this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
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[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Looking at that, why do some browsers block media query screen size by default??

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's in the "Fingerprinting resistance tests" section so it would be one of the ways of preventing a browser from being uniquely identified by various reported variables, screen height, width etc. It's worth taking a look at this site that someone else here mentioned to see what information your browser is giving up about itself: https://www.amiunique.org/

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Sure, you can get fingerprinted if you have a unique window size, but do you really want to disable that at the cost of disabling all responsive websites?

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I am using Librewolf and Mullvad Browser as daily drivers, both of which pass the fingerprinting resistance tests, and the only problem I have experienced was with Twitch and that was solved by changing the user agent.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's not what I mean by responsive. Look at the first image in the article, and now resize the window. By disabling media queries, that probably doesn't happen anymore.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That image is responsive on both my browsers. I used the Twitch example only to make the point that that was the only problem I'd experienced, not that it was necessarily related to responsiveness.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Saying that "that image is responsive" confuses me. Do you mean the resized website behaves like the image?

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The browser window size is an easy way to fingerprint. You might be the only person viewing web content in a 1916x988 window who also has a certain font installed.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yes, but that probably also prevents websites from adapting to your window size better.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

So, I haven't done any html or css since around when the mobile web was in its infancy but by my understanding responsive websites don't need to know the exact screen resolution to be responsive. You anchor elements to certain parts of other elements and some are anchored to certain regions of the screen and change the arrangement if there's not enough space to fit them all on that axis

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

For layouts that change quite a bit, that sounds like quite a hassle compared to if screen small arrange like dis.