Disallow all "active content" now!

[matsoljare]

The current thread named "Ancient Temple" is not just unviewable, it caused my entire system to crash numerous times, it wasn't easy to even know what thread caused it. There is NO REASON WHATSOEVER to allow this so called "active content" to be posted IN THREADS the way they are now, when you can just as well post a link to the material for those who want to see it. The threads themselves should contain text and pictures, only!

I would have replied in the actual thread, but it's not even possible because even the reply page contains the faulty "app" as well! There's one more recent thread that contains some weird non-Youtube player that freezes up a lot of systems as well.

[cKleinhuis]

i see, that thing needs some activation! will disable it for now!

[Nahee_Enterprises]

   The current thread named "Ancient Temple" is not just unviewable, it caused my entire system to crash numerous times,
    it wasn't easy to even know what thread caused it.   There is NO REASON WHATSOEVER to allow this so called "active content" to
    be posted IN THREADS the way they are now, when you can just as well post a link to the material for those who want to see it.
    The threads themselves should contain text and pictures, only!
    I would have replied in the actual thread, but it's not even possible because even the reply page contains the faulty "app" as well!
    There's one more recent thread that contains some weird non-Youtube player that freezes up a lot of systems as well.

I agree that it will cause problems for some systems, especially older ones that are unable to handle more current and up-to-date software.   In fact, every time that I go to a Topic which has a ShaderToy link to that particular video, my browser "hangs" for a brief amount of time until (I presume) whatever scripting and code is downloaded.  But so far, have not hit anything that causes a "crash", thank goodness!!!

But at what point does this forum need to shy away from new and trendy functionality, so that those with systems unable to cope with such things may work correctly??   Where is the line to be drawn??

I am sure that somewhere there are people still running very old machines with Windows-98, old graphic cards, and browsers that have not been updated since Netscape Navigator was popular.   Granted that may be on the extreme side of things, but you probably get what I am referring to.   What systems and software are the turning-point that this forum should try to cater to??   And when could they be allowed to move to the next more current level, such as "active content"??
 

[matsoljare]

Just disallow all embedding of Flash, Shockwave, Java or whatever it is. It's a huge security risk too. There's really no reason to allow them other than the standard Youtube etc. links.

[cKleinhuis]

especially the shadertoy is not a big company, it is just run by a decent guy (inigo quilez) and it is not optimized for usability, on the homepage
all the shaders load and run actively - at least for rendering the first frame - which is even on a faster computer quite a blast, and thus the embeding
code they provide is in autorun mode as well, a simple PLAY button to initialise the whole thing would be nice

nevertheless, i disabled it, embeding of youtube/other video sites stays intact, occasional flash as well, and java is not supported right now...
  

[matsoljare]

What exactly is "occasional" Flash?

[cKleinhuis]

it is generally allowed, but no one (except of me, 3 times i think ) uses it

[Kali]

@matsoljare: Ok, sorry, I didn't mean to upset you, I knew it didn't work well in Firefox because I saw some artifacts in the rendering, but I didn't know it will crash any system.
I thought it was cool to have a shader running inside the thread, but I shouldn't post embedded webgl because the technology is new and sometimes buggy, and requires certain hardware to work properly.

My fault. I'll post just the links.

[Nahee_Enterprises]

    @matsoljare: Ok, sorry, I didn't mean to upset you, I knew it didn't work well in Firefox because I saw some
    artifacts in the rendering, but I didn't know it will crash any system.   I thought it was cool to have a shader
    running inside the thread, but I shouldn't post embedded webgl because the technology is new and sometimes
    buggy, and requires certain hardware to work properly.        My fault.  I'll post just the links.

I do not think it is really that much of a problem with Firefox, since I have tried it under three different versions of Firefox.  It may take a short bit of time before it starts functioning, but it does work eventually.   I believe it has more to do with the hardware, and/or some other software on the machine.   That is what is probably crashing the computer.
 

[cKleinhuis]

@kali, it was not your fault, i implemented an automatic embedder for shadertoy links, and webgl works in a way that if implemented in a browser, like all current browser now have, it attempts to emulate it in software, which basically is taking up so much cpu time that no time is left over for other things, this could be solved on the software side, but it would need some work by iq, it would be nice having an automatically created thumbnail while editing a shader, this thumbnail should be used to tease a shadertoy, with a big play button or something, the actual compilation of the shader should then just be done when clicking on that, you can see what i mean when you load directly the homepage of
http://shadertoy.com it takes very long to initialise all those shaders... chrome browser deals a little better with it, but it is a general problem

[eiffie]

I had always wanted to ask for a separate WebGL topic but matsoljare is right you still wouldn't always know where a link is leading and folks would unknowingly run into it. If we post links to WebGL content we should specify it, at least until it becomes a standard. (...and reiterating the embedding was automatic so don't blame the posters.)