InformAction Forums

Recently NS has changed its look, w/o my doing anything to my FF or NS installation.

I now have a gigantic exclamation mark in the "S" button, which is telling me exactly what, please?
I used to see various versions of a forbidden sign which did have some meaning - this seems to be gone.

Hovering over the button I now get only a list of site which I can classify as "not trustworthy". There used to be both these items in the list plus those which I could classify as trustworthy, i.e. allow them. So, if I got unwanted behaviour I was able to exclude the culprit by trial-n-error. No more, it seems.

I right now have a problem using www.rottentomatoes.com for no apparent reason whatsoever. More specifically the "more" link in Movie Info does not work. I remember I used to have to temporarily allow something, but that is now impossible, as I said above. I cannot even deactivate NS for this whole site.

Please advis, thanks.

Well, the problem with the NoScript interface is that Allow Scripts Globally is set, you can change that by the menu item or NoScript Options > Whitelist

Sheygetz wrote:I right now have a problem using www.rottentomatoes.com for no apparent reason whatsoever. More specifically the "more" link in Movie Info does not work. I remember I used to have to temporarily allow something, but that is now impossible, as I said above. I cannot even deactivate NS for this whole site.

Is that the exact link where the issue occurs?
What do you mean by "deactivate NS"?
Can you please be more specific than "does not work"?

All the various representations of the NS icon are described here: https://noscript.net/features

The very last icon depicted intimates that NS has been configured to allow all - bottom-most check-box in whitelist tab of options - and that's bad. Moreover, that option can be disabled from display in the NS icon pop-up menu in: options, appearance tab.

When frequenting any arbitrary web-site and one discovers missing functionality the first course of action is to temporarily allow to top domain, i.e., the web-site one is on so that any scripts being hosted get a chance to be invoked. That obviously can be made permanent if the web-site is a frequented favorite.

Secondly, if functionality is still missing, then selectively temporarily allow sequentially any site indicated as blocked having CDN in the domain name. CDN is acronym for 'content delivery network' and that's how embedded multi-media is presented. Again, one needs to establish which one, or combination thereof needs to be allowed - as sometimes multiple CDN are required simultaneously - but that can open the door to other CDN domains, each of which will attempt to invoke scripts - potentially on other domains - which in turn will attempt to invoke scripts (and they in turn on other domains in a sequentially cascading phenomena). Each of these new sites will appear after refreshing of the web-page when domains have been permitted to invoke scripts.

Bear in mind, that any domain made permanent on any arbitrary web-site becomes globally white-listed. Furthermore, if one enters a site and faced with a torrent of domain names clamoring for permissions to invoke scripts, temporarily allow all should provide full functionality of that web-site, but until the browser is restarted the permissions are global - and will be in affect for the very next web-site one visits. ALWAYS revoke temporary permissions prior to leaving any site where such permissions have been granted.

At rottentomatoes.com I temporarily allow:

rottentomatoes.com
cdn.optimizely.com
cdnjs.cloudflare.com

Then upon refresh temporarily allow:

ajax.googleapis.com
d3blamo577v4eu.cloudfont.net
optimizedby.openx.com

After refreshing, Movies & DVD & TV content is functional. However, News will require additional scripts - probably GoogleTagServices - to be invoked by additional sources that become apparent as they are enabled.

What I'd do with the foregoing is create ABE rules allowing the above SITES to be Accepted from .rottentomatoes.com, with a final Deny rule.

Site cdn.optimizely.com
Accept from .rottentomatoes.com
deny
#
Site cdnjs.cloudflare.com
Accept from .rottentomatoes.com
deny
#
Site ajax.googleapis.com
Accept from .rottentomatoes.com
deny
#
Site d3blamo577v4eu.cloudfont.net
Accept from .rottentomatoes.com
deny
#
Site optimizedby.openx.com
Accept from .rottentomatoes
deny

If ABE subsequently blocks scripts for the above SITES on other web-pages, you'll get notification to that affect. Simply add the domain of that particular URL needing to invoke scripts from the aforementioned SITES.

Otherwise, if the foregoing SITES are permanently allowed, they'd be permitted on any site in the interwebs. I'd heartily recommend to avoid doing that.

wxman1 wrote:All the various representations of the NS icon are described here: https://noscript.net/features
The very last icon depicted intimates that NS has been configured to allow all - bottom-most check-box in whitelist tab of options - and that's bad.

Thank you, that was it.
When I noticed the exclamation mark thing, I had no recollection of changing NS's behaviour myself. Which no doubt I must've, though I can't for the life of me remember why. So, thanks! I changed the "allow all" status and now NS looks and behaves more like it used to.

Still, the top comment on the site you link, "Operating NoScript is really simple." has me rotfl. Such hyperbole - NS is easy for people who understand computers. But who does? In this half sentence "for the top-level (main) document, but some other active content or script sources imported by this page are not allowed yet. This happens when there are multiple frames, or script elements linking code hosted on 3rd party hosts." I have fattened the concepts your average PC user (!) has no grasp of. This is like claiming Wittgenstein was for elementary school kids. Add to that the fact that not everybody's mothertongue is English. I'm on the German version, so have to "translate" the help-text to fit what I see on my screen.

I assume this stuff just isn't easy inherently . But maybe it could be made more easy, i.e. explained better in layman terms, than just to say, hey this is simple for geeks like me. Anyhow, thanx a lot for helping me out! And now I'll try and figure some more of this "simple" stuff

Sheygetz wrote:But maybe it could be made more easy, i.e. explained better in layman terms,

Do you have any suggestions for how to do this?

I think that the point is, you operate NoScript by simply opening the menu and clicking to allow or disallow sites. This is simple compared to, for example, writing ABE rules.

Understanding which sites you should allow or block is a different matter. That gets complex, and fuzzy, eg Google Analytics will track your behavior, but probably not try to install malware, so do you "trust" them or don't you? And determining exactly what a domain is doing can be a mixture of experimentation, guesswork, and frustration.

But the method of operation is quite simple.

Thrawn wrote:Understanding which sites you should allow or block is a different matter.

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