NIS disabling legit pages

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NIS disabling legit pages

shacker

1:19 am on Nov 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

I can understand why Norton Internet Security would offer an option to block unrequested popups, but a page on our site renders completely blank for NIS users who have NIS Ad Blocking turned on:

[journalism.berkeley.edu...]

This page creates popup windows for course details when links are clicked, but it does NOT spawn any unrequested (onLoad) popups.

Does NIS really not distinguish between benign and evil popups (where evil=unrequested)? Is there anything I can do about this beyond redesigning the application to work without popup windows or telling users to disable NIS?

Thanks,
Scot

encyclo

1:40 am on Nov 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

Welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com], shacker. You might want to consult the terms of service [webmasterworld.com] for the forum which forbids the posting of personal URLs (even for a site as distinguished as yours!).

Norton Internet Security has a terrible reputation for it's ham-fisted attempts at ad-blocking and its transparent proxy which adds Javascript awkwardly to every page.

When you say the page is blank, are you talking about the popup window or the original page with the list of links? If the latter, it could be that NIS is inserting its Javascript in a way which interferes with your popup Javascript and subsequently blocking the display of your page due to a parsing error introduced by them. What does the source code look like for an NIS user on the page?

NIS should be able to distinguish between requested and unrequested popups, but the program is so bad it's not surprising they get it wrong.

Rambo Tribble

3:10 am on Nov 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

Dear ol' Norton's JavaScript, which is applied to each page viewed, modifies the window object. To see what they are doing, just view source on a page rendered with Norton active and with its pop-up ad-blocker on. Some script is inserted before any script tag native to the page, and some is appended to the end of the page.

shacker

6:21 pm on Nov 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

encyclo, thanks for letting me know that URLs are not allowed here. Won't happen again. Seems like a tricky restriction for a forum where web dev is discussed, but I understand.

Yes, I saw the JavaScript that NIS inserts into and at the end of the page (its presence on affected machines was how I figured out how NIS was at fault).

It is the original page, with the list of links, that is blank, so NIS is definitely failing to distinguish between good and bad pop-ups.

I added the JavaScript with Dreamweaver. The question is, how can I rearrange the page to make NIS realize I'm not trying to advertise to the user or do anything not requested? Should my JavaScript come before or after what NIS inserts? Does anyone have an example of a similar page that NIS doesn't fail on, which I can emulate?

Thanks,
Scot

encyclo

6:52 pm on Nov 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

Scot, there are some good pointers in this earlier thread:

[webmasterworld.com...]

You could also try putting the Javascript in a separate file, where it is less likely to be interfered with.

Dealing with NIS is sometimes tough, because it is so bad a product. However, sadly there are quite a few people using it, so it is important to find those workarounds. If you can get a copy of the source code as modified by a computer running NIS, you can post the part between the

<head>

and

</head>

here.

A quick explanation about the non-posting of URLs: the trouble is if you have a "fix this page" thread, when you have fixed the problem the thread would become useless - but if the question is generalized and the markup is placed in the post rather than in a link, the thread remains valuable for others even once you've found the answer.

I particularly like the solution in msg #22 in the above thread ;)

shacker

12:11 am on Nov 25, 2004 (gmt 0)

Thanks for the link encylo. I like message #22 as well :). And I understand better now why URLs are disallowed.

Looks like I've got a number of approaches to try. Unfortunately I'm going to have to wait until my copy of NIS arrives - going back and forth with students in email: "Does it work now? No? OK, how about now?" is going to take forever. So a personal copy of NIS is on order. Feh.

Have a good Thanskgiving.