
Firefox Bug 111373 - don't allow animated site icons - vayun
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=111373
======
brobinson
For anyone who hasn't seen it, a favicon-based game:

[http://www.p01.org/releases/DEFENDER_of_the_favicon/](http://www.p01.org/releases/DEFENDER_of_the_favicon/)

~~~
cmdrfred
This is hilarious.

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avodonosov
The ticket is open so long because a workaround exists: close this tab and
never open this web site again.

~~~
thisjepisje
Or rather, a userscript/plugin?

~~~
avodonosov
what plugin?

~~~
ytdht
Greasemonkey extension with some script like
[https://gist.github.com/robbyrussell/46193](https://gist.github.com/robbyrussell/46193)
(I didn't test it but it should work)

~~~
avodonosov
Ah, a script/plugin as a workaround? Maybe, but do the sites with animates
favicons deserve so much attention? Do you know any useful web site with
animated favicon?

~~~
bad_user
GMail has a cool extension in Labs that changes the favicon to display the
number of unread messages. So that's a use-case.

~~~
avodonosov
That's useful, My webmail (yandex) has this feature too.

I think such notifications is not what this ticket is about. Not just because
technically in this use case favicon is replaced, not animated.

The ticket IMHO is about favicons which constantly move.

In any case, if I don't like a web site (its favicon, or the content) I don't
use it; I personally don't see the anymated favicons as a serious problem and
wouldn't spend any hour of my time working on it. Moreover we don't have right
to demand it from FireFox team.

Although I understand the author of this post, I sometimes feel annoyed by
certain features or problems in software too. Give it some time, and you will
forget about it :)

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ynak
I also hope FireFox would prevent HTML5 YouTube videos form autoplaying and
autoloading. They will implement a such feature in the next version, but it
doesn't seem to work properly now (It's beta, I know). And it's not clear to
stop autoloading, either. Does anyone have a good idea to block autoplay and
load HTML5 videos?

[http://www.ghacks.net/2015/06/11/finally-mozilla-adds-
workin...](http://www.ghacks.net/2015/06/11/finally-mozilla-adds-working-
html5-video-autoplay-blocking-to-firefox/)

~~~
kiiski
I think it would be possible to configure noscript to allow scripts, but
require a click to play media (I haven't actually tried it like that, since I
just keep almost all scripts blocked anyway).

~~~
tedks
NoScript has a configuration option allowing you to set HTML5 content as click
to play.

~~~
vixsomnis
I can't find it. Is it not in the options GUI?

~~~
kiiski
Did you try the "Embeddings -> Forbid <AUDIO> / <VIDEO>".

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dhoe
That bug only has 60 comments. Here's one with 600+ comments and 400+ people
in CC.
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=78414](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=78414)

~~~
erikb
I noticed that one too. I think with flash and co dying this won loses intent
as well. Nowadays I have nearly zero websites where this is a problem.

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cdnsteve
_It 's a trap_

Low priority issues can sometimes linger around for a _very long time_ taking
away precious focus of developers and creating distractions from adding real-
value-features.

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db48x
Hmm. How many animated favicons have you noticed? I can't think of any...

~~~
incompatible
I've seen zero animated favicons. I'm wondering if it's a "feature" that
doesn't work on Linux. The URL bar doesn't even display favicons anymore,
although they show up without animation in bookmarks.

~~~
incompatible
[http://www.p01.org/releases/DEFENDER_of_the_favicon](http://www.p01.org/releases/DEFENDER_of_the_favicon)
that somebody linked to shows that the animation does indeed work in the Linux
version of Firefox. Weird that I've never seen one before, but now that I've
seen it, I don't want to see another.

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zitterbewegung
This is a sign that Firefox decision making is democratic and actually fair
isn't it?

~~~
Xylakant
It's more a sign that a lot of people have an opinion about it but none of
those are sufficiently annoyed by the issue to actually fix the problem.
There's way more work to go around than time available.

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nothrabannosir
I didn't read the entire bugreport; did anybody mention non-gif dynamic
favicon changes? Like this:

[https://gist.githack.com/hraban/e669edce68fbb9cd004b/raw/5f8...](https://gist.githack.com/hraban/e669edce68fbb9cd004b/raw/5f87685874594d43666de49a0ca3e8123101d8c6/faviconchanger.html)

(essentially: $('link[rel=icon]')[0].href='...';)

Because that's kind of useful for a lot of sites. Then again, if you don't
remove that, what's the use of banning gifs?

~~~
realusername
That's interesting, the animation seems to be slower when I'm on another tab,
maybe Firefox has some optimisations affecting this.

~~~
TheCoreh
It has. IIRC the setTimeout and serInterval functions are throttled to 1000ms
while the tab is unfocused.

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kukx
I wouldn't blame the Firefox team for not fixing it. It's not that they were
doing nothing in the meantime. They actually have their hands full with more
meaningful changes. When the web stops developing then they will probably have
more time on doing this kind of fixes/changes.

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kw71
I noticed recently that firefox no longer stops playing animated gifs when I
press the <esc> key. This behavior change, which prevents me from stopping
annoying animations, annoys me more than any favicon ever did.

~~~
iolothebard
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/toggle-
animat...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/toggle-animated-
gifs/)

shift + esc

~~~
kw71
Thank you for showing me a workaround for this regression!

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stuaxo
> These animated favicons are a huge problem for laptops. I just reduced

> Firefox's CPU usage from 21.6% to 2.8% by closing a single background tab

> with an animated favicon.

 _why_ does it use so much CPU ? Something is not optimised here, it should be
a lot less.

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directionless
My "favorite" ancient bug report, is
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=91337](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=91337)
(and its duplicate
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=259109](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=259109))

It's why I stopped using thunderbird, and mostly gave up on mozilla products.
Here we are, about 14 years later.

~~~
JupiterMoon
I can't reproduce.

~~~
jamescostian
Same. I'm waiting for the perfect moment

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conradfr
This is amusing.

There are bugs opened for 10 years that are infuriating though, like
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=307089](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=307089)

~~~
bzbarsky
There is no magic. Either the browser stores the source somewhere or the
browser refuses to show source or the browser refetches the source from the
server when asked to show it.

Given that in the setting of that bug report the user has explicitly
instructed the browser to not store anything anywhere, and that you don't like
the third option (the current behavior), I assume your proposed solution is to
put up some sort of error message instead of showing the source in this
situation?

~~~
conradfr
I suggest to do it like Chrome does, show me the source. Maybe it caches the
original source, I don't know, but I can't imagine that's expensive (given all
that Firefox caches on each tabs ...).

~~~
bzbarsky
Caching the original source can in fact be pretty expensive in a lot of cases.
Which is why Firefox tries to put it on disk, not in memory. But, again, if
the user then explicitly turns that off, then Firefox doesn't do it.

The key part here is that this bug report is about a situation in which the
user explicitly changes the browser's default settings to not store stuff. And
then the browser ... doesn't store stuff. Shocking, I know.

------
donatj
At my old job I made one for a client. Their logo would spin once a minute. I
thought it was super neat. I guess it was kinda subtle compared to what's
possible, it's still the only animated fav icon I've seen.

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HappyTypist
If a browser blocks animated favicons, I can see that blocking sites that
dynamically update the favicon with a badge to show unread messages / new
updates / etc.

~~~
pilsetnieks
Am I missing something or are a lot of people confusing animated favicons
(animated gif as favicon, as per the linked article) with dynamically setting
the favicon?

~~~
TheLoneWolfling
The problem is that there is no difference.

Or rather: you can simulate animated gifs with dynamically setting the
favicon. And as such blocking animated gifs wouldn't do anything beyond
driving people to use JS to animate them instead.

So, realistically, either block both, block dynamically setting it but allow
animated gifs, or keep both. But blocking animated gifs but allowing people to
dynamically set it won't do much of anything.

Personally, I'm for blocking animated gifs (or rather, making it a config
option), and throttling dynamically setting the favicon (like how FF already
throttles background JS events). Unfortunately, given FF's push towards no
options, I very much doubt it's going to happen.

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RexRollman
One nice thing about Firefox is that you can turn off the display of favicons
via about:config. This is nice as I personally find them to be annoying and
unneeded.

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petercooper
Reminds me of block popup features (not necessarily solely in Firefox). Is it
really that hard to prevent ANY new tabs or popups being opened by a page?

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dec0dedab0de
I have an idea, if you don't like something a site does, stop using it.

~~~
bnegreve
I really don't get that logic.

To me what you're saying is equivalent to saying that we should never discuss
anything.

 _Something 's wrong with the society? If you don't like it, you can just move
to a different country._

How can we possibly improve anything with that mindset?

I know that I'm overreacting here, but I would genuenly like to here comments
about that.

~~~
mhurron
Not everything has to be dealt with the same way, and not everything exists as
the same priority. Using or not using an annoying website doesn't come close
to the effects that living in a society that touches every part of your life.

I can stop going to a website or a store because of many reasons without
impacting anyone around me and getting the same result of not being botherd by
them. That is not an option regarding where I live. No I can not just move, it
is not that simple.

> I know that I'm overreacting here, but I would genuenly like to here
> comments about that.

It would seem you likely already know the answer.

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mtrycz
Yeah, yeah, everyone loves to hate on Firefox.

Still, if you're gonna do some shaming, pick something serious, there are some
serious things to pick form iirc.

~~~
zxcvcxz
Yeah like the fact that chrome is just generally shitty. It takes 30 seconds
to open and then uses half my RAM, but nah, lets hate on FF. OSS is such an
easy target too, seeing as most communication is done out in the open.

When chrome developers make closed source tools for flash that's fine, "It's
all about business and they're a private corporation who can do what they
want" but whenever the FF devs make any decision about anything they get
criticized, and most of the people doing the criticisms are chrome users and
people who swear by chrome for web development, but they seem to be the same
people who completely ignore other web browsers as if chrome is all that
matters. Back in the day we had to target all major browsers, now there's a
group of people who have a major hard-on for chrome and don't give a shit
about any other ecosystem and for some reason they think they're "good"
programmers.

