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The Panel

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joe04 edited this page Jan 29, 2018 · 5 revisions

xulBlock Advanced (xBA) has substantial changes to the panel of uBlock Origin (uBO).

Summary

In Advanced mode, the key feature of uBO's panel is the domain connectivity matrix. As Advanced users know, it's common for sites to connect to many more 3rd-parties than we need or want.

For me, quickly assessing the connectivity of a given site is by far the most frequent uBO operation I've done since activating Advanced mode long ago. In fact, the very first changes I made to uBO were to enhance these assessments:

  • Most of the other panel items became a distraction, so I removed them. (This includes the big whitelist button and per-site switches; these rules must be managed in the xBA dashboard.)
  • I removed the panel height restriction to see as many domains as I could without having to scroll.
  • I created hotkey capability to get the workflow I wanted.

Two viewing options

There are two ways to view the panel: either the regular popup or in a new tab.

Popup

The popup is what uBO users are accustomed to, i.e. when you click the uBO badge the panel pops up. This works the same in xBA.

The xBA popup panel height is adjustable. It's 500 pixels by default, but this Advanced setting can change it, allowing more domains to be viewed:

popupHeight is a string that defaults to unset, which is equivalent to 500px.

Note: For some browsers, the popup panel must not extend down to the edge of the browser window. See below for details.

New tab

Opening the panel in a new tab has advantages:

  • It always uses the browser's full height, thus showing the most possible domain connectivity without having to scroll down.
  • As a stand-alone tab, it continues to operate until closed, auto-updating itself for activity of the tab it was launched from.
  • Send it to a new browser window for side-by-side, real-time monitoring of domain connectivity.

Note that if the panel hotkey is in popup mode, you can still launch a new tab panel from the popup, via ctrl+shift+click on the all cell.

Hotkey access

Alt+P is xBA's panel hotkey. By default it opens the panel in a new tab, but this Advanced setting can change it:

popupIsHotkey is false by default, opening the panel in a new tab. Set it true to open/close the popup instead.

Note: For some browsers, the hotkey cannot be used for popup control, as explained below. That's why the default is new tab, which is fully reliable for all browsers.

Also note that the popup hotkey is just like clicking the badge. Thus the badge icon must be visible for the popup hotkey to function.

Known problems and workarounds

  • Pale Moon has a XUL popup widget bug such that a fully vertical popup causes the entire panel to go blank and remain so for every subsequent access of it. The workaround is simple: set popupHeight to allow sufficient margin at the bottom. Then restart the browser and the popup will work fine every time.

  • Basilisk has the same XUL popup bug as Pale Moon. The workaround is the same too.

  • Waterfox 56 cannot use the hotkey in popup mode because of a missing XUL popup function. Thus popupIsHotkey must be set false and the hotkey will open the panel in a new tab. I don't know the root cause and won't investigate; all I know is there's a console error stating that the XUL function showPopup is undefined. Note that accessing the popup by clicking the icon still works fine; only the hotkey is a problem.

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