Without using automation, is there any way to programmatically disable prerender feature (Advanced Setting: Predict network actions to improve page load performance) in google chrome?
I couldn't find any straight forward API that allows me to modify this setting. So, I tried modifying dns_prefetchin->enabled in the "[Chromedir]\User Data\Default\Preferences" file to "false". But that value was getting reset every time I open Chrome. Using the Procmon utility didn't provide me any additional clues on where chrome may store its settings.
Thanks in advance.
Edit: I should mention upfront that using command line option --prerender won't work as I need this value to be turned off for all instances of chrome (even when launched by Operating system shell).
Related
My searches have turned up nothing concrete. My extension uses Google's file picker to allow the user to browse their sheets and choose a desired file to write some data to, which manifest v3 breaks because of some GAPI limitations. Unless I've missed something obvious, there does not seem to be a simple workaround or method for this to migrate to v3 -- it just seems to be disallowed.
I'm not asking if there's a way to do something that they intend to not be possible (even though I doubt such a thing would exist with Google) but I'm optimistically hoping that maybe there is some hacky/annoying workaround that still fits within their rules. If I absolutely have to just allow them to set a sheet URL manually I will...I'm just trying to avoid it.
Any tips or suggestions would be appreciated.
You may have to test it yourself to make sure there are no weird behaviors, but Google has some recommendations regarding this in their migration guide:
In Manifest V3, all of your extension's logic must be included in the extension. You can no longer load and execute a remotely hosted file. A number of alternative approaches are available, depending on your use case and the reason for remote hosting. Here are approaches to consider:
Configuration-driven features and logic
In this approach, your extension loads a remote configuration (for example a JSON file) at runtime and caches the configuration locally. The extension then uses this cached configuration to decide which features to enable.
Externalize logic with a remote service
Consider migrating application logic from the extension to a remote web service that your extension can call. (Essentially a form of message passing.) This provides you the ability to keep code private and change the code on demand while avoiding the extra overhead of resubmitting to the Chrome Web Store.
Bundle third-party libraries
If you are using a popular framework like React or Bootstrap, you can download the minified files, add them to your project and import them locally.
For your case, option #3 seems like the easiest. Looking at the Google Picker API documentation it only uses two relatively small script files, https://apis.google.com/js/api.js and https://accounts.google.com/gsi/client. You could try to bundle these in your Chrome extension and call the methods locally.
I am not able to run my content script on the new tab page (where it is not assigned to any url).
I looked at various posts on the subject, ie, Does content script have access to newtab page?
and What is the URL of the google chrome new tab page and how to exclude it from manifest.json
which seem to suggest it is possible.
I enabled chrome://flags/#extensions-on-chrome-urls
I have:
"permissions": [
"http://*/*",
"https://*/*",
"chrome://*/*"
],
(also tried "*://*/_/chrome/newtab*")
still no luck ... what am I missing ?
this answer Can you access chrome:// pages from an extension? mentsions "wildcards are not accepted". Is this true ? and if so how to specify the newtab page ?
The problem is that Chrome 61 and newer explicitly forbids access to the contents of its built-in new tab page (NTP) via content scripts or any other API.
The solution is to create the entire replacement page as an html file in your extension and specify it in chrome_url_overrides.
As for why, here's quoting [source] rdevlin, one of the developers of chrome extensions API:
There's a few reasons for this change. One is to enforce policy,
the other is for consistency.
We've had a public policy for awhile now that states that modification of
the NTP through anything other than Chrome URL overrides isn't allowed (though
we didn't begin enforcing this policy in many cases until July 1st). This is
merely bringing chrome code more inline with that same policy to help prevent
surprise if an extension is modifying the NTP and is taken down for policy
violations.
This is also for consistency, since we've actually treated scripts on the NTP
differently for years now, due to certain NTP magic. For example, the URL seen
by the browser on the NTP is chrome://newtab, but the url in the renderer is
https://www.google.com/_/chrome/newtab. Since chrome.tabs.executeScript checks
the URL in the browser, the script would be denied, even though content scripts
(checked in the renderer) would be allowed. In theory, these permissions should
not be different. Similarly odd, if the user is using the local ntp
(chrome-search://local-ntp/local-ntp.html), injection would already be
disallowed in both the renderer and the browser. And, if we go waaaaay back,
the NTP used to be pure WebUI with an URL of chrome://newtab, where injections
were again disallowed. Rather than have inconsistent behavior depending on the
type of script injection the extension uses, we want to have consistency
throughout the system.
P.S. Please don't edit the quoted text.
Using MS Edge and apache w/ php, I just discovered via access.log that when I have the JavaScript debug panel (i.e. developer panel) open, it is making every http call twice. When I closed this panel, it has fixed the issue of all insert statements getting called twice.
Question: Does this doubling of http calls happen on every / most browsers that I need to look out for, or is this something special/unique with MS Edge?
I can't speak for all browsers and all developer tools. But, for IE and Edge the first time you open the tools and then open a JS file in the sources view it will try to request the file again. That request will be served from the local browser cache, sometimes not, depending on the cache settings for the file being requested.
The reason browser tools need to make this request is that browsers will often throw out the original source file as it doesn't need it to execute the page, as the source has been parsed it into something else that it can work with.
However, after you've opened the developer tools the browser will keep around sources in future navigations, either in the tools front end or elsewhere. Not keeping sources is an optimization for the first time use case, to save browsers keeping around source on the very low odds of the tool being used on any given navigation.
Of course some files are never cached by the browser and will need to be downloaded when requested by the tools, for example sourcemapped files.
In general any resources on your site that can be accessed by HTTP GET should be idempotent. That is, a GET shouldn't change the resource being requested (or generall the state of your site), so hopefully making additional requests shouldn't be an issue.
I want to test the code that must run when the browser does not have / does not allow me to use the local storage feature. Is there any way to mock this behavior on Selenium side?
Take a look at this question and the answers:
How can I browse with localstorage disabled?
It's not specifically about selenium, but it tells you how to configure the browsers to disable local storage; using that, you should be able to run selenium with a browser using that configuration.
I'm trying to find a non-SSL resource that is being loaded on my site.
This happens occasional where one of us forgets to use the https version of a resource (like some js in a CDN).
My question is there any firebug-like tools to find these "Turds in the punch bowl"? I want my green padlock back :)
Besides Firebug, which you've mentioned, you can use the developer tools in Chrome:
Tools menu -> Developer Tools
Go through the list of loaded resources in the Network tab
Alternatively, the HttpFox extension for Firefox can also be useful. It will keep logging the traffic even when you change pages, which may be useful in some cases.
(This is very similar to Firebug.)
mitm-proxy is great for stuff like this - http://crypto.stanford.edu/ssl-mitm/
You run it on your local machine in a console window, set your browser to use it as a proxy, and you can watch /log everything that your browser requests. It's a little noisy since it shows SSL hand-shaking and file contents, but you can filter that down. When you need to debug SSL communications it's invaluable to see those details though..
mitm-proxy is based on http://grinder.sourceforge.net/g3/tcpproxy.html which has more in the way of scripting capabilities.