When I visited the coursera website, I accidentally switch to this in the picture. How do I exit this "accessibility mode"?
I've tried clear cookies and delete localstorage, but it still doesn't work.
Related
When using WebPageTest it is possible to use custom scripts to set cookies. Is it possible to do the same on PageSpeed Insights or lighthouse?
For example in the European Union you may want to set cookies to disable the cookie consent popup which will not appear for repeat users who have already consented to the website's cookie policy.
Page Speed Insights
Page Speed Insights (PSI) is designed for simulating a first time user to the site, so your cookies popup would always show.
It does not cache cookies or anything else. There is no way to send cookies to PSI.
Lighthouse in the browser
If you are using Lighthouse in the browser simply untick the "Clear Storage" option in the top bar (you may have to click the gear icon top right to reveal this) and at that point run the page twice (once to set the cache), cookies will be stored and you will record a run with cached images, files etc.
If you wanted to create a run where cookies are stored but nothing else is cached you could go to the application tab in developer tools and remove everything other than the cookies.
However as this is not indicative of a real world scenario I do not see the benefit and is only included as it answers the original question.
Lighthouse CLI + Puppeteer
Your final option for complete control would be to run Lighthouse CLI on your own machine.
The source code for Lighthouse is available on GitHub, takes a short while to set up, installing chromium etc. but it is worth it.
At that point you have more control, if you partner it with Puppeteer then you have all the control to set individual cookies etc.
However it does appear that you should be able to pass cookies directly to Lighthouse via config according to this thread, but it might not work and ultimately ends up recommending puppeteer. Perhaps that is a feature that will get improved upon soon.
I was having a brief discussion with a friend about always clearing browser history on exit (or using incognito mode). He didn't do it because he wanted the "smart fill" to occur whenever he typed in the web address of a previously visited site in order to save time. I said my way around this was to put any regularly visited website in my bookmarks because the browser checked there whenever I started entering a web address, providing me with the same "smart fill" function.
My question is, can a website view the contents of my bookmarks folder, negating part of the reason for using incognito mode or clearing history on exit?
My question is, can a website view the contents of my bookmarks folder, negating part of the reason for using incognito mode or clearing history on exit?
No.
I am working on a website related to physically/psychologically abused person.
There is an emergency exit button available all time so the user can click on it before the "aggressive" person enter the room where the computer is located.
When the user click on the emergency button, the user is automatically redirected to Google with a query like "cooking apple pie" (this is an example).
Also, we would like to hide our website from the browser history in case the aggressive person check the history of the abused person. I think this cannot be done technically.
At least, can we generate fake browsing history to justify to the aggressive person the time that the user was on our website?
I tried multiple things to simulate a "browsing" like using an iframe or an ajax query to another website but none populate the browser history.
Is this can be done?
Thank you for your input!
I think you may be focusing too much on the browser and computer that you do not control and not enough on the content and the server that you do control. How about taking a different approach? Why not generate the pages for the user on the fly? The links are only good once. If you click on the home button (your escape key) and the aggressive person looks in the history the attempt to access them a second time could be made to display the weather or lottery results or something innocuous, Focus on what you have control over.
Useful Technical Details
Removing/Preventing Back Button Click History
You can allow the user to browse throughout a webpage without building up a history trail on the back button by having them click exclusively on javascript: links. This would still not remove any of the visited websites from their full browser history, so it's not a full solution.
Here's an example HTML JavaScript link:
CLICK HERE TO ESCAPE!
If this is acceptable, you could build an inoffensive homepage from which the user could access the site that would use JavaScript to send them to the real website. Every link on that new website would have to be a javascript link. Disadvantages of this would be that they would no longer be able to use the back button to navigate and that JavaScript is 100% required for the site to function.
Sanitized History
Make sure you have inoffensive titles and icons for any pages in the site so if the user does not delete their browser history they will not grab the attention of the third party.
Preventing Access to Protected Content
One option you have is to disguise your website as something else by having the user log in before they are allowed to access any of the content. You could save their session/login data in such a way that it is cleared if they hit an escape button it is erased or reset. As part of the login page, you could give users an alternate password to type in that would redirect them to fake content if their abuser becomes suspicious enough to demand they log in.
The session/login information should never save between browser sessions and always have a short expiration period, to further reduce the chances of the abuser gaining access to the website.
Disguising the Site
Considerations
If you choose to disguise the site either on the homepage or behind a "fake" login, be very careful to choose something that makes sense and would not arouse suspicion or interest. You don't want the fake page to be some sort of game or anything that might pique the third party's interest.
You also don't want it to look so boring or mundane that the original user would be hard-pressed to explain their possibly frequent visits. It shouldn't be anything so specific that the third party would think twice about the original user visiting it though. For example, it might be suspicious if someone who does not enjoy the great outdoors were to be visiting a page on mountain biking.
It also can't do something like just redirect them to Google without explaining the fact that they had to log in to access it.
General Advice
Private Browsing
Multiple sources have suggested either educating your target audience in how to use IE's InPrivate Browsing mode, Firefox's Private Browsing mode, or Chrome's Incognito mode.
There unfortunately does not appear to be a way to prevent the browser from keeping the current page in its browsing history through JavaScript. It's possible there might be some sort of plug-in or third-party control which would enable this, but it's probably just easier to get your users to use a private browsing mode.
Clearing History
Clearing a user's web history would not be possible since browsers restrict websites from accessing or altering data on the user's computer directly. Since the user's browser history is part of this data it would be a security issue if any website could clear the history.
You should provide instructions to your users for pruning or clearing their browser history, whether on the website itself before they enter, or through whatever resource you showed them how to access your website.
Generating a Fake History
If you need to generate a fake list of visited websites, you can always create new tabs/windows for the users (or possibly iframes) at timed intervals with JavaScript, but the user would have to disable their popup blocker for this to take effect.
Further Reading
Here is a helpful article on creating a useful Quick Disguised Exit From A Website. This forum thread that I found it on also had some useful information, but it's likely you've already seen it.
At least, can we generate fake browsing history to justify to the aggressive person the time that the user was on our website?
Have you cosidered turning it around?
What if technically all your pages and its content are about something else. So it is the content you want to hide that's loaded in a special way, making it easier for you to avoid having it in the browser history.
So then it becomes about knowing when to load/show the special content.
Above said, it's very important what #Frédéric Hamidi said:
Just keep in mind that if the "aggressive" person has control over that computer or the network, nothing can really prevent him/her from installing loggers on the machine or analyzing network traffic.
IE's InPrivate Browsing mode, Firefox's Private Browsing mode, and Chrome's Incognito mode
I would recommend this to prevent the abuser from finding the secret site in the browsing history.
Also, opening a social networking site and letting the browsing history collect that would be an excellent and believable excuse for the time spent on the computer.
I have had a report that my company's website is resizing at least one employee's browser windows. I experienced this behavior myself on the user's computer, and it was mystifying because the resizing only occurred on our site, not on any other site, and it occurred on both Firefox and Internet Explorer. The user has a Windows 7 machine running updated software. She has no add-ons, themes, or plugins besides the usual (Flash etc.) and her settings are the factory defaults. I cleared the browser cache on both browsers and restarted the computer and it still occurred. The only thing left is the css, but none of it seems suspicious to me.
What is happening is, when she clicks a button or internal link on the site, then when the new page finishes loading, the browser window resizes to approximately 80% of the width of the content. That is, the very last thing the page does as it loads is to resize itself. If she zooms in or out, then on the next load, it again resizes to 80% or so of the smaller or larger size of the content. If she maximizes and then loads a page, then the window resizes to 80% but somehow maintains the "maximized" icon. (You then have to click twice on the "maximized" icon to maximize.)
The reason I am flummoxed is that I thought this kind of behavior was something you could only do with JavaScript, but I deliberately tested this with pages that had no JavaScript at all and it still occurred. There is exactly one page on the website that has browser-resizing JavaScript on it, but it resizes to a pixel size, not a percentage, and it's part of a web service that wasn't in use while I was testing.
What kinds of things should I investigate to solve this issue? Because this is an employee, I have to either fix the website or fix her computer, so ideas for investigating both would be great.
The problem turned out to be that single page with browser-resizing JavaScript I mentioned. Another set of pages had needed some JavaScript functions from that web service, so one person had copy-and-pasted the functions that were needed. Then someone else came along, noticed that the copy-pasting was a dumb idea, and decided to simply include the JavaScript file that had those functions instead.
The problem was, the command to resize the window was bare in that file. For that one user, that command was being carried out and resizing every window. For everyone else, their browsers were ignoring the resize command except on the web-service popup window. I can only assume she had the problem because she had factory-standard settings, and the rest of us didn't. To fix the problem, I moved the resize command from the JavaScript file to the head of the web service page.
Sometimes browsers are not reloading images. Especially images that are in css.
Why is this happening?
Sometimes, when we creating website - we change images many times. Sometimes images are cached and they are not refreshing.
The best example are images, that browser loads on "mouseover" or "click" events (menu backgrounds for example) are really frustrating, because there is no way to refresh them with F5 or Ctrl+F5, because they are not displayed. They can ruin your day :D
HOW TO DISABLE CACHE IN POPULAR BROWSERS TUTORIAL
IMPORTANT: don't forget what you turned off/on - you may need cache later when you will work on 56k modem :D or 3G connection.
How to disable cache in Google Chrome:
Open Chrome Developer Tools (by menu, or shortcut Ctrl+Shift+I).
Click gear icon in right bottom corner (settings)
In settings of Developer Tools there is an option "Disable cache".
How to disable cache in Mozilla Firefox:
Type or paste "about:config" in address bar.
Accept message from scary window (new versions) :)
Find "network.http.use-cache" and double-click it.
To reenable - double-click again.
How to disable cache in Opera?
Type "opera:config" in address bar.
Find Cache section.
There are many helpful options. You can:
set image expiry in cache
permanent disable cache for images (its called "Cache Figs")
permanent disable cache for documents
How to disable cache in Internet Explorer 9
(unfortunately i dont have english version, so i can make mistake translating)
Turn on Developer Tools (shorcut key F12)
Expand developer tools window if you dont see menu
Find Cache in that menu and there should be an option "Always Refresh from Server"
Alternative for IE (older versions without developer tools):
You can find "Always Refresh from Server" option in IE settings.