InformAction Forums

Ann Telnaes cartoons from the Washington Post have stopped displaying anything, even a still shot, on first filling the page. Clicking on the label/button produces a still shot only. Disabling NoScript allows the WaPo page to display correctly. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/telnaes
There are other non-displaying videos like everything from Mediaite; http://www.mediaite.com/, and other assorted sites also. The Mediaite videos do not display even with NoScript disabled.
I can watch Jon Stewart perfectly well with or without Noscript.

I've been using NoScript for many years on both Linux boxes and Apple machines. This problem only recently appeared, within the past six months. The particulars of my offending machine:

Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac9,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
System Version: Mac OS X 10.6.8 (10K549)
Kernel Version: Darwin 10.8.0
Secure Virtual Memory: Not Enabled
64-bit Kernel and Extensions: Yes

NoScript2.1.0.2

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.1.6) Gecko/20091201 Firefox/3.5.6
File name: Flash Player.plugin
Shockwave Flash 11.1 r102

I've varied the versions of Firefox and Flash, to no useful effect.

Is there some iMac setting I have wrong? Is there some NoScript setting I have wrong?

Please, HELP?!

Probably better to update to latest versions of Firefox and NoScript, for safety purposes, though that's probably not the issue.
Latest Firefox 3 series= 3.6.25
Latest stable release of NoScript = 2.2.4

Then check in about:config whether image.animation_mode has been altered from its default. If it's in bold, it's been altered. R-click and click "reset" (to default).

Beyond that, this is yet another ugly example of an ugly trend, a pet peeve of this writer :
That allowing certain scripts in the menu results in others being called. So you have to let the page refresh, then when you re-open NS menu, a whole new set of scripts appear. Allow some or all of those, or even "Temp-allow all this page", refresh, and yet *more* show up in the menu. '[headbang]

If you have the RequestPolicy add-on, same thing.

I ran out of time (and patience ) trying to figure out what needed to be allowed, and how many generations of reloads, but that's the path. If you, or someone else has time, to play with that, the answer should come eventually. Or maybe I can get back to this later.

I went to the second site you linked, and immediately saw that it was the same thing.

Feel free to let the Webmasters of those sites know how you feel.

OK, got it.

I believe the culprit is doubleclick.net, a/k/a doubleclick.com, both of which eventually redirect to google.com/doubleclick. (Who bought them some time ago.)
They demand that you see their ads before they'll let you see the animation.

Temp-allowing everything on the planet in both NS and RequestPolicy didn't do it. Even allowing <audio><video> tags in NS > Embeddings didn't.

Then I removed the blocking HOSTS file that I use, and replaced it with one that has only the default entry for localhost. In other words, it no longer blocked browser requests to DC. After more re-allowing of the solar system and the galaxy (see above, re: Cascading, multiple-generation scripts calling to other scripts that call to others, etc.), --- It Played.

Restoring the third-party HOSTS file, with its 16,000+ sites blocked, broke the video again.

This is the third separate thread where I've seen complaints of a site broken by blocking DC. The first time, I admit to having been skeptical, as I'd never seen one broken, in all these years. The second time brought up the possibility that a Surrogate Script might be useful. Now I think it's been proven and isolated as the cause, so I'm going to ask Giorgio to consider very seriously making a surrogate for doubleclick.com and doubleclick.net.

ETA: More proof: When no Hosts blocking, RP > "Other origins within this page" shows a request from wpdigital.net to doubleclick. Allowing that without HOSTS blocking works; using the blocking Hosts, RP doesn't even show the request.

The only remaining question, given how much other junk you have to allow, is: Are the animated cartoons worth it?

Made a formal RFE (Request for enhancement) for the DC surrogate here.

After chasing down the hosts file, (replacing it had zero effect), and the various configuration lines you mention, plus following obsolete image and network lines to newer ones, the only method that works to get Ann Telnaes is to disable NoScript.
Does a person handy with Apple iMac have any insight into this problem?

Whant about allowing the following:

• washingtonpost.com
• yahooapis.com
• wapolabs.com
• taboolasyndication.com

Giorgio Maone wrote:Whant about allowing the following:

• washingtonpost.com
• yahooapis.com
• wapolabs.com
• taboolasyndication.com

The first three were among the first three allowed in my previous test. Tabolasyndication doesn't show at that point, either in NS menu or in JSView Page Info. It's apparently not being called yet.

I double-checked Hosts to make sure that it was not blocking tabolasyndication. No match.

This is on Win XP, Fx 3.6.25. May try again on 9.1

rustyhoundog wrote:After chasing down the hosts file, (replacing it had zero effect)

If you don't subscribe to, or use, a third-party provider of annoyance-blocking Hosts files, no, it wouldn't matter. The default Hosts has as little as one entry.
I should have make that clearer, perhaps. Sorry for any time lost.

Giorgio Maone wrote:Whant about allowing the following:

• washingtonpost.com
• yahooapis.com
• wapolabs.com
• taboolasyndication.com

Fx 9.01. All else the same.

OK, those four worked, but when and where tabolasyndication showed up was highly variable. Once, it was only in "Recently Blocked Sites" menu.
Another time, in main menu, but only after a generation or two of "allows".

It was helpful to set NS Options > Appearance to show only "Base 2nd-Level Domains", because allowing specific http etc. www etc often wasn't enough. Needed to allow all of whatever.com. Will double-check Fx 3.6.x.

[ongoing rant] Such sites are still extremely annoying, with the multiple-generation refreshes and allows, and the amount of garbage they try to load makes such detective work very time-consuming. I'd boycott them. [/ongoing rant]

... still don't know why toggling doubleclick.net in Hosts made a difference before.

I noticed an unrelated (possible) issue on this page. There are two js caching object pointing to js.washingtonpost.com, which are blocked when forbidiframecontext=2 with iframes blocked on trusted. From my recollection of caching object discussion, they should follow script and not embedding blocking semantics, it seems they are not being detected as caching.

Fx 9.0.1, NS 2.2.5rc3

Just now, on Fx 3.6.25, with DoubleClick blocked in Hosts as usual, I still can't get tabolasyndication.com to appear in the NS menu or in JSView Page Info, even after repeated "TA all this page", and TA all in RequestPolicy.

Possibly related to what al_9x saw?

The Firefox version I am now `testing' is 4.0.1 with NoScript-2.2.4 installed and working. No Ann Telnaes animations working. Long after my fox stops dancing, the bottom line is announcing more things coming in and more things are appearing in the page.
I just now disabled NoScript in the addons manager, restarted Firefox, and the Ann Telnaes page of the Washington post restarted with the animations working, all this while there has been NO hosts file in /etc.

I remind you, this box is an Apple iMac 9,1 running OS X 10.6.8, with MacPorts added for spice. I don't think testing on WinDoze is going to cut this problem. Well, maybe if the same exact problem is current on WinDoze.

Just as an information, the download of `mac' versions from ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/ of Firefox-3.6.25 quits for me part way through the download, this only for the en-US version. The en-GB version downloads just fine, but it runs like a spastic snail.

For further information, I tried 8.0.1 and 9.0.1 with no success installing; it claimed NoScript was not compatible. I have since gotten 2.2.4 so I'll try again with 9.0.1 and work back from there.

rustyhoundog wrote:The Firefox version I am now `testing' is 4.0.1

Really not much point in testing with unsupported browsers, which your OP was. Fx 3.5 is not supported, nor is 4.x

Try the supported version, 3.6.25, as well as 9.01. I found that it worked on 9.x, but not on 3.6.x. Still not sure why, and it's highly variable.

rustyhoundog wrote:I remind you, this box is an Apple iMac 9,1 running OS X 10.6.8, with MacPorts added for spice. I don't think testing on WinDoze is going to cut this problem. Well, maybe if the same exact problem is current on WinDoze.

I'm pretty sure that Giorgio would have noticed your OS, and tested the issue on a Mac machine. Sorry that I can't afford to buy an additional expensive computer just for occasional diagnostics. Did his suggestions not work?

There does appear to be a problem on Win also, as mentioned. It may not be the same problem, agreed.
Did you double-check about:config image.animation_mode = normal?

rustyhoundog wrote:Just as an information, the download of `mac' versions from ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/ of Firefox-3.6.25 quits for me part way through the download, this only for the en-US version.

Try the regular http site instead of the ftp:
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all.html
and click on the line "English - US" (if that's your preference), in the second column, labeled at the top as "Mac OS X".
I did this while composing this, and it downloaded completely, all 30.8 MB.

rustyhoundog wrote:For further information, I tried 8.0.1 and 9.0.1 with no success installing; it claimed NoScript was not compatible. I have since gotten 2.2.4 so I'll try again with 9.0.1 and work back from there.

"not compatible" - With what, exactly? Normally, an updated install will automatically search for updates to your add-ons.

System Requirements for Fx 9 on Mac show as
# Mac OS X 10.5
# Mac OS X 10.6
# Mac OS X 10.7

Can you be more specific about what error messages you get during install?
Are you overwriting your existing install, or doing a side-by-side install, in which case, you need to create a different folder, etc.

Suggestion: Try downloading a portable version of 9.01, if you can find one, and place it on a USB flash drive. I've been using various portable versions of Firefox for quite some time, though from a Windows-only source. A brief search of the Web didn't find a portable for Mac, but perhaps you could look more extensively. Then it doesn't interact so much with the machine.

Tom,

Thank you for the URL; 3.6.25 completed downloading from that site. During all this to-do I've discovered I had both Shockwave and Shockwave for Director installed as plugins for Firefox. I removed Shockwave and suddenly the animations and video from "Mediaite Newsletters" started to work; they refused to work in the past.
Ann Telnaes animations still do not work while NoScript is enabled.
The animations from Ann Telnaes page work with no change other than disabling NoScript and restarting Firefox. This while using Firefox-3.6.25, recently downloaded and installed.
From all this I would conclude there is an element of conflict between Adobe/Flash/Shockwave and Firefox/NoScript when compiled for Apple OS X. What that is, in my case, I do not know.

Guest wrote:Thank you for the URL; 3.6.25 completed downloading from that site.

Good. One problem solved.
Try downloading 9.01 also, if you don't mind the effort of having side-by-side installs of Firefox on your hard drive. Or if you have a friend with a similar Mac OS... and see if that makes a difference, since it made a difference for me. (One possible reason: Fx 9 supports the recent HTML5 standard; Fx 3 doesn't.)

During all this to-do I've discovered I had both Shockwave and Shockwave for Director installed as plugins for Firefox. I removed Shockwave and suddenly the animations and video from "Mediaite Newsletters" started to work; they refused to work in the past.

I'm not familiar with "Shockwave for Director". What if you were to uninstall that, and install only the Shockwave plug-in? Or do you need the other? Didn't see it mentioned in the OP. Just a thought.

Ann Telnaes animations still do not work while NoScript is enabled.
The animations from Ann Telnaes page work with no change other than disabling NoScript and restarting Firefox. This while using Firefox-3.6.25, recently downloaded and installed.

Please try creating a clean profile from scratch, then installing *only* the latest NoScript. Does the problem persist?
If you didn't install any other add-ons with your new install of 3.6.25, then you've already done this step, thanks.

From all this I would conclude there is an element of conflict between Adobe/Flash/Shockwave and Firefox/NoScript when compiled for Apple OS X. What that is, in my case, I do not know.

I assume Adobe Flash videos at, say, YouTube work fine for you, with NoScript enabled, on Apple OS X?

I had some problem with the Ann Telnaes cartoons on Windows, too -- see a few posts above. Will try to look into this more deeply.

Giorgio is mostly unavailable during relocation and connection to his new ISP,
and some others probably had some sort of celebration this past weekend , but I will try to dig more deeply into this in the next few days.
If I can find the Windows issue, it may transfer to Mac.

I'll also contact another member of the Mac team, if he has a chance to look at it. Thank you for your patience.

On Firefox 9.01 on Windows XP, temp-enabling the sites as suggested by Giorgio works.

washingtonpost.com
yahooapis.com
wapolabs.com
taboolasyndication.com

It may take several page refreshes as additional members of that list are called. Be sure to use the entire second-level domain, e. g., tabolasyndication.com, not http:// cdn.tabola-etc. -- to avoid being possibly too restrictive.

Then a NoScript block-logo appears, as it would for any other Flash object. I click this, "OK", and things play - eventually. There is a *lot* of content, and it takes a long time to load, even on a cable connection that consistently benchmarks at 6-10 Mbps.

Every time you click another of Ann's cartoons, such as, say, the "Mitt Romney Playlist", another block-logo will appear, assuming that you have Flash default-blocked, as I do. This one takes even longer to load, because it's not just one video, but an entire playlist. Give it time -- *lots* of time. (Messy page design, IMHO, but they didn't ask for MHO.)

I needed to take RequestPolicy out of the picture, because tabolasyndication didn't even show up in the NS menu until after it had shown in RP, then TA'd in RP. It got in the way of finding it, but now I know.

Try these steps, allow plenty of time for things to load, and see what happens. Don't forget the multiple page-refreshes, annoying as they are.
I'll see if I can reproduce this on Fx 3.6.25.