[off-topic]
Frames… :person_facepalming:
or Internet Exploder completely ignoring W3C standards despite Microsoft having a seat on the committee… :disappointed:
I’ll bet there’s a number of us here that remember back to Compuserve… or at least AOHell.
I, for one, did not predict that GIF’s would make a comeback, though. Remember whole pages full of ’em and which could actually bring your all-powerful 486 machine to a crawl?
Not trying hijack my own thread 
.
[/off-topic]
Or the infamous Browser Wars.
“FrontPage ain’t done ’til Netscape won’t run!”
NS adhered to the standard.
Tables MUST be closed. So what did FP do when generating webpages? Open 7 tables and close only 6. Open 11 tables and close only 10.
NS would wait for the last open table to be closed before displaying anything (while MS/IE broke the standard and sneakily autoclosed the last table).
So you could get a long webpage with all the space reserved (even when hovering over an invisible link on a “blank” page it’d show the hand instead of pointer), only nothing would be displayed.
So NS was “broken”, and IE “worked”.
Vile, atrocious behavior.
Q: How many M$ employees does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: None. They just declare darkness the new “standard”.
Oh, and don’t get me started on “line terminator” vs “line separator”…
Another off-topic session…
There was a time when I could hit relevant results on internet search engines straightforwardly and fast. Now impossible it is not, but as retarded as it may be unless you are searching for something popular or commercial you gotta make some custom searches most of the time, and it can take a lot more effort. The spelling correction stuff is blatantly used to get even more (unrelated) hits to milk the cows, artificially increasing the traffic. Many sites have been redesigned in ways which, in my opinion, pose a regression in performance and usability. But heck, during my adolescence I loved to read computing books (Peter Norton, Andrew S. Tanenbaum) so I guess you can understand the shocking change the internet has gone through to lodge the rabble. Mind you, I'm trying not to be judgmental. O:)
Yup. This happened as google “solved” the search problem for the average person and thus broke it for all the people accustomed to using Boolean expressions. I had to unlearn how to search and learn how to google.
Virtually the entire Internet is less usable and less useful than it was 10-20 years ago, which was before the muggles got smartphones .
The explosion of page scripts has not produced more usable, informative web pages; quite the opposite, in fact. Give a programmer more CPU and bandwidth and they’ll happily waste it through lazier coding. Yes, ads are a factor, but even with no advertisements, most web pages require tens or hundreds of megabytes of downloaded resources simply to display often useless information, such as the “5 Secret Tricks To Make More Money”.
I need a few items off AE, and this screen shows up several times a day. AFTER I swipe, login again, type in a captcha and wait:
It shows several cars driving into the entrance of an AliExpress store bag/shop.
Not sure what it means.
Looks pretty close to the one I O:) get whenever I tap store links or do local store searches:
Of course I am joking, it is the same stuff. Captured the screenshot ≈3 weeks ago, the “problem” is already older than a month.
:-)
On-topic:
Not only do I now need to log in to view most AliExpress pages, but the login process has been made stupidly complex. I must now:
1. Enter username and password.
2. Slide slider. (what’s the point of this when the system still requires a captcha every single time?)
[2a. Press Signin button.] (sometimes needed to load captcha, sometimes it loads automatically)
3. Solve Captcha.
4. Press Submit.
5. Press Signin button.
All “Ali” domain scripting is enabled and cookies are also enabled, so I find it ridiculous that this process is so involved and that it is required just to view most items or do searches.
The “extra” steps are not triggered by how long it’s been since your last login, since I just repeatedly logged in and out in order to test the system and triple-check the steps in the process. I have to do all of the above every single time; the only change is that sometimes I have to press Signin in order to trigger the captcha to load.
I hate how virtually everything now requires captchas and/or 2nd-factor confirmation codes just to log in. I’ve railed against the standard password system for literally decades, yet I despise the fact that my long, fully-random passwords are no longer “good enough” to prove my identity or even that I’m a human being. As I’ve used a password manager for more than a decade, I don’t like all of the extra steps now required.
The use of bad passwords has led us to this nightmare and I secretly, though admittedly unfairly, hate everyone who uses non-random passwords 
, even though I’m well aware that the username+password system was provably unworkable even in the 1970’s. Back then, a study of UNIX users showed that human beings simply cannot create and remember secure passwords. Dozens of later studies confirmed and expanded the finding, yet the username+password paradigm eventually became the standard authentication system for the global Internet.
That’s hilarious. I haven’t seen it yet, but it suggests that too many cars are trying to drive into their store building. A strange metaphor, in my opinion, as how many stores have drive-thru lanes?
Regarding the new “message center” of AliExpress.
(I mostly use the desktop PC web browser to browse AliExpress, I normally only use the mobile App version when I have decided to purchase some items, since usually the mobile prices of items are slightly cheaper — several cents cheapers when using the mobile app. Also, I haven’t been updating my mobile AE app so it’s still a relatively older version, which may not support the new message center.)
So what I’m mentioning will mostly be based on the desktop web browser. I notice there is a new message center. And it is a bit confusing, because the replies could be in the “old” message center, while my new reply will be in the new ‘message center’. So it could get hard to follow, if the response exists in the old but not in the new, or vice-versa. AE is sort of encouraging or forcing the use of the new message center now.
I have given up using AE on the web, the app is frictionless. maybe that is the goal all along, push people to use mobile only.
The app is frictionless? How is the app search wise? Powerful searching is key to me. Something which can only show me a handful of items per page on a smartphone is useless. Some times I inspect hundreds of items per search. I also distrust applications from stores and crap like that.
:-)
“Oh my God, we’re all going to crash into the side-walls of the entrance!!”
Ha, that error message looks like it’s blaming you for being a bad browser driver. “It’s not us, it’s you” 
+1. I could rant about this for awhile, but nobody wants that so let’s just say that there are good reasons to hate appification.
After some tests. Once you signed in AliExpress with an account it adds your IP into their database. So every time you want to search something for example AliExpress checks your IP and is looking for a linked to the IP account. If that pair exists then AliExpress makes you sign in. I used VPN to hide my IP and it removed all restrictions in the same browser. Also there are not problems in network where nobody singed in AliExpress ever. Anyway I don’t think it’s a good practice because AliExpress keeps all information that can be used by hackers. Hackers can know your home address and your IP thanks to AliExpress.
And I just noticed that they are starting to collect Taxes? WTF!!! They are in China FFS!!!
Taxes were already discussed here: Aliexpress charges sales tax?
I’m not familiar with taxes in the US, but they might be required to collect taxes if they want to do it right. At least for EU customers they don’t care about taxes, declare everything as gift or use some dubious ways to bring all packets inside the EU without paying taxes.
They all charge tax now, even eBay, before I never paid tax for out of state sellers. I also see 2 charges on my card, one to the seller and one to ebay for tax.
I usually login first, most times in fact, but I can check out AliExpress items without being logged in. Just FYI. O:)
My experience has changed since my last remarks. At the moment I can again view most item pages without needing to login. I have no clue how anything works anymore 
. AliExpress continues to require the following for me to login:
#1. Enter username and password, press Signin (default [Enter] key)
#2. Slide verification bar, press Signin (default [Enter] key No focus, so must use mouse)
#3. Answer Captcha, press OK/Signin (default [Enter] key)
#4. Slide verification bar, press Signin (default [Enter] key No focus, so must use mouse)
Sometimes the #4 verification bar doesn’t appear, but I must still use the mouse to press Signin again.
That process has remained consistent for the past few months and I’ve learned it well. However, I just now went to double-check before posting and something insane happened; it let me log in with just:
#1. Enter username and password, press Signin (default [Enter] key)
No verification bar, Captcha, or anything else. WTF??!? As I said, I have no clue how anything works anymore. This is the first time I’ve signed in with only a username, password, and [Enter] key since the new website went live at the beginning of the year. Nothing has changed on my end, as this is the same device and IP (or IP range) that I’ve had all year.
[Edit 2019-11-07] Things went back to the usual long process, so perhaps it depends on how old my cookie is or how long since my IP was logged. Who knows.