Note to Computerworld – The Firefox NoScript plugin rocks
on April 13th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
This is kinda funny. Computerworld put out an article about 20 “must have” Firefox extensions. Then, they put out an article on 10 Firefox extensions to avoid. And in that “avoid” article, they talked about the NoScript plugin, a plugin that I use and love. Here’s what they say about avoiding this plugin:
This extension is hugely popular and works as advertised, giving you control over which JavaScript, Java and other executable content on a page can run, depending on that content’s source domain. You whitelist the sites you consider safe and blacklist the sites you don’t.
If you really have a need for this kind of control, then you’re already using the extension and will continue to do so. But for the average Web surfer, constantly having to whitelist sites so that scripts can execute in order to give you a fully formed Web experience gets tedious very quickly.
Does NoScript make Firefox safer? Sure. Is it worth the hassle? No. For some reason, paranoia seems to be cool among Web geeks, but for the most part, it is totally unwarranted unless you’re sending and receiving sensitive data. Most typical Web surfers who install this extension remove it after the novelty wears off.
A few points:
1. If it is hugely popular, then obviously there’s something to it.
2. What I find most amusing about this is that the majority of Firefox users ARE geeks of some sort. “Typical Web surfers” aren’t using Firefox near as much as IE. And even if they are using FF, those that find this type of plugin even remotely interesting want it from a security aspect or just want to know what is running, so why even address this as a plugin to avoid? This really makes no sense to me.
3. The article also says to avoid Greasemonkey (a plugin they had suggested as one of the “must haves” – that’s funny just by itself). This plugin allows you to use your own Javascript to customize how webpages are displayed, and you can use scripts written by others. This strikes me an inconsistent. I know that this is not really the same, since these are really doing two different things, but they both use Javascript, and Javascript can be dangerous in either case.
4. They use the term “paranoia” like it is an insult or something to be avoided. Dude, paranoia is a good thing!
Vet
I really like NoScript. I have been using it since forever.
I use a forum site with FireFox that uses JavaScript to display ads. But they’re coming from a different server than the forum is, so I don’t allow javascript from the ad site and I don’t have to see the ads.
Its funny when other forum members mention the ads I can’t see.