InformAction Forums

Tom T.

Listing of script sources for whioh surrogates are provided

I think there is a 'wee typo' in the Subject.

IMHO, it is very useful to document this.
I appreciate all the time you, the other Mods and especially Giorgio spend on developing NoScript and helping us to use it.

Thank you!

DJ-Leith

Edited to Add on 2014-07-28

This Post was in reply to Tom T.'s Post that has now become a single locked Post:

List of sites which NoScript provides surrogates for (DATE e.g. May 2014)
viewtopic.php?f=26&t=19930

As you can see from the comments below and the more than 27 thousand views of the thread - this was a very useful post (and Tom T. was always a very helpful person).

The Mods and barbaz have periodically updated the post since Tom T.'s very sad death:

Remembering our friend Tom T.
viewtopic.php?f=26&t=18773


In July 2014 Giorgio Maone restructured the forum, there is now a subforum for:

NoScript Surrogates
viewforum.php?f=26

In my opinion, it is best to start a new thread - in this subforum - for each new surrogate script.

DJ-Leith

@ DJ-Leith:

Looks like Spell-Check failed again.

Thanks for the catch. I see that it's already been fixed.

And thank you for the kind words.

I also appreciate all the time you, the other Mods and especially Giorgio spend on developing NoScript and helping us to use it.
After trying to get rid of some pop ups on e-bay, particular, the one that keeps say thanks here's you free cards which I hate because it is a lie, nothing is free so it is false advertising, I noticed I now can not search on e-bay. Is the a surrogate script that can be make for e-bay? It's OK though because I can use Amazon mean while.

One of the major problems I have seen is something in the blacklist is often required to run things on the page such as an input field or search fields. It is hard to know which of these sites on a page that has been blocked is the one for the input field or search. Any help there?

bmazak wrote:One of the major problems I have seen is something in the blacklist is often required to run things on the page such as an input field or search fields. It is hard to know which of these sites on a page that has been blocked is the one for the input field or search. Any help there?

Sometimes it *is* trial-and-error, temporarily allowing one script at a time until it works. If you have specific sites in mind, please post them.

There may be clues in the script names. Please see NoScript Quick Start Guide, and find the section with the bold notation, "Updated 25 Jan 2012:", for information on recognizing a site's secondary servers and their scripts.

The JSView add-on will give you the full names (full file paths) of the scripts that are running on a page. Even if you cannot read Javascript itself, these full names may give more information about the purpose of each individual script. You can access this by clicking on the JSView icon, or by right-clicking on the page, click "View Page Info", and the JSView tab will be visible. Click it to see the list.

As for eBay, if you can post the exact steps needed to reproduce what you described, then perhaps we can indeed find a way to work around it, or create a surrogate if needed. Do you have to have an account there to produce this issue?

You may also find the RequestPolicy add-on useful in blocking pop-ups, third-party offers, etc. that originate outside the site. But will Firefox's built-in pop-up blocker not work on the eBay pop-ups themselves? (Firefox Tools > Options > Content > check "Block Popup Windows".)


Side note: I think I'll remove the addendum to the OP about intending to lock this topic, as it seems as good a place as any to discuss surrogate-related issues.
If there are objections from users, other Mods, or, of course, Giorgio, such posts can always be split off into new topics. But the threads on disappearing icons and Why must I "Temporarily allow all this page" REPEATEDLY? seem very useful for centralizing those discussions, and for users to search them before posting. Any objections?

Sorry, I should also have pointed you to the sticky post, SOME SITES YOU MIGHT NOT WANT TO ALLOW.

There are more than 100 sites listed there, whose principal purpose of scripting is for advertising, data-mining, or both.
So you can usually eliminate them from your trial-and-error process, which saves a lot of time.
Or you can mark them Untrusted when they appear, which means you won't see them in the main menu again. This shortens the menu greatly.

You can still find them in the sub-menu, NS Menu > Untrusted, in case you wish to temporarily allow them, to help support your favorite sites with the advertising revenue, but that's up to you. If a site's ads are intrusive, distracting, privacy-invasive, or offensive, I'm not going to allow them. Let the site find better ad agencies.

If any of these script sources (sites) are truly needed to make a site function, there is probably already a Surrogate Script for it, as per the sticky post at the top of this topic.

I hope this helps make the process easier. Feel free to ask any further questions.

Would NS consider expanding its surrogates support with those found in Ghostery? Ghostery also provides surrogate scripts for web elements it blocks. The surrogate scripts can be found inside <profile_directory>/ghostery/surrogates.db.

milithruldur wrote:Would NS consider expanding its surrogates support with those found in Ghostery? Ghostery also provides surrogate scripts for web elements it blocks. The surrogate scripts can be found inside <profile_directory>/ghostery/surrogates.db.

The question is whether pages break without the surrogates.

If you can point to examples of pages that can't work without allowing data-miners etc, then I'm sure Giorgio would be happy to talk about including surrogates for them.

I didn't get how to Blacklist those scripts by NoScript. I would like to Blacklist those, for all the websites.
I also would like to overall blacklist Google Analytics, so that the NoScript bar won't pop up when only this script is blocked. Can someone help me?

What you want is the 'Untrusted' submenu.

How is it possible to type in or mark scripts so that they appear in the untrusted menu/list?

Tom T. wrote:... NoScript will by default run a "surrogate script"...

So they are run no matter whether or not scripting is allowed on that particular domains?

Depending on how you write the surrogate, it may run on whitelisted sites, or on non-whitelisted sites, or everywhere.

Documentation here.

This list could use an update...
(not being a moderator, can't do it myself - but if someone on forum staff would like me to contribute the current list how would you like that? diff output or full list? post here/PM?)