[clug-talk] Fun with about: urls

[Shawn]

What weird timing...  I was just telling my students about this, and the 
"javascript:" URL.  AND, how if you are running a Mozilla based browser, this 
URL actually provides helpful (and usually accurate) error messages, Unlike 
IE's javascript errors, which often are just wrong, or meaningless - other 
than letting you know *something* went wrong... :)

Shawn

On Friday 28 October 2005 15:46, Mark Carlson wrote:
> There are a few about: URLs I'm aware of, and they can be used to do
> some pretty neat things.  I'm sure some of you may know these, and if
> you have any more info, please share it :-)
>
> These can be pasted into your browser (FireFox for sure, links no, I'm
> not sure about other browsers, and who knows about IE...) I'm told
> they have been around since the Netscape 1.0 days, maybe before?
>
> about:blank
> This URL is a blank page.  If you have a computer that is pretty slow
> and you don't want it rendering a web page every time it opens up
> (this can take a few extra seconds) set the homepage to about:blank
> and it might have a little quicker start up time.  Also, this is
> apparently something some browser hijackers set your homepage to...
> I'm not sure why.
>
> about:config
> I found out about this one after seeing
> http://www.petebevin.com/archives/2005/03/10/firefox_popups.html
> In FireFox it has a lot of configuration options you can change.  One
> kind of handy option to add is:
> privacy.popups.disable_from_plugins with a value of `2`
> This will (for the most part) disable Flash and possibly other plugins
> from opening popups that get around the FireFox popup blocker.  I
> still get some popups in FireFox after adding this, but fewer than I
> did before.
>
> I also had to use about:config once to allow FireFox to use SSL2
> (ugh...) to configure a DLink router.
>
> about:
> In FireFox, this gives you a page with a little information about the
> version you are using.
>
> about:buildconfig
> In Mozilla browsers, shows you the arguments used to build the browser
> (although if you used Gentoo, you'd probably already know, heh)
>
> about:cache
> In Mozilla browsers for sure: This is handy if you want to find out
> how much of the cache the browser is using, and where the folder is.
>
> about:plugins
> This shows what plugins are loaded.  It's rather handy if you are
> trying to get a plugin installed and don't know if it's there or not,
> or if it's handling the right MIME types.
>
> There are quite a few others, and of course, after getting halfway
> through writing this I found a good page on Wikipedia (note for later,
> search Wikipedia first...)
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/About: that describes them in much more
> detail.
>
> -Mark Carlson
>
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