Invisible Websites
June 2nd, 2008 · by David Bradley
Sometimes it’s a surprise that a site shows up at all in my browser. I run the latest version of the NoScript plugin in Firefox to block malware and opportunistic networks and other nasties and the graphic (click to see full size) shows just a handful of the possible sites and scripts I could choose to enable while visiting a fellow blogger’s site.
I’ve pixelated the domain for this particular site, although I actually allowed it into the NoScript whitelist, to save embarrassment and subsequent legal battles. But, the list of external sites they are running is almost endless. I’m also pretty certain my comment on their post didn’t submit because there was some other script running that I didn’t want to enable.
If you run scripts on your own blog, you might want to take a look at what us Noscripters are not seeing when we visit. Do you really need all those site addins slowing down your page loads? Do you have to track your visitors on MyBlogLog and Technorati? What about firing up blocks of visitor avatars from other servers are they absolutely necessary? Finally, do you really need the few pennies that serving dozens of annoying ads all over your site might bring but probably won’t because most visitors won’t click them because they’re running NoScript and AdBlock Plus anyway? It’s maybe getting a bit late in the year, but perhaps it’s time for a site spring clean.
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4 responses so far ↓
Wayne Smallman // Jun 2, 2008 at 2:56 pm
But in disabling some of this stuff, isn’t there a chance you’re killing the website in the process?
What of all this web2.0 malarkey?
I had some guy once ask my why my page titles were in a lurid green colour. I had no idea and assumed he was doing something crazy / daft.
Anyway, a few months ago, I saw a thumbnail preview of my blog home page with the titles surrounded by a lurid green block.
Not knowing: 1. what this was, or: 2. what was the cause of it, I could do nothing.
Then, purely out of interest, I installed AdBlock Plus — lurid green blocks around my titles.
I use sIFR to generate the titles. The idea is that I can use any font I like, which is then generated using Flash, but the text is still selectable and accessible.
Problem is, to AdBlock Plus, it “looks” like an advert…
Wayne Smallmans last blog post..Honda dive into the future of live advertising
David Bradley // Jun 2, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Yeah, there’s value in a lot of the web 2.0 stuff, of course, but there are more and more people using blocking and security plugins that it means if you’re using addins and scripts on your site you have to add another layer of testing in different browser configurations to make sure you’re site will be viewed okay.
db
Robbert // Jun 25, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Not exactly what I was looking for, but how many people actually use such a addon? And besides that, people with such a plugin enabled probably don’t click ads anyway!
Robberts last blog post..Over de autoverzekering
David Bradley // Jun 25, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Robbert, I guess you’re right, most users are probably oblivious to scripts and certainly will not have heard of NoScript. Of course, if you look at the listing in NoScript for Sciencetext.com you’ll see that there are several things running, such as the getclicky stat counter, google analytics (temporarily), and Sharethis. The deactivation of any of those will not break this site, thankfully.
By the way, what exactly were you looking for, I might be able to help?
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