How to identify which page to allow in NoScript

[antipop]

Using Firefox in Windows 7 Pro, when I look at this page, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/v ... reets.html, I see an image of a still shot from a video that is available to watch. Without NoScript installed I would need to click on the "Play" button in the center of this image, and then the video would start up. However, with NoScript installed as I have it now configured, it does not start up automatically when I click the button because NoScript prevents it unless I first right-click to use the context menu to show NoScript options.

In these options I see multiple choices of various domains, e.g., Temporarily allow "co.uk", among many others. At the bottom of this list of various domains I also see one saying "Temporarily allow all this page". If I want to watch the video I have a choice of using the last option to "...allow all this page", or else I can one by one start allowing the individual domains on the list until I happen to come across the one that actually allows the video to start. This one-by-one method is a sort of hit-and-miss approach, as well as exceedingly time-consuming, especially considering just how frequently it occurs. On the other hand the first option, "...allow all this page", seems a bit like overkill as well as wreckless in that I have bypassed the purpose of NoScript in avoiding whatever is unnecessary.

It would most certainly be swell if I knew some way of identifying specifically which of these particular domains I needed to allow so that I could use NoScript in a more precise and efficient manner. Am I missing something here, or is this the same way that others have to approach this problem?

[barbaz]

Personally, I install Adblock Plus (well, my own fork of ABP) and add subscriptions blocking all the things I don't want, and any site explicitly blocked there, goes straight to Untrusted.
That makes the trial-and-error problem less, but short of digging around in the site source code (which would be even more time consuming), I don't know of any way to avoid it altogether.

[antipop]

I am not really following you in how to apply your method in this case. Can you explain it more? Thanks.

[therube]

There is no way to know what will or will not be needed.

Happens to be very little at that site anyway.
Other sites could be vastly different.

Over time, you kind of get a feel for what is needed or not.

Happens that

+brightcove.com
+dailymail.co.uk

are all that are needed, in this case.

[barbaz]

I am not really following you in how to apply your method in this case. Can you explain it more? Thanks.

EDIT There are better written instructions @ viewtopic.php?p=75314#p75314 . /EDIT

1) Install Adblock Plus
2) Get subscriptions from https://adblockplus.org/en/subscriptions
3) Go to a site where you want to figure the minimal NS permissions
4) Go to ABP menu -> Filter Preferences -> Find, then start typing the domain you're wondering about. If it's not found, and if you don't happen to find any similar-looking or related domain in the process, it *might* be an OK domain, leave it alone for later trial-and-error. If you see the domain explicitly blocked, like any of these patterns:

Code: Select all

||site.com^$third-party
||site.com^
://site.com^
://site.com/*
/site.com/*

but *NOT* like any of these (the last two would actually be whitelists):

Code: Select all

||site.com^$object-subrequest
||site.com/some/specific/path/*
/site.com/*$script,image
site.com###foofoofoofoofoo
subdomain.site.com#@#.FOOFOOFOO
@@||site.com^$domain=

go to NS menu -> Untrusted -> Mark (site) as Untrusted, because either that domain is not needed and is something you definitely don't want, or you won't need to allow it in any case thanks to surrogate scripts. (List of sites for which NS has built-in surrogate scripts in the sticky.)

If you want to know more about the patterns, and why I've categorized each one like that, see https://adblockplus.org/en/filters