I'm sure it will work fine

To be fair, it sounds better than the proposals to use Discourse as version control.

mott555

@TimeBandit How about a collection of static HTML files kept in git? You want to post, you just checkout that thread's .html file, append a div with your content, and commit/push/rebasify or whatever it is that git calls it.

sloosecannon

@mott555 said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

@TimeBandit How about a collection of static HTML files kept in git? You want to post, you just checkout that thread's .html file, append a div with your content, and commit/push/rebasify or whatever it is that git calls it.

XSS: It's by design!

TimeBandit

@mott555 said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

How about a collection of static HTML files

Are you crazy?
That would make accessing the forum NOT take enough resources on your machine

dcon

@TimeBandit said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

@mott555 said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

How about a collection of static HTML files

Are you crazy?
That would make accessing the forum NOT take enough resources on your machine

How can you believe that??? You've seen peoples coworker's code around here!

boomzilla

@TimeBandit said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

@mott555 said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

How about a collection of static HTML files

Are you crazy?
That would make accessing the forum NOT take enough resources on your machine

But it's using git so it's actually all the static html files ever:

Also, topics are paged and there are commit hooks to make you you don't violate paging on any page every time you commit.

dcon

@boomzilla Please debug your scripts before setting up that auto submitter...

anonymous234

@boomzilla I still maintain that the best combination of usable and WTF is using MediaWiki + a bot to handle the paging and ensure you only append and don't edit.

boomzilla

@anonymous234 the race conditions would make for fun times in busy threads.

Luhmann

@boomzilla
Get back the likes thread!

kazitor

@anonymous234 said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

the best combination of usable and WTF is using MediaWiki

This is correct.

dkf

@hungrier said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

I thought document.write was a relic from the 90s that nobody used any more.

Nobody… except those fancy frameworks you've got layered on top of it.

JBert

@Lorne-Kates said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

Back to Community Server it is.

This new Chrome mode only allows limited data to be downloaded. I'm sure Community Server's tag cloud is going to trip it on the first try.

Filed under: GOD DAMN IT WHY DOES IT DELETE TWO CHARACTERS WHEN I PRESSED IT ONCE, We need a new tag cloud to attack

pie_flavor

@mott555 Dang, a time when I can't suggest Discourse. How about that Discourse-but-in-PHP thing, does that use document.write?

JBert

@pie_flavor The Flarum website states that it uses a lightweight JS library and that it has infinite scrolling, so it would likely fail too.

No, the real contender might be AsmBB, though the realtime chat might break.

acrow

PLEASE DISABLE "Never slow Mode" TO VIEW THIS WEBPAGE
...is what gets added to every page now sporting Please enable Javascript to view this page.

Well, it's just another indicator for pages that I wouldn't want to visit anyway. ...Say, is there an add-on that marks links leading to that kind of pages, so I don't waste time clicking there in the first place?

anonymous234

@acrow Some websites will go to great lengths to provide a horrible user experience. It's bizarre.

kazitor

@acrow said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

PLEASE DISABLE "Never slow Mode" TO VIEW THIS WEBPAGE
...is what gets added to every page now sporting Please enable Javascript to view this page.

And you know how they'll ensure the message is displayed? document.writeing the entire actual content.

PleegWat

Is this new crusade only against document.write(), or also against things like assigning to innerHTML? I believe the former does not work on web pages that are already fully loaded, so any SPA will instead be creating and injecting new DOM nodes.

acrow

@kazitor I know, right? So it should be extra easy to write that detector add-on.

hungrier

@dkf said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

@hungrier said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

I thought document.write was a relic from the 90s that nobody used any more.

Nobody… except those fancy frameworks you've got layered on top of it.

I thought they would all use createElement and appendChild and alert('500 OK') like you're supposed to

TwelveBaud

@boomzilla said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

FUCKING HELL WHY DOES IT DELETE TWO POSTS

I'll write the hotpatch that makes it so that when the logout page is loaded as an image (based on Accept headers) it still logs you out but returns the trollface emoji instead of HTML.

@JBert said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

@pie_flavor The Flarum website states that it uses a lightweight JS library and that it has infinite scrolling, so it would likely fail too.

It did. Also, they outright told us we wouldn't be a good fit at their stage of development.

@PleegWat said in Betting NodeBB and Discourse ain't gonna have fun with this:

I believe the former does not work on web pages that are already fully loaded, so any SPA will instead be creating and injecting new DOM nodes.

After the document has been loaded, calling document.write implicitly calls document.open, which clears the entire contents of the DOM. But it doesn't clear the JS context, so scripts that are already loaded are fine. The real area of difficulty is that both Gecko and Blink speculatively parse HTML even while scripts are still running, so unbalanced writes are evil. Balanced writes are fine for Firefox, but apparently not for Chrome Neverslow.