Feature request: Purge removed bookmarks from whitelist

[cartographer]

Noscript is an awesome program. I have a feature suggestion for it. Noscript has had a feature that allows you to allow scripts on all bookmarked site. I suggest adding a feature to remove all sites that are not currently bookmarked. I make this suggestion because bookmarks are added and removed all the time. The program right now can add new bookmarks as soon as you visit them, but when old bookmarks or dead links get removed, there's no easy way to purge them, so the list grows and grows. Please consider adding this feature. Thanks!

[Thrawn]

The program right now can add new bookmarks as soon as you visit them,

? I've never heard of this Firefox feature. Unless you have some kind of addon that automatically bookmarks pages? In which case, I would *not* recommend mixing this with NoScript's option to automatically allow sites opened through bookmarks.

[cartographer]

Sorry, I'm afraid I wasn't very clear in my description. It's not a Firefox feature. It's a Noscript feature, but it's not exactly the way I described it. Forget what I said about any program (Firefox or otherwise) automatically bookmarking pages.

What I really meant is that Noscript automatically allows scripts on a page that you open via bookmarks. Suppose I bookmark www.google.com right now. As far as I know, Noscript has not allowed any scripts for www.google.com yet. However, if I open www.google.com by using my bookmarks, then scripts will be allowed for the site.

But suppose I no longer want www.google.com in my bookmarks, so I manually remove www.google.com from my bookmarks. As far as I know, www.google.com remains in the list of sites that Noscript has whitelisted, because it was once in my list of bookmarks. Over time, sites like Google pile up in the whitelist because I have removed them from my bookmarks, but forgot to take them out of the whitelist in Noscript also.

My feature suggestion is to add a "purge" feature in Noscript to remove all whitelisted sites that are no longer in the bookmarks. I hope this clarification helps.

[Thrawn]

First, do you want to manage your whitelist via bookmarks, or did you enable this by accident?

Second - pruning everything that isn't in your bookmarks sounds very aggressive to me; it would even destroy the preloaded whitelist. Perhaps a more useful option would be if NoScript could temporarily allow anything visited via bookmark, so that if you ever remove the bookmark, the site simply won't be allowed next session. How does that sound?

[cartographer]

I do want to manage the whitelist via bookmarks. Generally I trust any site I visit at the time I visit it, but my list of bookmarks changes over time (as I'm sure yours do). My intention is not to stop trusting bookmarks, but to clean up obsolete entries from the whitelist. Besides, only temporarily allowing bookmarked sites would require more work; you'd have to remember to allow bookmarks every time Firefox opens/closes.

To avoid destroying the default whitelist, an option could be added to protect the default whitelist from the purge feature I suggested.

[Thrawn]

Besides, only temporarily allowing bookmarked sites would require more work; you'd have to remember to allow bookmarks every time Firefox opens/closes.

No, I didn't mean making the setting temporary. I meant granting temporary permissions to the sites (Temporarily Allow instead of just Allow). So, you'd still seamlessly allow any site you visited, but if you haven't visited a site in the current session, it's not whitelisted.

To be clear: this approach is not currently available, but if it would work for you, then I'd recommend it to Giorgio as an RFE. Actually, to me it makes more sense than using permanent permissions.

[cartographer]

If I understood you correctly, then wow, that sounds like a brilliant idea.

When I made my suggestion, I was just tired of the whitelist becoming bloated and full of obsolete bookmarks that I have long removed (sometimes years ago). If I understand you correctly now, you're suggesting the option of using the whitelist only for sites that are NOT bookmarked. In other words, the whitelist will be very short, and not simply an incomplete and outdated copy of the list of bookmarks. It seems your idea of temporarily allowing each site if it's opened via bookmark is better than my purging idea because instead of simply dealing with obsolete bookmarks after the fact, it actually prevents those obsolete bookmarks from being added to the list in the first place.

If I have understood you correctly, I would support adding the option you suggested. I only ask that it be a choice; if it's mandatory that people use the option, then it would restrict the freedom of people who don't like allowing bookmarks. Having more choices is always a good thing, and it could affect the development of the software in the future in ways I admit I can't currently see. Also, please only allow the actual site that's being visited. For example, if we visit site www.actualsite.com, and it has scripts from 4 other different domains (e.g. www.ad1.com, www.visitorcounter2.com, www.affiliate.com, www.whatever.com), only allow www.actualsite.com, and nothing else. I think the current "temporarily allow all scripts on this site" feature works just fine. Aside from that, I'm looking forward to your suggestion and to finally cleaning up my list.