refspoof help
well after many seem to be in need of such a help file i thought ..
heck why not write one as i have quite some time spent anyway to refine the extension ..
to test it - use as ex http://refspoof.mozdev.org/referrer.php
or as spoof url this or
another page to list this and other browser properties
feedback preferably to the refspoof note board
(previous posts may contain your answer .. if the extension doesnt work try it with a new profile :) )
as for the basics what the referrer is:
normally as you travel by links through the web any well behaved browser sends the address it came from
in the request for the new documents .. be it pictures or html pages.
If you enter an url direcly in the address bar or load a bookmark no referrer will be sent.
Now as an example: You search with google for "cars" you'll get a list of links .. if you click now
on one .. the target site might - if they check their logs - know that where you came from and in this case
what search terms were used. (made automated public as trackback in the blogging world)
This behaviour could be changed to disallow any referrers with mozilla for privacy reasons but it normally
could harm the web experience as described why below.
why would i want to spoof/pretend a referrer?
quite some websites (especially in the content/image/news/porn business) use referrer control as a simple
mean to prevent outside deep linking. others use it to generate statistics of viewers.
now further to explain how refspoof works :)
the working center (backend) of the extension is the nsSpoofProtocolHandler.js component which watches
for spoof:// formatted urls and reformats the http request accordingly .. unfortunately i didnt got it that
far in refinement as to get the back/forward buttons to work (would love if anyone could help me in this respect)
now to the gui i created for it .. there are 3 or 4 main elements
toolbar
toolbar options menu
preferences / convert dialog
sidebar that doesnt too much yet
toolbar
can be toggled via the menu "View>Toolbars>refspoof Toolbar" !!
1 - spoofmarks button: generates bookmarks of the format "spoof://tst.com;ref://tst.com". it uses either the the current page
or the contents of the url/refbar (preferences)
2 - spoof button: takes the contents of the url/refbar and spoof if clicked upon .. also accepts drag n drop of text or url links
3 - refbar: the url we are going to spoof with - pressing enter while on focus has the same effects as pressing the spoof button ..
is a popdown bar as it generates a not permanent stored history that can be cleared via "Clean refbar history" in the Options menu bar
4 - url=ref: disables/clears the refbar and takes the urlbar contents as referrer on a click on spoof / spoofmark button ..
5 - toolbar options menu
6 - sidebar button: toggles a sidebar with a url that can be set in preferences not really useful yet
toolbar options menu
1 - if toggled every "spoof button" click will open a new tab
2 - dumps the referrer of the current page to the refbar
3 - the refbar is a pull down menu this cleans it
4 - opens another window that contains info and a single button to convert your old .rdf or the other spoof file formats .ini and .txt ; delimited --
(well if you are into pr0n you may wanna go to http://www.pr0nbar0n.com/ :) .. you can select multiple files to get written to one bookmark file :) just hold the respective
modifiers to do so - like shift/command/alt key depends on the operating system
5 - opens the prefs window
preferences
1 - on taking a bookmark either the contents of the url/refbar or the properties of current page are used as mentioned above
if the shift modifier is pressed while pushing the button the other behaviour is used instead
2 - shows either a bookmark save dialog or saves the bookmark directly to the specified folder (like a predefined direct "add bookmark here")
3 - placeholder grayed out for now (dont know as much about rdf/xbl/css yet have to look a bit more at sage extension code ;) )
4 - opens a bookmarks save dialog to store a bookmarklet that enables to reload the current page with a self chosen referrer
5 - a checkbox for more info/debug messages if you wanna watch them :) or are looking a bit at the code .. some further messages are shown in the statusbar if you click on spoof/spoofmark while no refbar spoof url is given.
what's behind this inconsistency of the word refer(r)er?
some say the single r version is intentional some say it's a spelling error - fact is that in the rfc of http spec (rfc=read for comment) it's written with one r ..