Digg Backs Down On DiggBar 180
Barence writes "Social news website Digg.com has made key changes to its recently introduced DiggBar. The browser add-on had been much criticised for its use of frames to 'host' third-party websites within the digg.com domain using an obfuscating short URL, thereby boosting its own traffic figures to the detriment of those third parties. After many major sites ran negative articles on the DiggBar, and even changed their code to block it, Digg has relented and announced two changes to ease concerns."
Re:Facebook (Score:2, Informative)
Because no one uses it as an aggregator for other sites. Most of the time is actually spent on the site, with the goal of creating or viewing content on Facebook, not going to 3rd party sites to view their content.
Well that & I just checked the Facebook website, and I didn't notice any framing of 3rd party sites (which might be the other problem with your argument)
Good point. There is a difference of purpose with Facebook. BTW, Facebook does use framing when following a shared link that does not have built-in support for the site like YouTube.
Re:What I want to know is (Score:5, Informative)
*sigh* No, it doesn't (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, google very clearly puts the original URL on the top frame, as well as on the main results search page. Did you miss the part where one of the major complaints is URL obfuscation? RTFS!
Re:Browser bars make me puke... (Score:4, Informative)
The summary is wrong. It's not a browser add-on. It's a frame, loaded via HTML, like any other frame. It loads when you click a link on Digg.
Re:*sigh* No, it doesn't (Score:5, Informative)
Also Google's image frame serves the purpose of providing the image directly, so you don't have to search through an entire webpage to find it. It's great for random image browsing.
Re:*sigh* No, it doesn't (Score:2, Informative)
I don't like the diggbar, but it also has the actual url in the bar as a clickable link
Backing down would be opt-in only (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What I want to know is (Score:4, Informative)
it's the fact that the frame was served to spiders. facebook doesn't do that.
Re:But I LIKED the bar! (Score:4, Informative)
If your content filter is fooled by the Digg bar, then it's a really, really bad content filter.
The URL of the site is still loaded on your computer whether it's inside the Digg bar or not.
I never thought I'd say this with a straight face (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Do we really have to revive the 90s web (Score:3, Informative)
I hate this as well, and use a greasemonkey script [userscripts.org] to stop that behavior. Turning this off by default would drastically reduce rick-rolling and might even improve their bandwidth. Or, if they don't mind using the same bandwidth, they could start buffering the video upon page load. This would improve user experience for those with low bandwidth so that they don't have as much stuttering.
Re:Do we really have to revive the 90s web (Score:3, Informative)
I use Flashblock. It turns a Youtube area (or any Flash) into a play button. Perfect solution.
Define unobtrusive (Score:3, Informative)
For me, the Digg bar was very obtrusive. I'm forced to use IE6 at work, and when the Digg bar shows up on that browser on my work system (Win XP SP2), it causes unacceptable graphical tearing and glitches in the page it's wrapping. If I scroll down, I had better not scroll back up because I wanted to see something at the top of the page.
Furthermore, when I first noticed the Digg bar showing up on sites I visited via Digg, it was pretty easy to get rid of the bar -- one click to an obvious-looking close button widget and it was gone. A few days ago, I seemed to no longer have the ability to even get rid of the bar, which (combined with the aforementioned graphical problems) is what made it so annoying to me.
As a developer who slings a lot of web-based applications, I have been operating for years with the understanding that it's considered bad form to use frames and iframes, and especially bad form to wrap someone else's content in one of your frames. Most web sites (and the entities that operate them) don't like it when you include their site contents inside yours using frames -- there are legal concerns, concerns about obfuscating the URL so the end user is confused, concerns over the mis-appropriation of others' copyrighted material, concerns over the appearance vs. reality of content ownership (i.e., making someone else's work appear to be yours), and technical considerations, among other issues.
One such technical consideration is that most sites are authored assuming that they pretty much own the root of the DOM, and things like the Digg bar break that assumption. It's not an unreasonable assumption to make, especially since it simplifies your JavaScript and navigation logic. I recall testing out free WiFi at several airports, including Denver International. The Denver system would intercept your HTTP requests and decorate the page you were trying to load with their own ad-laden HTML, which would then wrap your desired site inside a frame. Their stuff mostly worked, but occasionally would bork my browser or cause multiple instances of ad bars and other detritus to be loaded around the page I wanted to see. In some cases, the web site I was viewing came up completely scrambled. (This was on a MacBook Pro running both Safari and Firefox 2.x. I did try both.)