Browser Change

Mixed-content autoupgrade and blocking AI-researched

Dependency: Browser mixed-content policy

Chrome's rollout (starting Chrome 79) autoupgraded and then blocked HTTP subresources on HTTPS pages, breaking artworks that combine many remote media sources when hosted or archived under HTTPS.

Affected Artworks

Photo Noise Major impact Degraded

Steven Read

Loads remote images discovered via search. If embedded assets resolve to HTTP-only hosts, they may be blocked.

Those that will die Major impact Degraded

Gregory Chatonsky

Aggregates third-party media across origins. HTTP-only endpoints or legacy embeds can be blocked in HTTPS context.

onewordmovie Major impact Degraded

Beat Brogle & Philippe Zimmermann

Pulls large sets of image URLs from the wider web. Mixed-content blocking can silently drop images, altering the film.

Fixes & Mitigations

  • Workaround: Rewrite asset URLs to HTTPS, or proxy through an HTTPS 'asset relay' under curatorial control.
  • Workaround: Use Content Security Policy directives (upgrade-insecure-requests) during migration testing.

Chrome began a phased rollout: introduce per-site unblock settings (Chrome 79, Dec 2019), autoupgrade and block mixed audio/video (Chrome 80, Jan 2020), and autoupgrade/block mixed images (Chrome 81, Feb 2020).

Notes

Mixed-content is a frequent “archival regression”: moving a work to HTTPS (or embedding it in an HTTPS archive player) can break it if its dependencies are still HTTP.

Links