Popup blocker and Data Manager

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SiEntomologist
Posts: 8
Joined: October 29th, 2009, 6:50 pm

Popup blocker and Data Manager

Post by SiEntomologist »

This is really two related questions, but having partly solved one of them from advice found in this forum, I'm hoping someone can explain both.

I've been using SeaMonkey 64-bit for many months (currently 2.50) without problems other than that it currently doesn't use the Windows date format (a recent bug, as far as I can tell). I mention that because my old 32-bit version of the Profiles folder was used to initialize the 64-bit version, in case that has anything to do with this situation.

I was experimenting with the "Block unrequested popup windows" setting. As warned by the note associated with that setting, I found that devices I use that have an initial signon popup (see below) now fail, even after I turn off the global blocking and restart SeaMonkey. So I tried Manage Permissions, hoping to create a white-list entry. That's where my first question arose.

Manage Permissions sent me to Data Manager which took three minutes or more to load. S-l-o-w.

There were about 2500 entries for "All data types", the vast majority of which I did not recognize at all and which only specified zero offline storage space. ("Only allow [offline] websites with explicit permissions" has been set since forever, and I have NEVER granted explicit permission.) From some of their names, I assume most were ad or statistical tracking sites. Not finding an obvious way to delete these en masse, I tried deleting a few by hand. This appeared to work, but after a couple of minutes the ones I removed reappeared on-the-fly!

Hunting around in this forum, I found a suggestion to delete the file webappsstore.sqlite (which was 54MB). After doing this and restarting SM, webappsstore.sqlite was rebuilt to 96KB and the Data Manager list was reduced to about 400 sites nearly all of which I recognize, apparently complete with passwords which was mainly what I was concerned about -- and none have a key for "Storage" -- zero bytes or otherwise.

My first question is, was anything important lost by rebuilding the sqlite file? So far, apparently so good. I'm happy, but surprised, that the zero offline storage entries were eliminated without other intervention.

But back to popups.

With popups allowed globally from Preferences, Manage Permissions is grayed out, so there doesn't appear to be any way to blacklist selected sites. Is this correct? Why not? (Although in this case whitelisting makes more sense to me.)

With popups blocked globally from Preferences, the Manage Permissions selection brings up Data Manager, and apparently lets me add a Permission to Allow Open Popup Windows. At least that's what it shows. Most web sites now seem to have replaced popups with overlays, so it's hard to tell.

But here's the problem. I have a Network Attached Storage device called "TS-ARI071" which presents a signon popup dialog immediately upon access. (I also have routers and network printers that work the same way.) If I enter http://ts-ari071/ into Internet Explorer, for example, IE displays that signon dialog. Before I started playing with the popup settings, SeaMonkey behaved the same way.

Now, regardless of specific site permissions and whether or not popups are blocked globally, the NAS signon dialog is bypassed and it displays the message "Authorization Required." And for the routers, which are most easily addressed by their local ip addresses (e.g. 192.168.2.2), there doesn't appear to be a way even to enter a permission for the addresses, although their passwords are still available.

What happened? Are there other Preferences settings that affect popups? I don't have any add-ons that are supposed to do anything about popups, and they were all installed before I changed SeaMonkey popup settings anyway.
isaacschemm
Posts: 270
Joined: January 20th, 2015, 12:29 pm

Re: Popup blocker and Data Manager

Post by isaacschemm »

I wonder if SeaMonkey is remembering and sending some incorrect username and password for the router.
SiEntomologist
Posts: 8
Joined: October 29th, 2009, 6:50 pm

Re: Popup blocker and Data Manager

Post by SiEntomologist »

I guess that's a possibility, but what it displays when I ask in Data Manager is correct, and what it enters at other, non-popup signon locations is correct. Since the devices are local, there's no time delay that might hint that they're thinking about what to do with an incorrect password and I don't know of any ordinary web sites that start out with a signon popup. I guess I can set up an ip packet trace to see exactly what's going on -- I haven't done that in a couple of years, though, so it might take me a while.
Anonymosity
Posts: 8779
Joined: May 7th, 2007, 12:07 pm

Re: Popup blocker and Data Manager

Post by Anonymosity »

The data manager lists all hostnames that the browser has ever contacted for any reason, including third-parties that you normally would not be aware of.
What I did to configure popups was to go into about:config, and set these:
dom.disable_open_during_load - set to true
dom.disable_open_click_delay - set to 2500 (time delay in milliseconds)
That disables spontaneous popups but allows popups triggered by clicking something, if the response is within the time limit.
I also shortened the list of events that are allowed to trigger popups.
dom.popup_allowed_events = change click dblclick error reset submit
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