Stop sending me your errors

92 pointsposted 4 days ago
by speckx
(kramkow.ski)

14 Comments

cube00

4 days ago

> Not only will it make all 10 of us happy

It's a lonely road indeed.

This is one I often get which I notice because my Android mail client shows the plain text version in the notification so all you see is this failed HTML encoding flooding the screen as the notification text.

Chalk another win up for the Salesforce Marketing Cloud letting an encoding hack from the HTML version leak into the plain text version.

  This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

  --ySCSIjGKGV=_?:
  Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
  Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

  ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ [ repeated for a screen full ]

don-code

4 days ago

As a NoScript user, I see a lot of similar content served via websites as well.

The ideal case is that a website gracefully degrades with JS disabled. That's largely a pipe dream with React usage being what it is, but some sites manage it. Github is one who still does this well.

The nonideal case is that I'm presented with a misrendered site, but I can still see some semantic information that may, or may not, be what I was looking for. Gitlab's an example of this.

The worst case comes where the site white-screens and doesn't load _anything_ of use. Reddit is an example where it loads nothing but a loading image. My worst pet peeve is the Stack Overflow-style failure mode, though, which explicit says: "Enable JavaScript and cookies to continue.", rather than making any attempt to show any content at all, which is most similar to what the author here is describing.

m463

3 days ago

> As a NoScript user, I see a lot of similar content served via websites as well.

Same with umatrix, wsj.com as an example:

  Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker
and I just skip the website.

luz666

3 days ago

I skip these websites too. And also skipping websites that ask for cookie permissions in a malicious way. It is just not the kind of people/content I want to be around and therefore not worth my time. I am wondering myself, if I am the only one doing this.

foobarchu

4 days ago

Out of curiosity is that just "modern" reddit or old reddit too? (However long old reddit sticks around, anyway, it's clearly not long for this world after they began requiring a login to use it so if the login page requires JS then it's kind of moot)

graemep

4 days ago

> As a NoScript user, I see a lot of similar content served via websites as well.

I tend to hit the back button. If the site has something I really then I enable temporarily reenable JS and then use reader mode.

justsomehnguy

4 days ago

Sorry, but the ideal case is that a website gracefully upgrades with JS enabled.

But sadly every one site on the net should both:

render in less than 50ms - to be in the top chart in AdSense, even if there is no such need

download everything and load everything so it would render the right way instantly - even if there are a literal hundred of the requests[0], again to improve the ranking in the AdSense

actually should load a full content of the page (hit F12 on [0]) on the first or second request but delay the display with an utterly stupid CSS animation what would spin until the last tidbit is downloaded and loaded - because fuck you visitor, especially if your connection is anything but absolutely perfect.[1]

and it's need to dynamically load the parts of the page even if all the content fits in less than 8kBytes - because dynamic! progressive! fuck you, user!

Like you can replace that bullshit at [0] with a tiny page content, tiny CSS file and do the shenanigans with JS shit later - but hey! that means somebody would for 5ms actually see the actual content before it would be mangled to a stupid dynamic shit with a pseudo mobile mode on a 4k landscape monitor!

[0] Eg https://forum.mikrotik.com/t/14-years-lasting-bug-disconnect...

[1] yes it's actually four points there - because even so called 'web programmers' nowadays don't know what the actual stack they use. And yes, the first and second point and even third - they are all contradicts themselves.

zahrevsky

3 days ago

Basically, it's like sending a 200 OK with "Error" in the body?

repiret

4 days ago

I configure Mutt to run the HTML part through w3m and show me that instead of the text part, because of this exact misuse of multipart/alternative.

Hnrobert42

3 days ago

I feel for the author but they are the digital Amish driving a horse down a paved road.

Arch-TK

3 days ago

I don't agree with the analogy, but let's run with it for a second anyway.

Sending a mangled `text/plain` part in a `multipart/alternative` (when you could simply omit it) is the email equivalent of having a store that advertises that it sells Amish-compliant items, but the only compliant items on sale are hand-painted wooden boards that say, "Sorry, we don't sell Amish-compliant items."

Don't want to go out of your way to cater to the Amish? No problem. That's not what the post asks of you; the post simply asks you to stop claiming to do so.

Hnrobert42

a day ago

By my analogy, I meant that the author has chosen a hard road. They can be steadfast in their belief (one with which I am sympathetic), but the proof is all around them that things will not get better.

saurik

3 days ago

And yet why are people going out of their way to send multipart emails with useless parts? Your analogy does not fit as the Amish person is potentially refusing the HTML part: I just cited my preference, confirming to the protocol, and am being actively sent garbage information as somehow someone seriously thought it was easier for them to go out of their way to give me the option and then laugh at me for making the wrong choice than to just send an email that is HTML only.