How do nytimes.com slideshows bypass my blockers?
Today the NYT front page has done something new that breaks all of my Firefox controls so that their slideshows of images associated with articles on the homepage are autoplaying again (specifically, for today, images of the war in Afghanistan; 'live' primary coverage; photos from their 'weekender' section).
I am using FlashBlock (Plus), Disable HTML5 Autoplay, and NoScript, all set to autoupdate, and my FF is on beta channel 74.0b8, and while as a subscriber, my normal settings are Trust for nytimes.com and nyt.com, switching these to 'default' or all settings for the nytimes.com home page to untrusted did not stop the slideshows.
What are they doing that gets past all my blockers, and how do I stop it?
I cannot ignore moving/changing images. My brain is not wired that way. This makes their site completely unusable to me.
All Replies (3)
I think you mean the "Fading Slide Shows" of photos like this (single capture):
The images are rotated by a script, and I don't know whether any of your extensions can target them specifically or not.
If you block nyt.com on the NoScript drop-down, the first image never loads and the slideshow doesn't play, but that may block other features of the site that you want -- for example, the map of South Carolina doesn't load next to the election results.
If you use the Stylus extension -- an add-on that lets you apply custom style rules to websites -- you can use a rule like the following to blank the slide shows until you hover them. That gives you some control over when you see them. When hovered, they still are faded out by 75% in this example so they are subtle.
@-moz-document url-prefix("https://www.nytimes.com/interactive") {
/*** New York Times Fading Slide Show ***/
/* Fade out 100% when not hovered */
.nytmm_FadingSlideShow:not(:hover) {
opacity: 0 !important;
transition: opacity 250ms ease-in-out 250ms;
}
/* Fade out 75% when hovered */
.nytmm_FadingSlideShow:hover {
opacity: 0.25 !important;
transition: opacity 250ms ease-in-out 250ms;
}
}
To install that in your Stylus, you would:
- install Stylus if needed: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/styl-us/
- click its "S" toolbar button, then click Manage
- click the Write New Style button
- type in a name like NYT Slideshow
- click the Import button to pop up a box where you can paste that entire block of code and click Overwrite
- click Save, then see the effect on the New York Times site
I will try that, thank you!
It worked, thank you!