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Reviews for Smart Referer

Smart Refererby meh., Alexander Schlarb

4.3 star average
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59 reviews for this add-on
  • by TechGuy8, 6 years ago
    I like the concept, as I don't like webistes tracking where I have been...
    I had previously been using RefControl 0.8.xx
    But through my testing, found it was interfering with Disqus comment system.
    Thought I would give this one a go.
    But no, Disqus sections of pages still fail to show any comments when Smart-Referer is running.
    Tried the suggestion of setting Smart-Referer to loose (?) not strict via FF about:config. So it is now set extensions.smart-referer.strict to 'False'.
    But that did not change fact that Disqus comment sections fail to show any comments.
    Only when I have turned off (Disabled) Smart-Referer (and RefControl) do Disqus comments display.
    (In my eval testing, I would only be testing with one or other of these referral controls, not both at same time.)

    Other point that I would suggest, is: There seems no way to know that Smart-Referer is working (assuming I don't care about Disqus issue). So a way to show that Smart-Referer is working would be nice.

    As well as a way for it to work that also allows Disqus comments to function.

    Thanks. :)

    Developer response

    posted 6 years ago
    There is no way of making Disqus work, the issue is that Disqus uses the referer to work and it can be on any website, thus when the requests go the referer is removed because it's going to the disqus domain from another domain. Unless you add all the websites that use Disqus to the whitelist of RefControl, they won't work. You should tell Disqus to fix the issue because it's nothing we or RefControl guys can do.

    If it's enabled, it's working, the whole point of the addon is to be minimal and not require any fiddling other than the strict mode in case you need to use websites with weird domain setups.

    EDIT: ok, I added whitelist support and tested, it now works with Disqus, check the README here: https://github.com/meh/smart-referer for what to do. Keep in mind it will take some time to be reviewed, in the meantime you can use the package in the download section of the page I posted above.
  • by wrx, 6 years ago
    I really like the concept behind this add-on and overall it seems to work really well, but it is not without flaw. In less than 24 hours I've already found one site that does not like it.

    With the add-on enabled, I cannot reply to topics on 4chan. Since linking to a previous page, from the same domain, this should not happen... and after disabling Smart Referer, the problem resolves itself.

    So it seems like Smart Referer could use a little more tweaking or whitelist support. Beyond that, it seems like a great add-on and I'm looking forward to future releases.

    Developer response

    posted 6 years ago
    Just disable strict mode, set extensions.smart-referer.strict to false.

    Also the next version that is being reviewed will have whitelist support.
  • by Prenzel, 6 years ago
    Just works, I'm sure webadmins hate stuff like this though hehe.
    Thanks.
  • by Castamir, 6 years ago
    Works well, I have only one problem: why the hell it isn't included in Firefox's core, enabled by default?
  • by philklaus, 7 years ago
    The plugin should state more exactly what it does.
    It seems like it sends the referrer only when requesting resources with the same domain name. AND it considers SUB-DOMAINS to be the SAME domain.

    I'm using Firefox 11.0 on Mac OS X 10.8 (dev preview 2) and the plugin seems to work well.

    Thanks a lot!

    update: Thanks for your response, meh! I think that's a good way to handle it.

    Developer response

    posted 7 years ago
    About subdomains being considered the same domain, I added an option called `extensions.smart-referer.strict` that when disabled will take as same domain the subdomains, by default it will take subdomains as different domains.

    It will be there as soon as the reviewers review it.
  • by Spikes, 7 years ago
    Perfect idea because it requires no settings and works out of the box.
  • by xehp, 7 years ago
    Great addon! Works perfectly and requires no fiddling to get it to work :D. I would love to see this move out of experimental.
  • by atomizer, 7 years ago
    good to go so far - can test here...
    http://www.xhaus.com/headers

    maybe needs a toolbar button to toggle state?

    i miss another ext which, in addition to the referrer, could also spoof the UA. would be nice to see a more comprehensive header manipulation tool that worked on a per-domain basis

    Developer response

    posted 7 years ago
    About the state toggling: I made the extension restartless, so you can use the already present functionality in the add-on manager.

    It will be there as soon as the new version is reviewed.
  • by Firefox user da7dfe, 7 years ago
    Works fine up to now (a few hours). Testing available at http://www.stardrifter.org/cgi-bin/ref.cgi