Re: making requests from firefox without creating windows

Micha <[email protected]> writes:

> It would be interesting to know if someone can come up with a solution for 
> different browsers, though. Other ideas i ventilated include,
> 
> * The issue would be solved most easily if there would be a pooibility to
>   launch wwwoffle in 'silent' mode, that is, any clicked link will be loaded or
>   ordered in the background without leaving the actual page. I don't know if 
>   this is possible, from the browser side. But if so, then i could configure a
>   desktop icon to switch the wwwoffle mode. I could sitch into silent mode, 
>   order (or fetch imeediately) some links, switch back, and continue browsing.
> 
> * wwwoffle daemon could insert a little icon (say, 12pixel radius disc) before 
>    any link, that would order/fetch the link in background. Via href or submit.
>    Would be optional, of course. Would uglyfy some pages a little, but OTOH 
>    works on *any* browser :)

The problem is that when the user clicks on the link the browser will
send a request to the server/proxy and will display whatever comes
back (either as a new page or an error message).

For newer browsers it might be possible to use asynchronous Javascript
requests which can happen in the background, but this needs a modern
browser and cannot be considered as general purpose.


> * Do the same by ModifyHTML? If it's not possible to fetch in background this 
>    way, try to insert a mailto:mail2agent@action@URL into said icon link.
>    That would mean to trick wwwoffle...maybe by combining anchor insertion with 
>    a faked dontget-replacement ? All in all, sounds too complicated. 
>    This was not about hacking trojans, somehow.
>    Anyway, it would be desirable if ModifyHTML would provide some generic
>    plcaeholders, like %L for the link URL .... then it would be very easy. 

If you are trying to make this general purpose then this won't work
because you don't know that the browser will handle mailto URLs and if
it does then you don't know that it will use an external command to do
it.


> * Alternativly, explore the possibility to insert a css ID or class which activates 
>    Event-Handler code OnClick or something similar, which could turn out to
>    slip through the javascript filter as always 'local' if the the css file would
>    be stored in the local filesystem, on harddisk. 

Any attempt to make something "slip-through" is not a robust way to
add a new feature.

I think that Javascript is probably the only way to get the browser to
do something that doesn't involve changing what is currently
displayed.  The problem is that Javascript might be disabled or not
supported.

-- 
Andrew.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew M. Bishop                             amb-Uxr6IM1mbv2TY6FTCsQk+9Bc4/[email protected]
                                      http://www.gedanken.demon.co.uk/

WWWOFFLE users page:
        http://www.gedanken.demon.co.uk/wwwoffle/version-2.8/user.html