I was surprised in my failure to find a script online to download all of an author’s stories from Fiction Press or Fan Fiction.Net, so I threw together the below.

If you go to an author’s page in a browser (only tested in Chrome) it should have all of their stories, and you can run the following script in the console (F12) to grab them all. Their save name format is STORY_NAME_LINK_FORMAT - CHAPTER_NUMBER.html. It works as follows:

1. Gathers all of the names, chapter 1 links, and chapter counts for each story.
2. Converts this information into a list of links it needs to download. The links are formed by using the chapter 1 link, and just replacing the chapter number.
3. It then downloads all of the links to your current browser’s download folder.

Do note that chrome should prompt you to answer “This site is attempting to download multiple files”. So of course, say yes. The script is also designed to detect problems, which would happen if fictionpress changes their html formatting.

//Gather the story information
const Stories=[];
$('.mystories .stitle').each((Index, El) =>
	Stories[Index]={Link:$(El).attr('href'), Name:$(El).text()}
);
$('.mystories .xgray').each((Index, El) =>
	Stories[Index].NumChapters=/ - Chapters: (\d+) - /.exec($(El).text())[1]
);

//Get links to all stories
const LinkStart=document.location.protocol+'//'+document.location.host;
const AllLinks=[];
$.each(Stories, (_, Story) => {
	if(typeof(Story.NumChapters)!=='string' || !/^\d+$/.test(Story.NumChapters))
		return console.log('Bad number of chapters for: '+Story.Name);
	const StoryParts=/^\/s\/(\d+)\/1\/(.*)$/.exec(Story.Link);
	if(!StoryParts)
		return console.log('Bad link format for stories: '+Story.Name);
	for(let i=1; i<=Story.NumChapters; i++)
		AllLinks.push([LinkStart+'/s/'+StoryParts[1]+'/'+i+'/'+StoryParts[2], StoryParts[2]+' - '+i+'.html']);
});

//Download all the links
$.each(AllLinks, (_, LinkInfo) =>
	$('a').attr('download', LinkInfo[1]).attr('href', LinkInfo[0])[0].click()
);

jQuery('.blurb.group .heading a[href^="/works"]').map((_, El) => jQuery(El).text()).toArray().join('\n');

function DeepObjectCompare(O1, O2)
{
	try {
		DOC_Val(O1, O2, ['O1->O2', O1, O2]);
		return DOC_Val(O2, O1, ['O2->O1', O1, O2]);
	} catch(e) {
		console.log(e.Chain);
		throw(e);
	}
}
function DOC_Error(Reason, Chain, Val1, Val2)
{
	this.Reason=Reason;
	this.Chain=Chain;
	this.Val1=Val1;
	this.Val2=Val2;
}

function DOC_Val(Val1, Val2, Chain)
{
	function DoThrow(Reason, NewChain) { throw(new DOC_Error(Reason, NewChain!==undefined ? NewChain : Chain, Val1, Val2)); }

	if(typeof(Val1)!==typeof(Val2))
		return DoThrow('Type Mismatch');
	if(Val1===null || Val1===undefined)
		return Val1!==Val2 ? DoThrow('Null/undefined mismatch') : true;
	if(Val1.constructor!==Val2.constructor)
		return DoThrow('Constructor mismatch');
	switch(typeof(Val1))
	{
		case 'object':
			for(var m in Val1)
			{
				if(!Val1.hasOwnProperty(m))
					continue;
				var CurChain=Chain.concat([m]);
				if(!Val2.hasOwnProperty(m))
					return DoThrow('Val2 missing property', CurChain);
				DOC_Val(Val1[m], Val2[m], CurChain);
			}
			return true;
		case 'number':
			if(Number.isNaN(Val1))
				return !Number.isNaN(Val2) ? DoThrow('NaN mismatch') : true;
		case 'string':
		case 'boolean':
			return Val1!==Val2 ? DoThrow('Value mismatch') : true;
		case 'function':
			if(Val1.prototype!==Val2.prototype)
				return DoThrow('Prototype mismatch');
			if(Val1!==Val2)
				return DoThrow('Function mismatch');
			return true;
		default:
			return DoThrow('Val1 is unknown type');
	}
}

var DataToSend=new FormData();
DataToSend.append(PostVariableName, VariableData); //Send a normal variable
DataToSend.append(PostFileVariableName, FileElement.files[0], PostFileName); //Send a file
var xhr=new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.open("POST", YOUR_URL, true);
xhr.send(DataToSend);

function DownloadFile(
    FileURL,     //http://...
    Callback,    //The function to call back when the file download is complete. It receives the file Blob.
    ContentType) //The output Content-Type for the file. Example=image/jpeg
{
    var Req=new XMLHttpRequest();
    Req.responseType='arraybuffer';
    Req.onload=function() {
        Callback(new Blob([this.response], {type:ContentType}));
    };
    Req.open("GET", FileURL, true);
    Req.send();
}

//User Variables
var DownloadURL="https://www.castledragmire.com/layout/PopupBG.png";
var PostURL="https://www.castledragmire.com/ProjectContent/WebScripts/Default_PHP_Variables.php";
var PostFileVariableName="MyFile";
var OutputFileName="Example.jpg";
//End of User Variables

DownloadFile(DownloadURL, function(DownloadedFileBlob) {
    //Get the data to send
    var Data=new FormData();
    Data.append(PostFileVariableName, DownloadedFileBlob, OutputFileName);

    //Function to run on completion
    var CompleteFunction=function(ReturnData) {
        //Add your code in this function to handle the ajax result
        var ReturnText=(ReturnData.responseText ? ReturnData : this).responseText;
        console.log(ReturnText);
    }

    //Normal AJAX example
    var Req=new XMLHttpRequest();
    Req.onload=CompleteFunction; //You can also use "onreadystatechange", which is required for some older browsers
    Req.open("POST", PostURL, true);
    Req.send(Data);

    //jQuery example
    $.ajax({type:'POST', url:PostURL, data:Data, contentType:false, processData:false, cache:false, complete:CompleteFunction});
});

Unfortunately, due to cross site scripting (XSS) security settings, you can generally only use ajax to query URLs on the same domain. I use my Cross site scripting solutions and HTTP Forwarders for this. Stackoverflow also has a good thread about it.

So I was recently hired to set up a go-between system that would allow two independent websites to directly communicate and transfer/copy data between each other via a web browser. This is obviously normally not possible due to cross-site browser security settings (XSS), so I gave the client 2 possible solutions. Both of these solutions are written with the assumption that there is a go-between intermediary iframe/window, on a domain that they control, between the 2 independent site iframes/window. This would also work fine for one site you control against a site you do not control.

1. Tell the browser to ignore this security requirement:
   • For example, if you add to the chrome command line arguments “--disable-web-security”, cross-site security checks will be removed. However, chrome will prominently display on the very first tab (which can be closed) at the top of the browser “You are using an unsupported command-line flag: —disable-web-security. Stability and security will suffer”. This can be scary to the user, and could also allow security breaches if the user utilizes that browser [session] for anything except the application page.
2. The more appropriate way to do it, which requires a bit of work on the administrative end, is having all 3 sites pretend to run off of the same domain. To do this:
   1. You must have a domain that you control, which we will call UnifyingDomain.com (This top level domain can contain subdomains)
   2. The 2 sites that YOU control would need a JavaScript line of  “document.domain='UnifyingDomain.com';” somewhere in them. These 2 sites must also be run off of a subdomain of UnifyingDomain.com, (which can also be done through apache redirect directives).
   3. The site that you do not control would need to be forwarded through your UnifyingDomain.com (not a subdomain) via an apache permanent redirect.
      • This may not work, if their site programmer is dumb and does not use proper relative links for everything (absolute links are the devil :-) ). If this is the case:
        • You can use a [http] proxy to pull in their site through your domain (in which case, if you wanted, you could inject a “domain=”)
        • You can use the domain that you do not control as the top level UnifyingDomain.com, and add rules into your computer’s hostname files to redirect its subdomains to your IPs.

This project is why I ended up making my HTTP Forwarders client in go (coming soon).

It has always really bugged me that in Chrome, when you want to view the response and form data for an AJAX request listed in the console, you have to go through multiple annoying clicks to view these two pieces of data, which are also on separate tabs. There is a great Chrome extension though called AJAX-Debugger that gets you all the info you need on the console. However, it also suffered from the having-to-click-through problem for the request data (5th object deep in an object nest), and it did not support JSONP. I’ve gone ahead and fixed these 2 problems :-).

Now to get around to making the other Chrome plugin I’ve been needing for a while ... (Automatic devtool window focus when focusing its parent window)

[Edit on 2015-08-20 @ 8:10am] I added another patch to the Chrome extension to atomically run the group calls (otherwise, they sometimes showed out of order).

Also, the auto focusing thing is not possible as a pure extension due to chrome API inadequacies. While it would be simple to implement using an interval poll via something like Auto Hot Key, I really hate [the hack of] making things constantly poll to watch for something. I’m thinking of a hybrid chrome extension+AHK script as a solution.

Here is a little Tampermonkey script for Chrome that automatically clicks the “Continue playing” button when it pops up on Netflix, pausing the current stream.

// ==UserScript==
// @name         Netflix auto continue play
// @namespace    https://www.castledragmire.com/Posts/Netflix_Auto_Continue_Play
// @version      1.0
// @description  When netflix pops up the "Continue play" button, this script auto-selects "Continue" within 1 second
// @author       Dakusan
// @match        http://www.netflix.com/
// @grant        none
// ==/UserScript==

setInterval(function() {
    var TheElements=document.getElementsByClassName('continue-playing');
    for(var i=0;i<TheElements.length;i++)
        if(/\bbutton\b/.test(TheElements[i].className))
        {
            console.log('"Continue Playing" Clicked');
            TheElements[i].click();
        }
}, 1000);

Make sure to set the “User matches” in the settings page to include both “http://www.netflix.com/*” and “https://www.netflix.com/*”.

So I was applying for a job that requires using Facebook’s career section, and I found it immensely helpful that it automatically filled in most of the form (Skills, Education History, Experience, etc) via your profile, as that information can take well over half an hour to fill in every time. However, an uploaded resume is also required on the form, and when you upload the file, Facebook tries to import the contents from it, thereby deleting all information already filled in!

1. Make sure all information you have already filled in (the non automatic stuff) is saved elsewhere to fill in again. If this includes Skills, Education History or Experience, I highly recommend you fill this information directly into your Facebook profile. It can be made private if you do not wish it to be shared.
2. Upload your resume, which will erase everything already on the forms.
3. After you have uploaded your resume, run the following javascript (available via your browser’s javacript/developer console):
   
   document.getElementsByName('cand_resume_fbid')[0].value
   and store the result
4. Do a complete/hard refresh (ctrl+f5) of the page. While this will erase the resume, it will again fill in all the other automatic information.
5. Run the following javascript to restore the resume (replacing the ### with the value received from above):
   document.getElementsByName('cand_resume_fbid')[0].value='###';
   The change will not show on the page, but it works

Just throwing these up here for reference. Simple JavaScript scripts to get and set cookies. Not particularly foolproof, robust, or fully featured.

function SetCookie(Name, Value, SecondsToExpire) { document.cookie=Name+"="+escape(Value)+"; expires="+new Date(new Date().getTime()+SecondsToExpire*1000).toUTCString(); }
function GetCookie(Name)
{
	var Match=document.cookie.match(new RegExp('(?:^|; ?)'+Name+'=(.*?)(?:;|$)'));
	return Match ? unescape(Match[1]) : null;
}

Mac renders fonts differently than windows, which is a problem when trying to make cross-system compatible web pages. I've read in many places that using "em" instead of pixels fixes this problem, but sometimes using pixel based measurements is required for a project.

I found when testing a recent project's web page out on Apple's OSX that no matter what browser I used, the fonts were always 2px bigger than on windows, which threw off my layouts. So I used the simple JavaScript solution below (jQuery required). Note that this assumes all font sizes are in pixels. It might not hurt to add a check for that if you mix font size types.

$(document).ready(function() {
	if(/Macintosh/.test(navigator.userAgent))
		$.each(document.styleSheets, function(Indx, SS) {
			var rules=SS.cssRules || SS.rules;
			for(var i=0;i<rules.length;i++)
				if(rules[i].style && rules[i].style.fontSize!='')
					rules[i].style.fontSize=(parseInt(rules[i].style.fontSize, 10)-2)+'px';
});

Here are a few functions I’ve been finding a lot of use for lately. They are basically the JavaScript equivalent for PHP’s htmlentities and html_entity_decode. These functions are useful for inserting HTML dynamically, and getting values of contentEditable fields. These functions do replace line breaks appropriately, and HTML2Text removes a trailing line break.

var TextTransformer=$('<div></div>');
function Text2HTML(T) { return TextTransformer.text(T).html().replace(/\r?\n/g, '<br>'); }
function HTML2Text(T) { return TextTransformer.html(ReplaceBreaks(T, "\x01br\x01")).text().replace(/\x01br\x01/g, "\n").replace(/\n$/, ''); }
function ReplaceBreaks(TheHTML, ReplaceText) { return TheHTML.replace(/<\s*br\s*\/?\s*>/g, ReplaceText || ' - '); }

I’ve recently been having problems using the Google Reader widget in iGoogle. Normally, when I clicked on an RSS Title, a “bubble” popped up with the post’s content. However recently when clicking on the titles, the original post’s source opened up in a new tab. I confirmed the settings for the widget were correct, so I tried to remember the last change I made in Firefox that could have triggered this problem, as it seems the problem was not widespread, and only occurred to a few other people with no solution found. I realized a little bit back that I had installed the HTTPS Everywhere Firefox plugin. As described on the EFF’s site “HTTPS Everywhere is a Firefox extension ... [that] encrypts your communications with a number of major websites”.

Once I disabled the plugin and found the problem went away, I started digging through Google’s JavaScript code with FireBug. It turns out the start of the problem was that the widgets in iGoogle are run in their own IFrames (which is a very secure way of doing a widget system like this). However, the Google Reader contents was being pulled in through HTTPS secure channels (as it should thanks to HTTPS Everywhere), while the iGoogle page itself was pulled in through a normal HTTP channel! Separate windows/frames/tabs cannot interact with each other through JavaScript if they are not part of the same domain and protocol (HTTP/HTTPS) to prevent Cross-site scripting hacks.

I was wondering why HTTPS Everywhere was not running iGoogle through an HTTPS channel, so I tried it myself and found out Google automatically redirects HTTPS iGoogle requests to non secure HTTP channels! So much for having a proper security model in place...

So I did a lot more digging and modifying of Google’s code to see if I couldn’t find out exactly where the problem was occurring and if it couldn’t be fixed with a hack. It seems the code to handle the RSS Title clicking is injected during the “onload” event of the widget’s IFrame. I believe this was the code that was hitting the security privilege error to make things not work. I attempted to hijack the Google Reader widget’s onload function and add special privileges using “netscape.security.PrivilegeManager.enablePrivilege”, but it didn’t seem to help the problem. I think with some more prodding I could have gotten it working, but I didn’t want to waste any more time than I already had on the problem.

The code that would normally be loaded into the widget’s IFrame window hooks the “onclick” event of all RSS Title links to both perform the bubble action and cancel the normal “click” action. Since the normal click action for the anchor links was not being canceled, the browser action of following the link occurred. In this case, the links also had a “target” set to open a new window/tab.

There is however a “fix” for this problem, though I don’t find it ideal. If you edit the “extensions\https-everywhere@eff.org\chrome\content\rules\GoogleServices.xml” file in your Firefox profile directory (most likely at “C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\PROFILENAME\” if running Windows 7), you can comment out or delete the following rule so Google Reader is no longer run through secure HTTPS channels:

<rule from="^http://(www\.)?google\.com/reader/" 
to="https://www.google.com/reader/"/>

That being said, I’ve been having a plethora of problems with Facebook and HTTPS Everywhere too :-\ (which it actually mentions might happen in its options dialog). You’d think the largest sites on the Internet could figure out how to get their security right, but either they don’t care (the more likely option), or they don’t want the encryption overhead. Alas.

One thing I always really miss when working in other dynamic languages that aren’t JavaScript is the ability to access known (non dynamic) members of an associative array/object/hash (called a hash from here on out) through just a single dot. This matches C’s syntax of accessing struct members, as opposed to being forced into using array syntax which is harder to read IMO in languages like PHP and Perl. For example...

Zones[Info['Zone']]['DateInfo'][Info['Date']]['UniqueEnters']+=Info['Count'];

Zones[Info.Zone].DateInfo[Info.Date].UniqueEnters+=Info.Count;

I had the need to pass a program’s [standard] output to a web browser in real time. The best solution for this is to use a combination of programs made in different languages. The following are all of these individual components to accomplish this task.

Please note the C components are only compatible with gcc and bash (cygwin required for Windows), as MSVC and Windows command prompt are missing vital functionality for this to work.

The first component is a server made in C that receives stdin (as a pipe, or typed by the user after line breaks) and sends that data out to a connected client (buffering the output until the client connects).

PassThruServer source, PassThruServer compiled Windows executable.

• This compiles as C99 under gcc:

  gcc PassThruServer.c -o PassThruServer

• Define “WINDOWS” when compiling in Windows (pass “-DWINDOWS”)

#include <stdio.h>
#include <malloc.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <sys/types.h> 
#include <sys/socket.h>
#include <netinet/in.h>
#include <signal.h>

//The server socket and options
int ServerSocket=0;
const int PortNumber=1234; //The port number to listen in on

//If an error occurs, exit cleanly
int error(char *msg)
{
	//Close the socket if it is still open
	if(ServerSocket)
		close(ServerSocket);
	ServerSocket=0;

	//Output the error message, and return the exit status
	fprintf(stderr, "%s\n", msg);
	return 1;
}

//Termination signals
void TerminationSignal(int sig)
{
	error("SIGNAL causing end of process");
	_exit(sig);
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
	//Listen for termination signals
	signal(SIGINT, TerminationSignal);
	signal(SIGTERM, TerminationSignal);
	signal(SIGHUP, SIG_IGN); //We want the server to continue running if the environment is closed, so SIGHUP is ignored -- This doesn't work in Windows
	
	//Create the server
	struct sockaddr_in ServerAddr={AF_INET, htons(PortNumber), INADDR_ANY, 0}; //Address/port to listen on
	if((ServerSocket=socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0))<0) //Attempt to create the socket
		return error("ERROR on 'socket' call");
	if(bind(ServerSocket, (struct sockaddr*)&ServerAddr, sizeof(ServerAddr))<0) //Bind the socket to the requested address/port
		return error("ERROR on 'bind' call");
	if(listen(ServerSocket,5)<0) //Attempt to listen on the requested address/port
		return error("ERROR on 'listen' call");

	//Accept a connection from a client
	struct sockaddr_in ClientAddr;
	int ClientAddrLen=sizeof(ClientAddr);
	int ClientSocket=accept(ServerSocket, (struct sockaddr*)&ClientAddr, &ClientAddrLen);
	if(ClientSocket<0) 
		return error("ERROR on 'accept' call");

	//Prepare to receive info from STDIN
		//Create the buffer
		const int BufferSize=1024*10;
		char *Buffer=malloc(BufferSize); //Allocate a 10k buffer
		//STDIN only needs to be set to binary mode in windows
		const int STDINno=fileno(stdin);
		#ifdef WINDOWS
			_setmode(STDINno, _O_BINARY);
		#endif
		//Prepare for blocked listening (select function)
		fcntl(STDINno, F_SETFL, fcntl(STDINno, F_GETFL, 0)|O_NONBLOCK); //Set STDIN as blocking
		fd_set WaitForSTDIN;
		FD_ZERO(&WaitForSTDIN);
		FD_SET(STDINno, &WaitForSTDIN);

	//Receive information from STDIN, and pass directly to the client
	int RetVal=0;
	while(1)
	{
		//Get the next block of data from STDIN
		select(STDINno+1, &WaitForSTDIN, NULL, NULL, NULL); //Wait for data
		size_t AmountRead=fread(Buffer, 1, BufferSize, stdin); //Read the data
		if(feof(stdin) || AmountRead==0) //If input is closed, process is complete
			break;
		
		//Send the data to the client
		if(write(ClientSocket,Buffer,AmountRead)<0) //If error in network connection occurred
		{
			RetVal=error("ERROR on 'write' call");
			break;
		}
	}
	
	//Cleanup
	if(ServerSocket)
		close(ServerSocket);
	free(Buffer);
	
	return RetVal;
}

The next component is a Flash applet as the client to receive data. Flash is needed as it can keep a socket open for realtime communication. The applet receives the data and then passes it through to JavaScript for final processing.

Compiled Flash Client Applet

import flash.external.ExternalInterface;
import flash.events.Event;
ExternalInterface.addCallback("OpenSocket", OpenSocket);

function OpenSocket(IP:String, Port:Number):void
{
	SendInfoToJS("Trying to connect");
	var TheSocket:Socket = new Socket();
	TheSocket.addEventListener(Event.CONNECT, function(Success) { SendInfoToJS(Success ? "Connected!" : "Could not connect"); });
	TheSocket.addEventListener(Event.CLOSE, function() { SendInfoToJS("Connection Closed"); });
	TheSocket.addEventListener(IOErrorEvent.IO_ERROR, function() {SendInfoToJS("Could not connect");});
	TheSocket.addEventListener(ProgressEvent.SOCKET_DATA, function(event:ProgressEvent):void { ExternalInterface.call("GetPacket", TheSocket.readUTFBytes(TheSocket.bytesAvailable)); });
	TheSocket.connect(IP, Port);
}
function SendInfoToJS(str:String) { ExternalInterface.call("GetInfoFromFlash", str); }
stop();

var NewSock=new XMLSocket();
NewSock.onData=function(msg) { GetPacket(msg); }
NewSock.onConnect=function(Success) { SendInfoToJS(Success ? "Connected!" : "Could not connect"); }
SendInfoToJS(NewSock.connect(IP, Port) ? "Trying to Connect" : "Could not start connecting");

JavaScript can then receive (and send) information from (and to) the Flash applet through the following functions.

• FLASH.OpenSocket(String IP, Number Port): Call this from JavaScript to open a connection to a server. Note the IP MIGHT have to be the domain the script is running on for security errors to not be thrown.
• JAVASCRIPT.GetInfoFromFlash(String): This is called from Flash whenever connection information is updated. I have it giving arbitrary strings ATM.
• JAVASCRIPT.GetPacket(String): This is called from Flash whenever data is received through the connection.

This example allows the user to input the IP to connect to that is streaming the output. Connection information is shown in the “ConnectionInfo” DOM object. Received data packets are appended to the document in separate DOM objects.

JavaScript+HTML Source

var isIE=navigator.appName.indexOf("Microsoft")!=-1;
function getFlashMovie(movieName) { return (isIE ? window[movieName] : document[movieName]);  }
function $(s) { return document.getElementById(s); }

function Connect()
{
	getFlashMovie("client").OpenSocket($('IP').value, 1234);
}

function GetInfoFromFlash(Str)
{
	$('ConnectionInfo').firstChild.data=Str;
}

function GetPacket(Str)
{
	var NewDiv=document.createElement('DIV');
	NewDiv.appendChild(document.createTextNode(Str));
	$('Info').appendChild(NewDiv);
}

Next is an example application that outputs to stdout. It is important that it flushes stdout after every output or the communication may not be real time.

inc source, inc compiled Windows executable.

inc counts from 0 to one less than a number (parameter #1 [default=50]) after a certain millisecond interval (parameter #2 [default=500]).

./inc 10 #Counts from 0-9 every half a second

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
	int NumLoops=(argc>1 ? atoi(argv[1]) : 50); //Number of loops to run from passed argument 1. Default is 50 if not specified.
	int LoopWait=(argc>2 ? atoi(argv[2]) : 500); //Number of milliseconds to wait in between each loop from passed argument 2. Default is 500ms if not specified.
	LoopWait*=1000; //Convert to microseconds for usleep

	//Output an incremented number every half a second
	int i=0;
	while(i<NumLoops)
	{
		printf("%u\n", i++);
		fflush(stdout); //Force stdout flush
		usleep(LoopWait); //Wait for half a second
	};
	
	return 0;
}

This final component is needed so the Flash applet can connect to a server. Unfortunately, new versions of Flash (at least version 10, might have been before that though) started requiring policies for socket connections >:-(. I don’t think this is a problem if you compile your applet to target an older version of Flash with the ActionScript v1.0 code.

This Perl script creates a server on port 843 to respond to Flash policy requests, telling any Flash applet from any domain to allow connections to go through to any port on the computer (IP). It requires Perl, and root privileges on Linux to bind to a port <1024 (su to root or run with sudo).

Flash Socket Policy Server (Rename extension to .pl)

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;

#Listen for kill signals
$SIG{'QUIT'}=$SIG{'INT'}=$SIG{__DIE__} = sub
{
	close Server;
	print "Socket Policy Server Ended: $_[0]\n";
	exit;
};

#Start the server:
use Socket;
use IO::Handle;
my $FlashPolicyPort=843;
socket(Server, PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, getprotobyname('tcp')) or die "'socket' call: $!"; #Open the socket
setsockopt(Server, SOL_SOCKET, SO_REUSEADDR, 1) or die "'setsockopt' call: $!"; #Allow reusing of port/address if in TIME_WAIT state
bind(Server, sockaddr_in($FlashPolicyPort,INADDR_ANY)) or die "'bind' call: $!"; #Listen on port $FlashPolicyPort for connections from any INET adapter
listen(Server,SOMAXCONN) or die "'listen' call: $!"; #Start listening for connections
Server->autoflush(1); #Do not buffer output

#Infinite loop that accepts connections
$/ = "\0"; #Reset terminator from new line to null char
while(my $paddr=accept(Client,Server))
{
	Client->autoflush(1); #Do not buffer IO
	if(<Client> =~ /.*policy\-file.*/i) { #If client requests policy file...
		print Client '<cross-domain-policy><allow-access-from domain="*" to-ports="*" /></cross-domain-policy>'.$/; #Output policy info: Allow any flash applets from any domain to connect
	}
	close Client; #Close the client
}

1. Start the servers
   • In your [bash] command shell, execute the following

     Server/FlashSocketPolicy.pl & #Run the Flash Policy Server as a daemon. Don't forget sudo in Linux
     ./inc | ./PassThruServer #Pipe inc out to the PassThruServer

   • Note that this will immediately start the PassThruServer receiving information from “inc”, so if you don’t get the client up in time, it may already be done counting and send you all the info at once (25 seconds).
   • The PassThruServer will not end until one of the following conditions has been met:
     • The client has connected and the piped process is completed
     • The client has connected and disconnected and the disconnect has been detected (when a packet send failed)
     • It is manually killed through a signal
   • The Flash Policy Server daemon should probably just be left on indefinitely in the background (it only needs to be run once).
2. To run the client, open client.html through a web server [i.e. Apache’s httpd] in your web browser. Don’t open the local file straight through your file system, it needs to be run through a web server for Flash to work correctly.
3. Click “connect” (assuming you are running the PassThruServer already on localhost [the same computer]). You can click “connect” again every time a new PassThruServer is ran.

To continue the subject in my last post, these next cross-window bugs also derive from objects not being recognized properly when being passed between windows in JavaScript.

I needed the ability to dynamically run functions in the secondary window form the primary window where the parameters are taken from an array. Since a “function” from a secondary window is not seen as a function object from the primary window in IE, the apply member was not working.

I have included a fix for this below in the “RunFunctionInRemoteWindow” function, which is just a wrapper function in the second window that calls the apply function. This function manually copies the array through a for loop, instead of using slice, because in IE7 (but not IE8), the passed arrays were not seen as valid JSObjects, so the slice method (which is a standard method used for copying arrays by value) was not working.

<html><body>
<input type=button onclick="RunTest();" value='Click me when the second window has opened to run the test'>
<script type="text/javascript">

//Spawn the second window
var NewWindow=window.open('RemoteWindow.html');

//Run the test
function RunTest()
{
	LocalAlertString('This is an alert generated from the local window');
	NewWindow.RemoteAlertString('This is an alert generated from the remote window');
	alert('The local window alert function is of type function: '+(LocalAlertString instanceof Function));
	alert('The remote window alert function is of type function: '+(NewWindow.RemoteAlertString instanceof Function));
	LocalAlertString.apply(window, ['This is an alert generated from the local window through the APPLY member']);

	try {
	NewWindow.RemoteAlertString.apply(NewWindow.window, ['This is an alert generated from the remote window through the APPLY member. This will not work in IE because the remote window\'s function is not actually a function.']);
	} catch(e) { alert('The REMOTE APPLY failed: '+e.message); }

	NewWindow.RunFunctionInRemoteWindow('RemoteAlertString', ['This is an alert generated from the remote window through the FIXED APPLY function.']);
}

//Generate an alert in the local window
function LocalAlertString(TheString)
{
	alert('Local String: '+TheString);
}

</script></body></html>

<html><body><script type="text/javascript">
//Generate an alert in the remote window
function RemoteAlertString(TheString)
{
	alert('Remote String: '+TheString);
}

//Call functions in this window remotely through the "apply" member
function RunFunctionInRemoteWindow(FunctionName, Parameters)
{
	//Manually copy the passed Parameters since "Parameters" may not be a valid JSObject anymore (this could be detected and array.slice used if it is still valid)
	var ParametersCopy=[];
	for(var i=0;i<Parameters.length;i++)
		ParametersCopy[i]=Parameters[i];
	
	window[FunctionName].apply(window, ParametersCopy);
}
</script></body></html>

I was doing some research around April of 2009 on JavaScript interaction between web browser windows. I was doing this because web browsers are starting to split off each tab/window into separate processes/threads (Firefox is lagging in this), which can lead to some useful new implementations in the browser world, including multithreading. I wanted to explore the interaction between these windows to make sure there were no caveats that might creep up if I decided to take advantage of this.

The first one I found was that each browser window has its own instance of all of the base object classes, so prototypes do not carry over, and instanceof will not work as expected.

For example, if in WindowOne, you add a prototype to the Array class called IsArray, it is only accessible by arrays created in WindowOne. If you pass an array created in WindowOne into a second window, the prototype is still available on that one array (IIRC this was not true of some of the browsers at the time, but I tested again today, and it worked for IE8, Firefox3, and Google Chrome). Also, since the base object class in Window1 and other windows are not the same, an object created in Window1 and passed to another window will return false in a instanceof Object operation in that other window.

<html><body>
<input type=button onclick="RunTest();" value='Click me when the second window has opened to run the test'>
<script type="text/javascript">
Array.prototype.IsArray=true;
var NewWindow=window.open('RemoteWindow.html'); //Spawn the second window
function RunTest() { NewWindow.RunTest({}, [], new ExampleObject()); }; //Send the test data to remote window
function ExampleObject() { } //An example class
</script></body></html>

<html><body><script type="text/javascript">
function RunTest(AnObject, AnArray, AnExampleObject)
{
   var MyTests=[
      'AnObject instanceof Object',
      'AnObject.IsArray',                               //Object.prototype does not have this (Array.prototype does)
      'AnArray instanceof Object',
      'AnArray instanceof Array',
      'AnArray.IsArray',                                //This was added to the Array.prototype in the parent window
      'AnArray instanceof opener.Array',                //This example does not work in IE7 because opener.x cannot be properly accessed
      'AnExampleObject instanceof opener.ExampleObject',//This example does not work in IE7 because opener.x cannot be properly accessed
      'AnExampleObject instanceof ExampleObject'        //This test should error because "ExampleObject" does not exist in this window
   ];
   
   for(var i=0;i<MyTests.length;i++) //This runs each test like the following: alert("TEST: "+(TEST));
      try {
         eval('alert("'+MyTests[i]+': "+('+MyTests[i]+'));');
      } catch(e) {
         alert('Error on test "'+MyTests[i]+'": '+(e.hasOwnProperty('message') ? e.message : e.toString()));
      }
}
</script></body></html>

Since I just released my AJAX Library, I thought I’d post a useful script that uses it. The function CrossDomainGetURL below uses the AJAX Library to make requests across domains in Firefox. It takes one more parameter (not in order) than the AJAX Library's GetURL function, which is an array of domains to pull cookies from for the AJAX request.

function GetCookiesFromURL(Domains) //Return all the cookies for Domains specified in the Domains array
{
	var cookieManager = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/cookiemanager;1"].getService(Components.interfaces.nsICookieManager); //Requires privileges, which is granted in CrossDomainGetURL
	var iter=cookieManager.enumerator, CookieList=[], cookie; //The object used to find all cookies, the final list of cookies, and a temporary object
	while(iter.hasMoreElements()) //Loop through all cookies
		if(((cookie=iter.getNext()) instanceof Components.interfaces.nsICookie) && Domains.indexOf(cookie.host)!=-1) //If a cookie whose host matches one of our domains
			CookieList.push(cookie.name+'='+cookie.value); //Add it to our final list
	return CookieList.join("; "); //Return the cookie list for the specified domains
}

function CrossDomainGetURL(URL, Data, CookieDomains, ExtraOptions) //See AJAX Library GetURL function. CookieDomains is an array specifying what domains cookies are pulled from for the AJAX call. 
{
	//Access universal privileges in Firefox (Required to get cookies for other domains, and to use AJAX with other domains). This functionality is lost as soon as this function loses scope.
	try { netscape.security.PrivilegeManager.enablePrivilege("UniversalXPConnect"); }
	catch(e) { return alert('Cannot access browser privileges'); }

	if(CookieDomains instanceof Array) //If an array of domains is passed to get cookies from...
	{	
		ExtraOptions=((ExtraOptions instanceof Object) ? ExtraOptions : {}); //Make sure extra options is an object
		ExtraOptions.AdditionalHeaders=((ExtraOptions.AdditionalHeaders instanceof Object) ? ExtraOptions.AdditionalHeaders : {}); //Make sure extra options has an additional headers object
		ExtraOptions.AdditionalHeaders.Cookie=GetCookiesFromURL(CookieDomains); //Get cookies for the domains
	}
	
	return GetURL(URL, Data, ExtraOptions); //Do the AJAX Call
}

I’ve been incredibly busy lately, especially with work, but I finally have some time for personal stuff like posting again, yay. I’m currently stuck at the airport, and am leaving at 7AM this morning on vacation for 10 days on a tour of the west coast (Los Angeles, Disney World, Hollywood, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, etc). The main reason for this get away is I’ll be meeting up with a good friend and his fiancée for their vacation and will be attending his wedding in Las Vegas ^_^.

I am currently on one of those open network connections at the airport that you have to pay to use, tunneled through one of my SSH servers, so I can bypassing their pay service and get online for free to post this :-). Hey, it’s their own fault for not securing it properly lol. I periodically kept getting dropped connections due to a weak signal, so I had to get back up after finding the connection and walk around, using my iPod to detect signal strengths until I found a better area with a stronger signal because. The thing is proving to be very useful ^_^. Anywho, on to the content of the post.

I’ve recently run into a number of new bugs [new to me at least] in both IE (version 7) and Firefox (version 3) that I have not encountered before and, as usual, have to program around to accomplish my tasks. I thought I’d discuss 3 of these bugs.

• Relative (non absolute) base URL paths do not work in either Firefox or Internet Explorer.
  

  Setting a base path for a website is often a necessity for websites that have web pages that are in subdirectories beyond the websites’s root directory. The reason for this is that the page-common layout of a web page usually refers to all images and content in a relative path. This is done for multiple reasons including:

  • Ease of moving the site between addresses like for test stages, or if the site is served from multiple domain names.
  • It’s easier to read source code URLs this way
  • It makes the HTML files smaller; though this isn’t a problem for most users these days because internet connection speeds are much faster.
  
  An example of W3C valid code that produces this error is as follows:

  <head><base href="/MySite/">
  

  The code, unfortunately, has to be an absolute URL like the following for current versions of IE and Firefox.

  <head><base href="http://domain.com/MySite/">
  

  
  

  One simple method to solve this problem is to use JavaScript to set an absolute base URL. Unfortunately, this then requires web browsers to have JavaScript enabled to work :-\. For this reason, this is really a quick fix for internal use that shouldn’t be put into production use unless JavaScript is required anyways.

  The following code will set a base of “http://domain.com/MySite/” for “http://domain.com/MySite/Posts/Post1.html”.

  <head>
  	<script type="text/javascript">
  		function GetBase() //Get the directory above the current path’s URL
  		{
  			return document.location.protocol+	//The protocol ("http:" or "https:")
  				'//'+				//End the protocol section with a //
  				document.location.hostname+	//The host (domain)
  				document.location.pathname.replace(/(\/[^/]*){2}$/,'')+ //This moves up 1 directory from the current path. To move up more directories, set the "2" in this line to NumberOfDirectoriesToMoveUp+1
  				'/';				//Add a '/' to set the end of the path as a directory
  		}
  		document.write('<base href="'+GetBase()+'">'); //Write a BASE object to set the current web page’s base URL to GetBase()
  	</script>
  </head>
  

  
  

  A simpler solution is to just have your parsing language (PHP for example) detect the server you are running on and set the proper base URL accordingly. This method assumes you know all the possible places/addresses your website will run on.

  <head><base href="<?=($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']=='domain.com' ? 'http://domain.com/MySite/' : 'http://domain2.com/')?>"></head>
  

• Reserved keywords in IE cannot be used as object members
  Example (JavaScript):

  var MyObject={};
  MyObject.return=function() { return true; }
  

  Solution: Instances of this must be encoded in strings

  var MyObject={};
  MyObject['return']=function() { return true; }
  

  This also occurs for other reserved keywords like “debugger” and “for”.
• IE’s window does not have the “hasOwnProperty” member function like ALL OTHER OBJECTS
  

  This is a major nuisance because trying to find out if a variable exists and is not a prototype in the global scope is an important function. *sighs*

  The fix for this is using “window.VARIABLE!==undefined”, though this won’t tell you if the variable is actually instanced or [again] if it is part of the prototype; only if it is defined.

One more JavaScript engine difference between IE and Firefox is that in IE you can’t end a hash with an empty member. For example, the following works in Firefox, but not IE:

var b={a:1, b:2, c:3, d:4, };

This shouldn’t really be done anyways, so it’s not really a problem IMO. I ran across this when converting some bad Perl code (generated by YACC) which coincidentally allows this.

It’s really hard making everything compatible across all web browser platforms when they all contain so many nuances and bugs :-\.

JavaScript is a neat little scripting language and does the job it is intended for very well. The prototype system is very useful too, but has one major drawback. First, however, a very quick primer on how objects are made in JavaScript and what prototyping is.

function FooBar(ExampleArgument)
{
	this.Member1=ExampleArgument;
	this.AnotherMember='Blah';
}
var MyObject=new FooBar(5);

FooBar.prototype.NewMember=7;
var SecondObject=new FooBar();

FooBar.prototype.NewMember=9;

The way to detect if an object has a member is to use the in function, and then to determine if the member is prototyped, the hasOwnProperty function is used. For example:

'NewMember' in MyObject;			//Returns true
MyObject.hasOwnProperty('NewMember');		//Returns false

'Member1' in MyObject;				//Returns true
MyObject.hasOwnProperty('Member1');		//Returns true

'UnknownMember' in MyObject;			//Returns false
MyObject.hasOwnProperty('UnknownMember');	//Returns false

for(var i in MyObject)
	console.log( i + '=' + MyObject[i].toString() ); //console.log is a function provided by FireBug for FireFox, and Google Chrome

Member1=5
AnotherMember=Blah
NewMember=9

for(var i in MyObject)
	if(MyObject.hasOwnProperty(i))
		console.log(i+'='+MyObject[i].toString());

Member1=5
AnotherMember=Blah

This isn’t too bad if you are using prototyping yourself on your objects, but sometimes you might make objects that you wouldn’t expect to have prototypes. For good coding practice, you should really do the prototype check for every foreach loop because you can never assume that someone else will not add a prototype to an object type, even if your object type is private. This is especially true because all objects inherit from the actual Object object including its prototypes. So if someone does the following, which is considered very bad practice, every foreach loop will pick up this added member for all objects.

Object.prototype.GlobalMember=10;

Object.prototype.indexOf=function(Value)
{
	for(var i in this)
		if(this.hasOwnProperty(i) && this[i]===Value)
			return i;
	return undefined;
}

It would be really nice if “for(x in y)” only returned non-prototype members and there was another type of foreach loop like “for(x inall y)” that also returned prototype members :-\.

for(var i=0;i<ArrayObject.length;i++)

for(var i in ArrayObject)

//Array.indexOf prototype
if(Array.prototype.indexOf==undefined)
{
	function ArrayIndexOf(SearchIndex)
	{
		for(var i=0;i<this.length;i++)
			if(this[i]==SearchIndex)
				return i;
		return -1;
	}
	Array.prototype.indexOf=ArrayIndexOf;
}

I’m not going to go into how JavaScript stores the prototypes or how to find out all prototype members of an object, as that is a bit beyond what I wanted to talk about in this post, and it’s pretty self explanatory if you think about it.

This is sort of a continuation of the parseInt in JavaScript post made a few months ago.

Another minor JavaScript oddity is that it has two very similar String functions in its base library that are so similar that they can cause confusion to programmers. If a programmer only uses one of the two, and then tries to work with someone else’s code that uses the other function, things could easily get messy. These two functions are substr and substring, which w3schools defines as follows:

I actually did something like this myself in my super awesome string library (which I have not yet released and do not know when I will...). I do not consider this hypocritical though because in my string library, I have a “substr”, like the JavaScript one, but the function that acts like JavaScript’s substring is called “mid”, after the function used in Visual Basic. I did this because I wanted the library to have “matching function names for many languages (PHP, JavaScript, VB, etc).” to make it easier on other programmers already familiar with other libraries.

There were at least 3 really neat things about Google Chrome when it made its spectacular entrance onto the web browser market a few months ago that made it a really viable option compared to its competitors. These features were [“are”, going to write it in present tense as they are still true]:

1. It is fast, especially with JavaScript.
   • I have done speed tests on the JavaScript engines between browsers (which unfortunately I can’t post), and function calls, especially recursion, in the JavaScript engine in Chrome are incredibly faster when compared to the other Web Browsers.
   • However, SpiderMonkey, the new JavaScript engine being used in Firefox, seriously kicks all the other browsers in the butt in speed optimizations when it comes to loop iterations and some other areas. SpiderMonkey is available in the newest non-stable builds of Firefox (v3.1), but is not turned on by default.
2. Different tabs run in different processes; which was very heavily advertised during Chrome’s launch. This carries with it two great advantages.
   1. A locked or crashed tab/window (usually through JavaScript) won’t affect the other tabs/windows.
   2. Since each tab is in a separate OS process, meaning they are also being run on separate OS threads, they can be run on separate logical operating cores (CPUs). This means that browser tabs can be run in parallel and not slow each other down (depending on the number of logical CPUs you have).

   Unfortunately, this is not as completely true as is widely advertised. New processes are only opened when the user manually opens a new window or tab. If a new window or tab is opened by JavaScript or by clicking a link, it still runs in the same process!

   Google has a FAQ Entry on this as follows:

   16. How can my web page open a new tab in a separate process?

   Google Chrome has a multi-process architecture, meaning tabs can run in separate processes from each other, and from the main browser process. New tabs spawned from a web page, however, are usually opened in the same process, so that the original page can access the new tab using JavaScript.

   If you’d like a new tab to open in a separate process:

   • Open the new tab with about:blank as its target.
   • Set the newly opened tab’s opener variable to null, so that it can’t access the original page.
   • Redirect from about:blank to any URL on a different domain, port, or protocol than that of the page spawning the pop-up. For example, if the page spawning the pop-up is on http://www.example.com/:
     • a different domain would be http://www.example.org
     • a different port would be http://www.example.com:8080
     • a different protocol would be https://www.example.com

   Google Chrome will recognize these actions as a hint that the new and old pages should be isolated from each other, and will attempt to load the new page in a separate process.

   The following code snippet can be used to accomplish all of these steps:

   var w = window.open();
   w.opener = null;
   w.document.location = "http://different.example.com/index.html";
   			

   
   

   The only problem is... THIS NO LONGER WORKS! Google recently (within the last 7 days) broke this FAQ recommendation with an automatic update to Chrome, so new tabs that are not manually opened by the user cannot be forced to new processes even with their little code snippet. Personally, I think this behavior is really lame and every tab should be able to open in separate processes every time no matter what, and still be able to talk to each other through process message passing. It may slow things down a little, but it’s a much more powerful model, IMO. An option for this in the window.open’s options parameter would be really nice...

3. And of course, it’s Google, who, in general, “does no evil”. :-)
   • I can’t find the original article I was looking for on this “don’t do evil” topic :’( ... it basically said something to the extent that the “don’t be evil” motto only applies to business inside the USA, or something like that.
   • I have been a long time fan of Google though, and I still think that pretty much everything they’ve done, in general, has been for the good of everyone. There are always going to be blemishes on a company that size, and for how big they are and all they do, they’ve done a pretty damn good job, IMO. Just my two cents.

function ClearCookies() //Clear all the cookies on the current website
{
	var MyCookies=document.cookie; //Remember the original cookie string since it will be changing soon
	var StartAt=0; //The current string pointer in MyCookies
	do //Loop through all cookies
	{
		var CookieName=MyCookies.substring(StartAt, MyCookies.indexOf('=', StartAt)).replace(/^ /,''); //Get the next cookie name in the list, and strip off leading white space
		document.cookie=CookieName+"=;expires=Thu, 01-Jan-1970 00:00:01 GMT; path=/"; //Erase the cookie
		StartAt=MyCookies.indexOf(';', StartAt)+1; //Move the string pointer to the end of the current cookie
	} while(StartAt!=0)
}

<input type=button value="Clear Cookies" onclick="ClearCookies()">
<input type=button value="View Cookies" onclick="ViewCookies()">
<textarea id=CookieBox style="width:100%;height:100%"></textarea>
<script type="text/javascript">
function ViewCookies() //Output the current cookies in the textbox
{
	document.getElementById('CookieBox').value=document.cookie.replace(/;/g,';\n\n');
}

function ClearCookies() //Clear all the cookies on the current website
{
	var CookieNames=[]; //Remember the cookie names as we erase them for later output
	var MyCookies=document.cookie; //Remember the original cookie string since it will be changing soon
	var StartAt=0; //The current string pointer in MyCookies
	do //Loop through all cookies
	{
		var CookieName=MyCookies.substring(StartAt, MyCookies.indexOf('=', StartAt)).replace(/^ /,''); //Get the next cookie name in the list, and strip off leading white space
		CookieNames.push(CookieName); //Remember the cookie name
		document.cookie=CookieName+"=;expires=Thu, 01-Jan-1970 00:00:01 GMT; path=/"; //Erase the cookie
		StartAt=MyCookies.indexOf(';', StartAt)+1; //Move the string pointer to the end of the current cookie
	} while(StartAt!=0)
	document.getElementById('CookieBox').value='Clearing: '+CookieNames.join("\nClearing: "); //Output the erased cookie names
}
</script>

A very important part of programming languages is the standard library that comes with them. PHP has one of the strongest base standard libraries I’ve ever seen. It’s also great to always be able to just throw out any function call in a script and not need look up the library file that you need to include! Perl has one of the largest official library sets (not included by standard) that I know if, but I find it a pain always having to remember which libraries I have to include for all the different functions I need. Though this is probably just because I don’t use Perl that much, as I have most of the C standard include libraries memorized, heh.

To properly use any function from any library, it is important to know exactly how it is supposed to work and any idiosyncrasies. You can never know EXACTLY how a function works unless you have the source for it, but you can pretty much always guess the gist of the internals. This is one of the reasons I have always enjoyed writing my own Personal Libraries, besides that fact that I find it fun getting down in the nitty gritty of things. Not knowing the inner workings of a function is not really a problem when programming, as this is the whole point of encapsulation, and documentation is usually sufficient enough.

I ran into a problem with the parseInt (sister of parseFloat) JavaScript function a long ways back however (this topic has been written down for years to talk about). JavaScript is kind of special in that it is a language that you just kind of jump into and assume you can quickly pick up everything, as there is very very little to its base library. One would assume that the “parseInt” function would just turn anything given to it into an integer, so “parseInt('123')” would return “123” and “parseInt(1.4)” would return “1”, as expected. The gotcha comes in if you pass a 0 before an integral number in a string, in which case it assumes the number is in octal (base 8 math). I found this out by accident when parsing time strings, where minutes are always 2 digits with leading 0s. When “parseInt('09')” is called, it returns “0” because 9 is not a part of base 8 math. Oops! parseInt stops at the first character it identifies that is not part of the base it is currently parsing in. Incidentally parseInt will also parse hex[adecimal] (base 16) strings, as per standard C syntax, for example, “parseInt('0x10')” returns “16”. I would have just said standard hex syntax, but not all languages represent hex in that manner, for example, Visual Basic requires &H before a hex number instead, like “&H10” represents “16”.

• Adblock plus:
  • Block unwanted ads, images, and other multimedia.
  • Notes: Had to upgrade to this from just “Adblock”.
• Adblock Filterset.G Updater:
  • A good set of ads to block for Adblock.
  • Notes: This doesn’t seem to be updated much anymore, and never checked to see if it worked with Adblock plus.
• AI Roboform Toolbar for Firefox:
  • This is a software suite that always you to store passwords and personal information in encrypted (against AES) container files against a master password, so it’s pretty darn secure. It interfaces well with both IE and Firefox, and really helps with the filling out of personal info on those long tedious credit card forms and such.
  • Notes: I just wish it worked better outside of web browsers in the Windows environment... maybe one day I’ll make something for that, it would be fun.
• BugMeNot:
  • Bypass web registration by checking the bugmenot.com database for free user-provided accounts.
• Cache View:
  • Allows you to go to a cache for the page you are currently on from one of the many caching services like Google Cache, Coral Cache, and archive.org’s Wayback Machine.
  • Notes: I modified this to allow you to open all cache sites at once and to work for Firefox 3... maybe one of these days I’ll release the additions.
• Download Statusbar:
  • “View and manage downloads from a tidy statusbar”
• Firebug:
  • Required for [web] programmers, and still very useful for [web] developers. Some main features include:
    • JavaScript console for debug output and real-time JavaScript injection
    • JavaScript debugging
    • Realtime HTML DOM view
    • Realtime editing of DOM object information and positioning
    • DOM object CSS styles and where they came from
    • Downloaded files with their acquisition time
  • Notes: This is by far my favorite Firefox extension.
• FireFTP:
  • Fully featured FTP manager.
  • Notes: You’ll never need to find a component FTP manager again once you’ve got this great Firefox integrated one.
• Greasemonkey:
  • Insertion of JavaScript scripts on specified web pages.
• Html Validator:
  • Realtime HTML validation of viewed web pages without having to go through w3c.org (web standards committee).
• IE Tab:
  • “Embedding Internet Explorer in tabs of Mozilla/Firefox”
  • Notes: Since IE is sometimes a necessity when people refuse to conform to standards; and for developers to make sure things look right in the (unfortunately) most used web browser.
• keyconfig [functions for] [Original?]:
  • (Re)bind keyboard shortcuts in Firefox.
  • Notes: I heavily rely on this since I’m a bit of a shortcut nut.
• Locationbar²:
  • Adds options to the location bar like:
    • Highlighting the domain
    • Go to parent directories of your current URL by clicking
    • Hide the protocol (ex: “http://”).
  • Notes: I originally used this because it fixed a major problem that plagued Firefox and still plagues IE in which the address bars show escaped URLs (like “Firefox%20Extensions” instead of “Firefox Extensions”), so foreign URLs, which used lots of non-ASCII characters were next to impossible to read. I submitted this to Mozilla a ways back, and fortunately it was fixed for Firefox 3. This, IMO, is one of the most important fixes for Firefox 3, and it wasn’t even really advertised.
• OpenDownload:
  • “Allows you to open ANY file (executables, etc.) from the internet into the default program assigned by your operating system, without needing to save it first.”
  • Notes: This is not marked as compatible with Firefox 3, but works fine. Firefox has added an “applications” tab to its options dialog that kind of takes care of this, but this still does at least allow direct opening of all file extensions without also mapping them in Firefox.
• Tab Mix Plus:
  • “Tab browsing with an added boost.”
  • Notes: This is becoming less needed with each Firefox version upgrade, but it still has a lot of options in it that make it worthwhile.
• User Agent Switcher:
  • Switch the “User Agent” of Firefox to fool pages into thinking you are using a different web browser or crawler.
  • Notes: There are many uses for this, one being to see how pages change for web crawlers.
• View Cookies:
  • “View cookies of the current web page.”
  • Notes: Firefox 3 has added a feature to make this no longer needed, but I still much prefer the way this extension handles cookie viewing.
• Web Developer:
  • A plethora of very useful web developer tools.

• Answers:
  • Alt+Click on any word or term for quick info from answers.com.
• ChatZilla:
  • An IRC (it’s a kind of chat room protocol) interface through Firefox.
  • Notes: I’m sure I’d use this a lot more... if I actually used IRC.
• DownThemAll! & FlashGot:
  • Ability to download lots of content and/or links from web pages.
• Morning Coffee:
  • “Keep track of daily routine websites and opens them in tabs.” You can set websites to load by individual day, weekday/weekend, or every day.
  • Notes: No longer really needed since RSS has become so commonplace.
• Page Update Checker:
  • “Automatically checks to see if a web page has changed.”
  • Notes: No longer really needed since RSS has become so commonplace.
• Referrer History:
  • Viewing how you browsed to pages through a referrer tree.
  • Notes: This is not compatible with Firefox 3, hasn’t been updated for ages, and is extremely slow as it uses a brute force method to build the referrer tree. I might see if I can find a better version of something like this (or make it) if the need ever arises again.
• Torbutton:
  • Toggle completely anonymous web browsing at the push of a button.
  • Notes: I found using the tor network way too slow, so I have since abandoned it for faster methods, which I will post about some day. Tor still remains an excellent “full-proof” way to stay anonymous on the internet though.
• VideoDownloader:
  • Download videos from many popular sites.
  • Notes: I prefer just using Firebug and a download manager now...

• Enhanced History Manager:
  • Lots of neat history managing features...
  • Notes: This addon hasn’t been updated in a long time... I’m not sure if it works with Firefox 3. To be honest, I don’t even remember what it does completely.
• Image Zoom:
  • “Adds zoom functionality for images...”
  • Notes: Firefox 3 now has full page zoom, as opposed to just text, so this is no longer really needed.

I have seen rather complex code out there for style sheet swapping in web browsers through JavaScript, and just found out a much simpler way works.

I could have sworn I tried to do real-time style sheet swapping a very long while back and none of my tests turned out satisfactorily, but a friend was just asking me about it, and I was redoing the tests, and it all worked out perfectly in an incredibly easy fashion in IE 6 & 7 and Firefox 2.5 & 3. All that needs to be done is swap the href of the link object pointing to the external style sheet file.

Adding style sheets by dynamically inserting HTML via JavaScript seemed to work just fine too.

<div id=example>
<script language=JavaScript>
	var MyObject=document.getElementById('example');
</script>

<body>
	<form name=MyForm>
		<input type=text name=ExampleText value=Example>
	</form>
	<script language=JavaScript>
		document.MyForm.ExampleText.value='New Example'; //Must use format document.FormName.ObjectName
	</script>
</body>