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Look, I do run uBO. It doesn't even completely block JS, yet it still routinely breaks very basic pages, and I have to use a lot of webdev and industry knowledg

Look, I do run uBO. It doesn't even completely block JS, yet it still routinely breaks very basic pages, and I have to use a lot of webdev and industry knowledge to even try to unbreak them without entirely turning off blocking. So no, for most people who want to use mainstream websites, just turning off JS is not a real option. That this is a dystopic scenario does not change the practical reality.

galangalalgol 4y ago
I never have to turn off uBO to get pages to work. Am I just visiting really boring sites, or is there a default setting I should change to be more strict amd break more pages?
- andrewflnr 4y ago
  I don't know, I guess it could be that turning on the "I know what I'm doing" matrix features made it more strict? It seems like every e-commerce site and most blog/news sites want to host all their images offsite (mostly CDNs I assume) in some weird JS-mediated way. Anything with a captcha breaks. Any purchase checkout process that involves other domains, which is almost all of them, can be counted on to break. If someone can tell me I'm just misunderstanding what's going on, I'd love to spend less time messing with websites' guts and still be reasonably protected.
  - notRobot 4y ago
    uBO can break sites, but in my experience doesn't to the degree that you're describing. Perhaps you should clear all settings and re-install the extension once and see if that helps? Do you maybe have other content blocking extensions running at the same time as uBO that are causing 'clashes'?
    - zarzavat 4y ago
      For me uBO breaks 3D-secure, so it does in fact break every e-commerce checkout that uses it. I just disable the entire extension before I buy something, but it’s rather awkward.
      - numpad0 4y ago
        That “enter just your web password here” thing? Don’t seem to for me. Amazon checkout seems to be breaking from something recently but likely not uBO filters.
    - andrewflnr 4y ago
      I'll probably give this a shot. The only settings changes I can remember are allowing things, but I could be wrong. No other content-blocker extensions, I believe.
      - notRobot 4y ago
        Sometimes 'Enhanced Tracking Protection' built into Firefox can break sites too. Click on the shield in the URL bar to toggle.
  - JeremyNT 4y ago
    In that mode you can make it much more strict, such that it loads no js at all by default, and/or loads only first party scripts by default. I think out of the box with the default blacklist mode very few things are broken, but the trade-off there is that you're running way more code. I do imagine the default list would block this specific nonsense from tiktok, although I haven't verified that assumption. I block all scripts initially with ubo and slowly allow what I need to make a site function (or just close tab on sites I deem unworthy of the effort). This is certainly more than you could expect from a normal user.
- sva_ 4y ago
  I just had this problem today when trying to book a flight at American Airlines. The purchase button would simply not work when uBO was on.
jxramos 4y ago
this may be daydreaming too shallowly, but I wonder if basic Javascript UI patterns could be identified by some tool. Something along the lines of a new pane showing up in the Developer Tools that semantically identifies the roles of certain Javascript. * This block of code ensures these UI elements are synched among each other. * This block of code sends this UI data to this server address. Something that gives a rough & coarse data tracing dependency analysis of inputs and outputs. There may be techniques to defeat this but I think some general patterns would become established where web designs could begin to be shifted to compartmentalize different functionality to streamline such a tool being able to to pare off the insignificant and safe parts of JS and enable folks like yourself to zero in on the interesting and questionable parts.
- Kerrick 4y ago
  Even without that tool, HTML continues to evolve and add common “components” that people have used JavaScript to create for decades, which work without (or with minimal) JS. For example, <details> and <summary>, <dialog>, <datalist>, and more.
  - jxramos 4y ago
    That’s interesting so your saying when developers offload to the html standard typical UI workflows that have been baked into certain html tags then there’s less innocuous JS to have to wade through in the first place. That’s amazing actually and very welcomed.
- novok 4y ago
  That is behavior based malware analysis.
- octoberfranklin 4y ago
  That's what LibreJS does. https://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/ https://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/ It is not terribly useful.
ShredKazoo 4y ago
I use uBO with JavaScript on and almost all the filter lists it ships with enabled. Never had any problems with web functionality. I just tried adding tiktok.com to "My filters", but it seems like ads.tiktok.com is still accessible with that rule -- how can I block all tiktok subdomains simultaneously?

galangalalgol 4y ago

I never have to turn off uBO to get pages to work. Am I just visiting really boring sites, or is there a default setting I should change to be more strict amd break more pages?

andrewflnr 4y ago
I don't know, I guess it could be that turning on the "I know what I'm doing" matrix features made it more strict? It seems like every e-commerce site and most blog/news sites want to host all their images offsite (mostly CDNs I assume) in some weird JS-mediated way. Anything with a captcha breaks. Any purchase checkout process that involves other domains, which is almost all of them, can be counted on to break. If someone can tell me I'm just misunderstanding what's going on, I'd love to spend less time messing with websites' guts and still be reasonably protected.
- notRobot 4y ago
  uBO can break sites, but in my experience doesn't to the degree that you're describing. Perhaps you should clear all settings and re-install the extension once and see if that helps? Do you maybe have other content blocking extensions running at the same time as uBO that are causing 'clashes'?
  - zarzavat 4y ago
    For me uBO breaks 3D-secure, so it does in fact break every e-commerce checkout that uses it. I just disable the entire extension before I buy something, but it’s rather awkward.
    - numpad0 4y ago
      That “enter just your web password here” thing? Don’t seem to for me. Amazon checkout seems to be breaking from something recently but likely not uBO filters.
  - andrewflnr 4y ago
    I'll probably give this a shot. The only settings changes I can remember are allowing things, but I could be wrong. No other content-blocker extensions, I believe.
    - notRobot 4y ago
      Sometimes 'Enhanced Tracking Protection' built into Firefox can break sites too. Click on the shield in the URL bar to toggle.
- JeremyNT 4y ago
  In that mode you can make it much more strict, such that it loads no js at all by default, and/or loads only first party scripts by default. I think out of the box with the default blacklist mode very few things are broken, but the trade-off there is that you're running way more code. I do imagine the default list would block this specific nonsense from tiktok, although I haven't verified that assumption. I block all scripts initially with ubo and slowly allow what I need to make a site function (or just close tab on sites I deem unworthy of the effort). This is certainly more than you could expect from a normal user.
sva_ 4y ago
I just had this problem today when trying to book a flight at American Airlines. The purchase button would simply not work when uBO was on.

jxramos 4y ago

this may be daydreaming too shallowly, but I wonder if basic Javascript UI patterns could be identified by some tool. Something along the lines of a new pane showing up in the Developer Tools that semantically identifies the roles of certain Javascript. * This block of code ensures these UI elements are synched among each other. * This block of code sends this UI data to this server address. Something that gives a rough & coarse data tracing dependency analysis of inputs and outputs. There may be techniques to defeat this but I think some general patterns would become established where web designs could begin to be shifted to compartmentalize different functionality to streamline such a tool being able to to pare off the insignificant and safe parts of JS and enable folks like yourself to zero in on the interesting and questionable parts.

Kerrick 4y ago
Even without that tool, HTML continues to evolve and add common “components” that people have used JavaScript to create for decades, which work without (or with minimal) JS. For example, <details> and <summary>, <dialog>, <datalist>, and more.
- jxramos 4y ago
  That’s interesting so your saying when developers offload to the html standard typical UI workflows that have been baked into certain html tags then there’s less innocuous JS to have to wade through in the first place. That’s amazing actually and very welcomed.
novok 4y ago
That is behavior based malware analysis.
octoberfranklin 4y ago
That's what LibreJS does. https://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/ https://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/ It is not terribly useful.

ShredKazoo 4y ago

I use uBO with JavaScript on and almost all the filter lists it ships with enabled. Never had any problems with web functionality. I just tried adding tiktok.com to "My filters", but it seems like ads.tiktok.com is still accessible with that rule -- how can I block all tiktok subdomains simultaneously?