I have a very simple idea. What if the person using the web browser were able to control the browser, rather than the web page currently loaded controlling the browser?
The goal is to bring uniformity and clarity back to the process of browsing the web. Right now, every single website is allowed to modify and customize the behavior of the browser, such as disabling copy-paste, changing the rendering of password fields, altering the tab-selection ordering, and dynamically altering textboxes on focus change. What if there was some user interface control that a user could toggle that would restore default, standard behavior for all UI elements in a webpage? Instead of opening the developer tools to try and trace JavaScript events and DOM attributes to figure out why pasting text is not working, the user could just override the non-standard behavior and use the browser normally. We could paste that difficult-to-type password that the website keeps deleting from our textbox without warning. We could view the Social Security Number that the website keeps hiding from us (the very person that typed it and really wants to visually confirm the whole number, not just two digits in the center). We could re-submit the form as-is instead of allowing the website to clear various fields without asking when the client-side validation logic is faulty.
Implementing this should be relatively straightforward. Just allow disabling JavaScript interfaces for replacing standard UI control behavior. Perhaps allow disabling JavaScript events for individual keystrokes and mouse movements, reserving those events exclusively for the browser to handle. Allow disabling any JavaScript interface that overrides system clipboard behavior or text entry behavior. Provide an easy-to-identify user interface toggle for enabling this override.
I am really tired of having to wonder on each new website, "What standard browser functionality will stop working this time? Will I be able to see the text I am typing? Will I be able to copy that text into notepad so I can edit it without obstruction, and then will I be able to paste the edited text back into the webpage? Will my entered password be deleted and replaced with a value substituted from the page itself? Will I be able to move my cursor between input fields, or will the focus magically change underneath me?"
