Optimise page loading

[Teufelchen1]

Hi 🙋‍♀️

The current implementation just blocks the display of the sidebar/next videos. It would be cool if they could be prevented from being loaded in the first place. Especially the preview images. This could be used to improve the page loading speed and decrease the network footprint of YouTube.

🦦

[ulyngs]

This is an excellent idea, let me see what I can do!

[ulyngs]

So, this should just use native Safari content blocking

[ulyngs]

Hmmm, based on requests I added a toggle where you can temporarily turn the recommendations or related videos back on. (Without having to turn the extension completely off -- see latest version on the app store

This relies on the extension simply hiding them -- I don't think this works if it blocks them from loading altogether.

We could of course just have two separate versions of the extension; one that blocks the content from loading, and then another that hides (and has a toggle).

Thoughts?

[Teufelchen1]

Let me recap that for clarification.

Use case A: The user 'Peter' wants to view YouTube videos without getting distracted from angry comments or multiple recommendations catching him into hours of hours watching YouTube.

Use case B: Every once in a while, Peter has a day off and actually wants to look at the recommendations, in order to pick the next video.

Use case C: The user Sandy on the other hand, often toggles the recommendations on and off within one session. She is annoyed by the amount of recommendations and the thumbnails but after every other video, she wants to pick the next.

---

(CW: I have no idea how this app works, what apis are involved and what they are capable off, hence the following is more of a guessing, rather than advice)

I think use case A & B can be achieved using content blocking, assuming that feature can be reasonably turned on and off. Probably not via the JS-Button that are currently used? -> Would require some other form of configuration input (i.e. a toolbar icon).

Use case C could get tricky, as I imagine turning blocking on & off will result in a page reload which will/can change the recommendations and is an UX issue. In comparison, in A & B this wouldn't be a problem as that would happen rarely and the user would probably don't mind a quick reload. Very similar to how many ad-blockers work.

---

One solution would be to just have both content blocking and hiding. I imagine a workflow like this:

• Install the extension
• Enjoying YouTube distraction free with content blocker
• If I like: Clicking on the extension icon in the toolbar, disable content blocking
• On YouTube, recommendations are shown. Additionally the On/Off button is added to the page
• The button can quickly show/hide the recommendations
• Via the toolbar icon, content blocking can be reenabled

Disadvantage of this approach would be, that it complicates the application and it may confuse the users as they won't understand the difference between content blocking and hiding.

Thanks for looking into it! 🙂