Dan Q
This self-post was originally posted to /r/operabrowser. See more things from Dan's Reddit account.
I’m looking for an extension that will automatically redirect-to-HTTPS for particular domains, e.g. to ensure that I’m using the secure version of Wikipedia, etc., whenever I go there. The HTTPS Everywhere plugin from the EFF does this for Firefox and Chrome; what can I do to make this work in Opera?
Opera 12 has been released, and brought with it a handful of new features. But there’s also been a feature removed – a little-known feature that allowed power users to have the web address appear in the title bar of the browser. I guess that the development team decided that, because the title bar is rarely seen nowadays (the space in which a title once occupied has for a long while now been used as a tab strip, in the style that Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox eventually copied), this feature wasn’t needed.
But for users of the KeePass Password Safe, this has the knock-on effect of crippling the ability for this security tool to automatically type passwords and other form data into web pages, forcing users to take the long-winded route of manually copy-pasting them each time.
To fix this problem, I’ve released the KeePass for Opera browser extension. It’s ludicrously simple: it injects a bit of Javascript (originally by Jean François) into every page you visit, which then appends the URL of the page to the title bar. This allows KeePass to detect what site you’re on, so the usual Global Auto-Type command (typically Left Ctrl + Alt + A) will work as normal.
[button link=”https://addons.opera.com/en-gb/extensions/details/keepass-auto-type/” align=”right” size=”medium” caption=”KeePass for Opera”]Install[/button]
Download KeePass for Opera (browser extension)
Open in Opera to install.
Further reading:
I’ve mentioned KeePass a few times before. See:
Last week I was talking to Alexander Dutton about an idea that we had to implement cookie-like behaviour using browser caching. As I first mentioned last year, new laws are coming into force across Europe that will require websites to ask for your consent before they store cookies on your computer. Regardless of their necessity, these laws are badly-defined and ill thought-out, and there’s been a significant lack of information to support web managers in understanding and implementing the required changes.
To illustrate one of the ambiguities in the law, I’ve implemented a tool which tracks site visitors almost as effectively as cookies (or similar technologies such as Flash Objects or Local Storage), but which must necessarily fall into one of the larger grey areas. My tool abuses the way that “permanent” (301) HTTP redirects are cached by web browsers.
[callout][button link=”http://c301.scatmania.org/” align=”right” size=”medium” color=”green”]See Demo Site[/button]You can try out my implementation for yourself. Click on the button to see the sample site, then close down all of your browser windows (or even restart your computer) and come back and try again: the site will recognise you and show you the same random number as it did the first time around, as well as identifying when your first visit was.[/callout]
Here’s how it works, in brief:
Compared to conventional cookie-based tracking (e.g. Google Analytics), this approach:
Moreover, this technique falls into a slight legal grey area. It would certainly be against the spirit of the law to use this technique for tracking purposes (although it would be trivial to implement even an advanced solution which “proxied” requests, using a database to associate conventional cookies with unique IDs, through to Google Analytics or a similar solution). However, it’s hard to legislate against the use of HTTP 301s, which are an even more-fundamental and required part of the web than cookies are. Also, and for the same reasons, it’s significantly harder to detect and block this technique than it is conventional tracking cookies. However, the technique is somewhat brittle and it would be necessary to put up with a reduced “cookie lifespan” if you used it for real.
[callout][button link=”http://c301.scatmania.org/” align=”right” size=”medium” color=”green”]See Demo Site[/button] [button link=”https://gist.github.com/avapoet/5318224″ align=”right” size=”medium” color=”orange”]Download Code[/button] Please try out the demo, or download the source code (Ruby/Sinatra) and see for yourself how this technique works.[/callout]
Note that I am not a lawyer, so I can’t make a statement about the legality (or not) of this approach to tracking. I would suspect that if you were somehow caught doing it without the consent of your users, you’d be just as guilty as if you used a conventional approach. However, it’s certainly a technically-interesting approach that might have applications in areas of legitimate tracking, too.
Update: The demo site is down, but I’ve update the download code link so that it still works.
Have you seen the latest stupidity that the Windows Internet Explorer team have come up with? Ten Grand Is Buried Here.
The idea is that they encourage you to give up whatever browser you’re using (assuming it’s not Internet Explorer 8), calling it names (like “old Firefox” if you’re using Firefox, “boring Safari” if you’re using Safari, “tarnished Chrome” if you’re using Chrome, and… “that browser” if you’re using Opera) and upgrade to Internet Explorer 8, and they’ll be giving out clues on their Twitter feed about some secret website that’ll only work in IE8 at which you can register and win $10,000AUS (yes, this is an Australian competition).
After looking at the site in Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera, I thought I’d give it a go in Internet Explorer 8. But it didn’t work – it mis-detected my installation of IE8 as being IE7 (no, I didn’t have Compatability Mode on).
In the end, though, I just used User Agent Switcher to make my copy of Firefox pretend to be Internet Explorer 8. Then it worked. So basically, all that I’ve learned is that Firefox does a better job of everything that Internet Explorer does, including viewing websites designed to only work in Internet Explorer. Good work, Microsoft. Have a slow clap.
NatWest phoned me today in response to my complaint the other day that their online banking service refused to support Opera, my web browser of choice, seemingly for no good reason. I threatened to take my account elsewhere. Regardless, they’ve promised to look into it and try to make the site Opera-compatible, and I’ve said I’ll give them ’til Christmas.
Let your feet do the talking, people. It’s the only way that big companies (and banks) pay any attention at all.
Just got back from seeing Equilibre (horse theatre thingy) with Claire. What can I say? Great music, brilliant dancing, some very impressive singing, the second best use of stagecraft (circumstances given) that I’ve ever seen, the work of a director with great imagination, impressive horseplay…
…but I can’t help but feel that I’ve come away from it missing something. Perhaps I just didn’t ‘get it’, but I did find it difficult to follow the plot, or, at times, even find one at all. Perhaps something to do with the fact that, of the four languages used during the show, I understood only the third-most frequently used.
Still: if you like horses, and you’d like to see them trot their stuff alongside opera singers on stilts, gypsies dancing with a horse skull, and flame-flinging people from earlier in my journal, this is the show for you. If, however, you don’t speak either Italian or Romany and don’t like horses, don’t bother.
They’re performing all of this week. Tickets £10 adults, £6 children.