[RESOLVED] Having trouble understanding ABE exceptions

[WroughtIronHero]

Hello! I've been using noscript for years and love the additional security it provides. It's a great addon. This is the first time I've had an issue with it, though.

Fair warning: I'm pretty illiterate when it comes to web design and code and the like, so I might have some of this information wrong, and my issue might be something really simple and stupid.

Recently, a Reddit sub I frequent added a feature that doesn't work with noscript enabled. Here is the subreddit. Specifically, it's the "Useful Information" bar on the left side. After some tinkering, I discovered that I can only get the bar to work if I have ABE disabled. Since I don't want to do that for all sites, I wanted to make an exception for Reddit. The problem is, everything I've tried to enter into the ABE rulesets hasn't worked. I tried reading through the documentation about ABE, but it was beyond my knowledge, and when I tried to copy the examples, it didn't work.

The thing I specifically tried to enter in the ruleset was:

Site .reddit.com .redditmedia.com .redditstatic.com .zkcdn.net
Accept from .reddit.com .redditmedia.com .redditstatic.com .zkcdn.net

...along with several other variations, but none of them worked. I'm probably missing something very obvious, but what did I do wrong? What should I actually be entering in the ruleset to allow this side bar to work?

[barbaz]

Please check the Browser Console (Ctrl-Shift-J) when this issue happens and post here any messages related to NoScript.
(related messages usually start with either "[NoScript" or "[ABE]"; if you don't know what's related, turn off CSS warnings and post everything else you see)

[WroughtIronHero]

Like this? I only see one line about ABE. Not sure what it means.

[barbaz]

You're looking in the right place. The line about ABE WAN is only saying what it detects your WAN IP as, and since you're not sure what it means, I've moved the screenshot link to the staff-only section.

Nowhere in there is the usual type of console message from ABE when it does something - https://noscript.net/abe/users.html
And the presence of that ABE WAN line means nothing got pushed off the console, what we see is what there is.

So, as a test, please go to about:config and set noscript.doNotTrack.enabled to false. Does it work then?

[WroughtIronHero]

Apparently changing that to false fixed it. The bar works like a charm now. Thank you very much for your help.

Out of curiosity, what did changing that line to false actually do? Was there something in the noscript options that I had enabled that I shouldn't have?

[WroughtIronHero]

Sorry to double post, but I can't edit since I'm not a registered user.

A quick Google search for the "do not track" makes it sound like it's something I probably wouldn't want permanently disabled. So I guess that means I'm not done yet, eh? I suppose that's why you said it was a test...

[barbaz]

Apparently changing that to false fixed it. The bar works like a charm now. Thank you very much for your help.

Out of curiosity, what did changing that line to false actually do? Was there something in the noscript options that I had enabled that I shouldn't have?

You're welcome

Changing the line to false disabled NoScript's DNT feature, which is implemented by ABE. Your options are as expected.

A quick Google search for the "do not track" makes it sound like it's something I probably wouldn't want permanently disabled. So I guess that means I'm not done yet, eh? I suppose that's why you said it was a test...

Yeah, exactly. You can work around this by putting the sidebar in about:config > noscript.doNotTrack.exceptions . The URL patterns are the same as for ABE rules.

[WroughtIronHero]

Ah, I see. I put the sites into the doNotTrack.exceptions field, and now it works even with doNotTrack enabled. So now everything works perfectly. Again, thanks for your help!

[barbaz]

Great! You're welcome!

On a semi-related note, I'll just leave this here: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=18078&p=62899#p62814