6 ms·

The short history of the “about:” URL (2013)

143 points by johnmw 8y ago

johnmw 8y ago
Note this was written by Lou Montulli who also wrote the amusing post about "The Origins of the <Blink> Tag" [1] [1] http://www.montulli.org/theoriginofthe%3Cblink%3Etag http://www.montulli.org/theoriginofthe%3Cblink%3Etag I didn't know about the about:about url, and have since found a number of amusing and useful links, for example: Chrome: chrome://site-engagement/ chrome://net-internals/#dns chrome://net-export/ chrome://indexeddb-internals/# Firefox: about:mozilla about:memory about:robots
- laumars 8y ago
  about:robots doesn't work on Firefox on Android (does on desktop Linux though). A useful list of all the "abouts" in Firefox is about:about
  - tobr 8y ago
    This mentioned both by the parent and in the post.
    - guipsp 8y ago
      This is not mentioned by the parent.
- taf2 8y ago
  Don’t forget chrome://extensions
  - andyfleming 8y ago
    And chrome://restart
- lytedev 8y ago
  chrome://chrome-urls lists all of them, for those who don't know (including myself until 5 minutes ago!) Including ones for forcibly crashing chrome! chrome://inducebrowsercrashforrealz/ Love finding little Easter eggs like these! Thanks!
  - kiallmacinnes 8y ago
    I'm on my cell phone, so... I cant test this out! But, this link led me to chrome://java-crash. Please tell me I can't put that in an iframe or something similar! Visiting it on my android phone crashes the chrome app.
    - guipsp 8y ago
      No, you cannot embed chrome:// urls this way (unless you find a bug!)
- yread 8y ago
  It's a pity they've removed about:cache https://superuser.com/questions/1316540/where-has-chrome-cache-been-moved-to https://superuser.com/questions/1316540/where-has-chrome-cac...
- VectorLock 8y ago
  The site-engagement one is particularly interesting. I guess Chrome tracks explicitly how much you use various sites. Seems to explain it more here https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/site-engagement https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/site-en...
- js2 8y ago
  Getting rid of that damn blink tag was the first time I ever directly edited a binary. Such a minor annoyance seems quaint now with what the web has become.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- grkvlt 8y ago
  don't forget chrome://dino for the 'no internet' dinosaur game! (press spacebar...)
bugmen0t 8y ago
Firefox has a list of all "about:" pages at about:about
- jwilk 8y ago
  The article mentions that.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
czr 8y ago
slightly ot, but, if anyone else was distracted by the use of 3-4 spaces between each sentence, this JS snippet will fix it: document.querySelectorAll("td>div").forEach(x=>(x.innerHTML = x.innerHTML.replace(/ /g, " ")))
jancsika 8y ago
Not everything works in about:blank. For example, if you go into devTools and try to build an SVG programmatically (or simply inject some innerHTML), the funcURLs won't pick up the ids in the <defs> section for things like gradients/patterns/etc. I can't remember which part of which spec conflicts with the other on this. I just remember mentioning it on the SVG list and the Mozilla bug list. (It actually works in Chrome, which a Mozilla dev told me is a bug in Chrome. :)
montulli 8y ago
I'm Lou and I'm the author of that article. If you have any questions I'm happy to answer them.
- johnmw 8y ago
  No further questions, just thanks for the enjoyable stories :-)
tannhaeuser 8y ago
about:legacy-compat made its way into HTML5 as the system identifier/URL of a (fictive) external SGML declaration set to contain declarations for the elements and attributes of HTML. It's required to make an HTML5 document a valid SGML application; if it weren't there, the declaration set would be treated as containing no declarations at all, which doesn't work for eg. empty (HTML "void") elements such as img and br, and also for writing enumerated attributes in their short forms such as in <option selected> etc.
parliament32 8y ago
The complete list of to-date about:mozilla passages: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/book/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/book/ I've always loved this easter egg.

143 points by johnmw 8y ago

Note this was written by Lou Montulli who also wrote the amusing post about "The Origins of the <Blink> Tag" [1] [1] http://www.montulli.org/theoriginofthe%3Cblink%3Etag http://www.montulli.org/theoriginofthe%3Cblink%3Etag I didn't know about the about:about url, and have since found a number of amusing and useful links, for example: Chrome: chrome://site-engagement/ chrome://net-internals/#dns chrome://net-export/ chrome://indexeddb-internals/# Firefox: about:mozilla about:memory about:robots

laumars 8y ago
about:robots doesn't work on Firefox on Android (does on desktop Linux though). A useful list of all the "abouts" in Firefox is about:about
- tobr 8y ago
  This mentioned both by the parent and in the post.
  - guipsp 8y ago
    This is not mentioned by the parent.
taf2 8y ago
Don’t forget chrome://extensions
- andyfleming 8y ago
  And chrome://restart
lytedev 8y ago
chrome://chrome-urls lists all of them, for those who don't know (including myself until 5 minutes ago!) Including ones for forcibly crashing chrome! chrome://inducebrowsercrashforrealz/ Love finding little Easter eggs like these! Thanks!
- kiallmacinnes 8y ago
  I'm on my cell phone, so... I cant test this out! But, this link led me to chrome://java-crash. Please tell me I can't put that in an iframe or something similar! Visiting it on my android phone crashes the chrome app.
  - guipsp 8y ago
    No, you cannot embed chrome:// urls this way (unless you find a bug!)
yread 8y ago
It's a pity they've removed about:cache https://superuser.com/questions/1316540/where-has-chrome-cache-been-moved-to https://superuser.com/questions/1316540/where-has-chrome-cac...
VectorLock 8y ago
The site-engagement one is particularly interesting. I guess Chrome tracks explicitly how much you use various sites. Seems to explain it more here https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/site-engagement https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/site-en...
js2 8y ago
Getting rid of that damn blink tag was the first time I ever directly edited a binary. Such a minor annoyance seems quaint now with what the web has become.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
grkvlt 8y ago
don't forget chrome://dino for the 'no internet' dinosaur game! (press spacebar...)

bugmen0t 8y ago

Firefox has a list of all "about:" pages at about:about

jwilk 8y ago
The article mentions that.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

czr 8y ago

slightly ot, but, if anyone else was distracted by the use of 3-4 spaces between each sentence, this JS snippet will fix it: document.querySelectorAll("td>div").forEach(x=>(x.innerHTML = x.innerHTML.replace(/ /g, " ")))

jancsika 8y ago

Not everything works in about:blank. For example, if you go into devTools and try to build an SVG programmatically (or simply inject some innerHTML), the funcURLs won't pick up the ids in the <defs> section for things like gradients/patterns/etc. I can't remember which part of which spec conflicts with the other on this. I just remember mentioning it on the SVG list and the Mozilla bug list. (It actually works in Chrome, which a Mozilla dev told me is a bug in Chrome. :)

montulli 8y ago

I'm Lou and I'm the author of that article. If you have any questions I'm happy to answer them.

johnmw 8y ago
No further questions, just thanks for the enjoyable stories :-)

tannhaeuser 8y ago

about:legacy-compat made its way into HTML5 as the system identifier/URL of a (fictive) external SGML declaration set to contain declarations for the elements and attributes of HTML. It's required to make an HTML5 document a valid SGML application; if it weren't there, the declaration set would be treated as containing no declarations at all, which doesn't work for eg. empty (HTML "void") elements such as img and br, and also for writing enumerated attributes in their short forms such as in <option selected> etc.

parliament32 8y ago

The complete list of to-date about:mozilla passages: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/book/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/book/ I've always loved this easter egg.