tor browser is a hardened variant of firefox esr.

I’m familiar with ESR. As I understand it, it is the version before (or more precisely a reflection of the version before) Mozilla switched to the newer version, breaking a lot of extensions that I liked in the process. As I remember it, it was a pretty deep departure (and many considered it too Chrome-y, was the same underlying engine on something like that). The newer version was more secure, but also more limited. I’ve played around with some ESR forks, but I do not use them normally/currently. That alone sounds like a pretty different environment.

screenshot is from macos,

Ah, now I see it. I’ve seen that in screenshots before. But yes, yet another case of different environments. And that’s not even getting into other possible extensions.

your claim of loading js from other instances is ludicrous for someone who knows how these things work

I’m sorry if you thought I was “implying that I’m … even lying”. I just want to get environmental discrepancy issues out of the way first. Let’s have best faith assumptions, like I will regarding the above sentence.

As for loading js, I took a screenshot, but I don’t want to upload screenshots if not necessary. It was from a few days ago and does show many instances attempting to run scripts. Notably, after my post, I noticed that images were loading without needing to enable any javascript from other servers (didn’t bother to check if they were still trying to, but I didn’t permanently allow them, and images were loading). I can upload my screenshot, but only if you really want them. That is if it is something you need. My best faith understanding of our communication is neither of us want this to devolve into something unpleasant, and I worry about it getting there.

ublock origin … umatrix

I have the former, tried the latter, but ultimately have stuck to a mix of ublock origin and noscript. Theoretically, one doesn’t even need noscript, ublock origin can do it. But I am used to this mix. I can see by how many times you’ve mentioned it, that I need not remind you for how long.

not just rant

If this feels like ranting, then perhaps we do not engage further. However, if /you/ feel you would benefit, I am more than happy to. I do appreciate the time you put into your responses and what you have added to the conversation.

remove thumbnail=96

Hey, that sounds like a great idea, I bet I could add that to ublock origins. And, yeah, zoom via ctrl plus is what I do (I’m not sure if it is remembered between sessions). As for the side bar, it does not bother me, it was just as an example of what an extension theoretically could do. Honestly, another extension should not be needed. Instead a lemmy /c/ or other repository for user hacks would be nice that you could put into ublock origins or other DOM manipulator. That removing thumbnail sampling looks awesome, will try it out next time I’m on desktop.

I’ll try to play with it next time I’m on desktop. Thanks!

Mentioned elsewhere, and a decent workaround. Doesn’t do well with thumbnails, unfortunately.

[edit: someone below suggested removing the thumbnail sampling (I’ll probably try via uBlock Origins). Honestly with that and a bit of zoom, might work fine. Will be testing it.]

So, why does your image show the ani.social and mine doesn’t? Remember I said Firefox. Sorry, too many years in dealing with these kinds of issues. Please show me a screenshot of the top of the browser so I can see it is Firefox and also expand out the noscript extension like you did before and show me the ani.social image expanded. I know your first image had a window header that did not look like Firefox. In fact you mentioned “tor browser” and I want to make sure we are talking apples to apples.

So, I agree with everything the other responders are saying. Whitelist the primary domain (and maybe a cdn domain that is hopefully nicely labeled) and a decent site should play decently. But it is also that I (generally) know when to pick my battles–or I at least keep my pointless battles to a small scope and fairly sporatic.

I’m asking for a solution to this from the lemmy community, not reddit or a big corposite. They would want a single domain or a few domains for opposite reasons than making the user happy: they would want to control the user experience and ensh**tify via dark patterns. I do not think we should need to blanket allow scripts from dozens of sites just to see images, that’s the scope of this mini-battle I do not plan to fight beyond this post. I mention ensh**tification because I just happened to see this https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2025/05/26/Internet-Sucks-Cory-Doctorow/ on this https://old.lemmy.world/?sort=Hot&listingType=All&page=3 (thanks, above suggester for reminding me of old.lemmy).

So open technology like the web is replete with disenshi**ifying add-ons. Ad blockers are running in more than half of all web browsers in the world. It’s the most successful consumer boycott in human history, but there are zero ad blockers running in apps, because you have to reverse engineer the app first, and that’s illegal under use of Bill C-11 and under the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and Article 6, the copyright directive.

[Note, I censored those letters. I’ve been told you can swear on the internet, though.] One of my “old man yells at cloud” moments of late is when I have to deal with a very small company forcing an app down my throat when a website will do and the using of that company/service (and thus app) is being forced upon me by outside forces. If it’s a small enough company, I will go through too many emails back and forth with their “CTO” telling them why it’s a problem and why they should just have an app (a site that, yes, almost certainly would need javascript). Because that’s the small act of protest some of us should be doing in my mind. That way the next time someone thinks, hmm, we could just do an app and only offer it, they’ll then think, naw, there’s going to be that one annoying customer, not worth it. Same with this issue, for me at least. I don’t see why we /have/ to run javascript on secondary sites just to have a thumbnail and a resulting image. And I’m posing this, again, on lemmy not reddit. So, consider this my allowing myself a brief moment to yell at a cloud.

[EDIT: Escaped my asterisks. I worried there would be automatic markdown, but I didn’t see the Preview button.]

Which is basically the same as old.reddit.com . Which is great as far as functionality. Squint and you can imagine it would be perfect. Zoom in and it’s decent, except the thumbnails now are even more clearly 4-pixel potatoes. Okay, so where’s my FOSS firefox extension that works like RES (Reddit Enhancement Suite)? Or, I actually don’t need that, just a FOSS firefox extension that takes any old.lemmy and makes the layout look like the new layout, with toggles to turn off anything in the new layout you don’t want (e.g. right side bar)? Or, maybe some custom javascript I can save in greasemonkey to make everything zoom 150% and replaces thumbnails with better compressed versions of their expanded versions (make my own thumbnails)?

Looks nice is my immediate impression (looking at it with all javascript off, including ). Still would like thumbnails that are the entire image just much smaller, maybe via CSS. The cropping is very misleading on a lot of images. Perhaps one could use css-toggle-switch–not going to try to solution it, and I know last time I checked css wasn’t great for it. But the results are notably different from lemmy.world for Active or Top past 12 hours. Not necessarily /bad/, particularly for top posts as they at least have a bit of engagement. But it seems like part of the solution is just don’t incorporate results from servers that require javascript. Is it possible (ethical even) to incorporate them, but be a middle-man that saves the user from their javascript?

That looks cherry picked or very lucky. Can you show me a screenshot of Firefox with NoScript and allowing only lemmy.world and ANY other image from the first five results of the home page? My result? “The American Dream” discuss.online - BROKEN “We are way overdue for an open source 2d printer” sub.wetshaving.social - BROKEN “We never stood a chance.” ani.social - BROKEN “literally useless” lemmy.blahaj.zone - BROKEN “Anime Recommendations” lemmy.dbzer0.com - Works (the one you show)