How do we know this works?

in
17 posts, 6 voices

Sep 1, 2009 11:25am ploder User	As title. How can I test this to see if it is working as stated?

Oct 17, 2009 12:38am Avindra V.G. Scriptwright	.... you can right click the links, copy them in search results and clearly see the tracking code is gone. edit: I made my own version of this script: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/60382

Jun 8, 2010 1:40am Draenan User	Right-clicking and copying the links won't tell you if the "onmousedown" tracking is removed, I believe. But I'm no Javascript expert. As far as I can tell, this doesn't work. Otherwise I wouldn't be seeing all the "onmousedown" references to clk() in the page source code, correct? I've put alerts() throughout the script, but the alert inside the part that actually does the "removeAttribute" doesn't trigger. Be nice if there was a definitive way to confirm if this script works or not.

Jun 8, 2010 2:12am Draenan User	Okay, so I started from scratch and tried again, and this time the alert in the removeAttribute section triggered when I was using GreaseMonkey with Firefox. Still doesn't trigger with GreaseKit in Safari. Looks like this might be a GreaseKit/Safari incompatibility problem.

Jun 8, 2010 6:47am Draenan User	Disregard my posts. As I said, I'm not a Javascript expert. :)

Jun 8, 2010 12:56pm krisu Scriptwright	You can look from Firebug, if you know how to do it :P It removes the onmousedown-part from the search links.

Jun 13, 2010 8:07am download Script's Author	I've not tested this on Safari, so I'm not sure if it works there. It may be that Safari, like Chrome, doesn't fire a "load" event for GM scripts. If so then an extra line needs to be added to fix that. I won't add the line until I know for sure, but I don't have Safari and don't plan on installing any Apple software (they package all sorts of crap with it). If anyone knows how load events behave in Safari, tell me and I'll make the changes.

Jun 24, 2010 5:29pm David Jo Scriptwright	At first thanks, that you presented your work to public. Second: I found the script is not working very well (50% or less). I watched my status bar (Firefox 3.5) and saw some traffic for google links before my browser follows a google independent link. If I search something and reload the google page afterwards, this additional traffic from google does not appear (script is enabled). The traffic I see appears every time I disabled the script, so the script is working but, as I already wrote, 50% or less. As result, I have to reload my search results first before I click on any link represented by google to make your script working. Google search results seems to be loaded by javascript, so no "load" event is raised on searching.

Jun 25, 2010 9:26pm download Script's Author	I had noticed it didn't seem to load sometimes, but just assumed it was my slow computer/connection causing a race condition. (That and I didn't really feel like working on it then). I changed the way it prevents clicks and keystrokes from being intercepted so it works with the new google. Hopefully this new method will last another few incarnations of google.

Jun 26, 2010 5:58am David Jo Scriptwright	Ok, I installed it on my machine. Don't know what to say. According to my status bar, it does not work, sorry. I am sorry, because I cannot help you. In my eyes google is the most seen failure, like facebook etc... but I think we have to give them the right to seek through our/theirs search results. TrackMeNot is another Firefox plugin I know, which fits in here. It sends random generated search queries to google (and others) with search queries. In combination with your solution it is a quite good kit against google.

Jun 26, 2010 5:36pm download Script's Author	Does it show in the active script list, and if so does it have a check-mark next to it?

Jun 27, 2010 6:31am David Jo Scriptwright	Yes it has. I disabled all other scripts. Only yours in enabled. Of course Greasemonkey plugin is enabled, too. If I search for "Wikipedia" for example, and hold the mousebutton down, an URL from google shows up including wikipedia's address, before I get redirected to wikipedia after releasing the mousebutton. As you can see I am using Firefox on Mac. Any known problems here?

Jun 27, 2010 7:06am David Jo Scriptwright	...and it shows up in the list of active scripts in context menue of GM with a check-mark next to its entry. I think you meant this...

Jun 27, 2010 11:33pm download Script's Author	I usually test by pressing the button down then dragging to somewhere else in the page and releasing. It allows you to see the results without going to the page. Unfortunately, I don't have a Mac to test on but you might be able to check at least one thing. Try removing the if(navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Chrome")!=-1){ and } from the bottom so it just leaves the: var e=document.createEvent("Event"); e.initEvent("load",false,false); dispatchEvent(e); If it works after that it's just a platform difference and I can make a quick change that should fix it. Otherwise, I'll have to wait 'til I can get to a Mac.

Jun 28, 2010 3:31pm David Jo Scriptwright	I tested it with nebulous results: 1. I removed the lines of code, as mentioned from your side. 2. I put an alert box saying "m" before you create the event for document. 3. Then I restart my browser and go to google's searching page. 4. I enter some simple search phrase like "wikipedia", and get no positive result's for the links. My browser shows me the google links. OK never mind. 5. I follow one of the links. 6. After I got redirected successfully I push the back button in my browser. Now Firefox generates some invalid URL for google like the following: http://www.google.de/#hl=de&&sa=X&ei=oL0oTM_9Ko... 7. After this I get a white screen for google's searching page. Google crashed. 8. I enter the plain address for google again. 9. Now I enter some search phrase like "wikipedia", and now I get positive result's for the links. My browser doesn't show the google links. Note, that every step out of this nine steps is important, even restarting my browser and this silly alert box. That's my result. Hope you get around this.

Jun 30, 2010 5:48pm download Script's Author	I couldn't replicate the hash url corruption but I think I got the other bits. It seems we were looking at different types of search results; I usually use "test" which returns regular results, while searches like "wikipedia" return sub-results as well. I've changed it to support the extra sub-results now. You should see the Google redirect url on mouseover of those links, but see it change to regular on mousedown.

Jul 1, 2010 4:37pm David Jo Scriptwright	Hi download, Now I noticed three different behaviours on three different machines :). I tested your script with Firefox+Greasemonkey+googlePrivacy on Windows XP, Ubuntu and Mac: Mac: Nothing changed, see my reply above. Windows: I noticed no diffence between "script is installed" and "script is not installed". The links were always WITHOUT the damn google redirects in the status bar. I could not get any diffence, too, if I started to drag the links anywere to see how Firefox behaves to the Urls. Ubuntu: Without script everything works normally. If I installed the script, google links all linked to undefined. Never seen that before... I had no time to dig deeper into this issue, maybe you will here from me later...cheers and bye.