Google Prefetching for Mozilla Browsers

Watch for this... by grub · 2005-03-31 02:38 · Score: 5, Insightful

I can see employees being confronted for browsing pages they never actually looked at. An obvious example: innocently searching for info on the silly Vin Diesel movie "XXX" turns up a nice mix of Vin and pr0n in the top results. Presumably a mix of both are loading up in the background

--
Trolling is a art,

Re:Watch for this... by the_mad_poster · 2005-03-31 02:39 · Score: 3, Insightful

Prefetching is one of those things that seems like a really great idea on paper, but doesn't hold up so well in practice.

The problem is that you have things like 'rel=next' that expect the user to go to some next "logical" page, but no structure to a site to encourage that logic. You get people upping bandwidth costs and slowing down browsing time because the site maintainer THINKS they'll go to some next page but the site design actually ENCOURAGES them to go to some other, unrelated page.

In OSS, a lot of the maintainers and coders are just "hackers" or college kids contributing bits and pieces of less broad knowledge over a bigger project team, not real software engineers who have been trained to really think through the consequences of certain design decisions. They don't research their target audience to realize that, while the prefetching feature would be great in a perfect world, the world isn't perfect, and it can really cause problems when so many people are moving from professional browsers to more amateur ones that test out these features in what they THINK is a mainly geek-oriented audience.

I could see why someone at Google might think this is a good idea, but I'd expect that a company with the means to do the necessary research wouldn't go about implementing this kind of hackish "feature set" until it had thought things through a little better.

--
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Re:Watch for this... by Juvenall · 2005-03-31 02:40 · Score: 5, Funny

To be fair though, it's never appropriate to search for Vin Diesel.
Re:Watch for this... by AtariAmarok · 2005-03-31 02:43 · Score: 1

...unless it is that "Pitch Black" movie. That one was surprisingly good, at least until the cheesy digital manta-bats showed up.

--
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Re:Watch for this... by argent · 2005-03-31 02:44 · Score: 5, Insightful

You get people upping bandwidth costs and slowing down browsing time because the site maintainer THINKS they'll go to some next page but the site design actually ENCOURAGES them to go to some other, unrelated page.

There are extensive studies from third parties on what people look at and do when they search on google. And you know what, they found people tend to look at and go to the top result, and don't even glance below the top few results most of the time.

I'd expect that a company with the means to do the necessary research wouldn't go about implementing this kind of hackish "feature set" until it had thought things through a little better.

I'd expect that Google has better figures on where people go to from Google's search pages than anyone else.
Re:Watch for this... by otisaardvark · 2005-03-31 02:48 · Score: 2, Informative

This isn't for pages WITHIN a site, where determining what is 'next' may be problematic. This is for search results.

Here there is a logical choice to prefetch, namely, the top search result. This just autoloads the page to which "I'm feeling lucky" points.

I still don't necessarily like it, it wastes bandwidth. Yes, I know I can turn prefetching off in about:config, but most people won't.
Re:Watch for this... by weapon · 2005-03-31 02:50 · Score: 0

I tend to disagree, say you have a couple of tabs open, ie. a google search and slashdot, you type in your search ('hot grits'), and go read slashdot for a couple of minuts. As slashdot is text heavy, it is not really going to be using up your bandwith, you jump back to your search, and as soon as you click on a link the website comes up. This is not a feature that will be always used, as if you are downloading pictures or there will not be much time left for prefetching, but this will speed up loading some of the time.

Weapon
Re:Watch for this... by camcorder · 2005-03-31 02:51 · Score: 1

You will allways be able to close it via network.prefect-next option on mozilla and fx aswell. If you have such worries, just make it false, and those who would like the convenience of it will get benefit.
Re:Watch for this... by delymyth · 2005-03-31 02:57 · Score: 2, Interesting

I know people who sometimes connect with a 56k modem, and me myself, sometimes I connect with my mobile phone (GPRS, 10kb/sec max as far as I could see).
It wouldn't be so nice to have bandwith sucked up by all those prefetching (and no, I don't want to change, neither the browser neither the Search Engine).

--
-- Personal Blog: http://www.delymyth.net/ (italian)
Re:Watch for this... by bfields · 2005-03-31 02:58 · Score: 5, Insightful

Prefetching is one of those things that seems like a really great idea on paper, but doesn't hold up so well in practice.

The page you cite in support appears to be an argument specifically against prefetching pages with the rel=next attribute. As you say:
The problem is that you have things like 'rel=next' that expect the user to go to some next "logical" page, but no structure to a site to encourage that logic.

That's a flaw in firefox's prefetching logic, not in site-designers' use of rel=next, which was never intended to be used to indicate links the user was most likely to follow.
In any case, google is actually using rel="prefetch", which *is* intended for that purpose. And google's use looks pretty sensible: "This tag is only inserted when it is likely that the user will click on the first link." From experimenting it appears that it's only used on some searches; e.g. the example they give is the first hit on a search for "stanford". So presumably they have fairly good evidence that a user is actually likely to click on such a link--I suspect they have enough data on this that they don't need to just guess.
In OSS, a lot of the maintainers and coders are just "hackers" or college kids contributing bits and pieces of less broad knowledge over a bigger project team, not real software engineers who have been trained to really think through the consequences of certain design decisions.... I could see why someone at Google might think this is a good idea, but I'd expect that a company with the means to do the necessary research wouldn't go about implementing this kind of hackish "feature set" until it had thought things through a little better.

I think you're making some huge generalizations here based on very little evidence.
--Bruce Fields
Re:Watch for this... by shaitand · 2005-03-31 03:00 · Score: 4, Insightful

In commercial development, a lot of the maintainers and coders are just "hacks" or college grads, who know how to write a resume and interview well, contributing bits and pieces of less broad knowledge over a smaller project team, not real experienced software engineers doing what they want to do and who have the brains or inclination to really think through the consequences of all design decisions.

"and it can really cause problems when so many people are moving from professional browsers to more amateur ones that test out these features in what they THINK is a mainly geek-oriented audience."

Precisely what browsers are you referring to? Perhaps you would care to let us know which browsers your highness believes to be "Professional" and which he believes are "more amateur". In general, I would contend the latter are actually superior browsers and that is why people move to them. Every browser I know of goes through a development, alpha, and beta stage to test features before final release. Also, google is implementing this, not a browser.

"I could see why someone at Google might think this is a good idea, but I'd expect that a company with the means to do the necessary research wouldn't go about implementing this kind of hackish "feature set" until it had thought things through a little better."

Perhaps they do not use rel=next attributes and believe they have a bit more data at their fingertips than you do. Maybe, just maybe, you are the one who has not performed any research and google has in fact examined a great deal of data. Maybe that data even tells them that the number of people who continue to the top search results is staggering.
Re:Watch for this... by BinLadenMyHero · 2005-03-31 03:00 · Score: 1

Not only that: many times I do a search on Google and don't want to actually open any of the search results. Either because:
1) The preview text on the result already gave me the information I want
2) I just wanted to check for the corret spelling of the word (did you mean..?)
3) I just wanted to check how many results that search would lead to, or which sites would show up
4) I might just be playing with Google (googlefight, googlewhack, etc)
Re:Watch for this... by anethema · 2005-03-31 03:03 · Score: 5, Informative

So turn it off in about:config, nothing lost.

--

It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Re:Watch for this... by smallpaul · 2005-03-31 03:05 · Score: 5, Insightful

Your post is confusing. First you say that prefetching doesn't work that well in practice and present a link to Simon Willison's blog. But the blog says that prefetching is an "excellent feature" except for a couple of quirks in Mozilla's implementation. Google does not trigger those quirks so they are irrelevant.
Then you go off on a tangent about how "real software engineers" think through their design decisions more than "open source hackers". This is totally contrary to my experience. I would more highly rate the software engineering of Mozilla against Internet Explorer, Unix versus Windows or Apache versus IIS. I could go through a long list of brutal design decisions in commercial software that did not hold up in the real world but I'll just mention Clippy and the Windows registry as two high-profile examples.
Finally, it is Google, a commercial software services company that is the topic of the article. So your whole argument is self-defeating. Either Google doesn't conform to your vision of real software engineering or the feature is not really at odds with real software engineering.
Re:Watch for this... by cyfer2000 · 2005-03-31 03:11 · Score: 2, Informative

For example, if you search triblock copolymer rheology there will be no prefetch. If you search Mozilla there will be prefetch.

--
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
Re:Watch for this... by switcha · 2005-03-31 03:11 · Score: 5, Funny

Hi there. I just came across your post. I was searching for "Vin Diesel" on Google...

--
You know what? ... A little club soda *did* get that out!
Re:Watch for this... by Rich+Klein · 2005-03-31 03:15 · Score: 1

That's why SafeSearch filtering is enabled by default. I don't know that the filtering is applied to the pre-fetched results, but I can't imagine why it wouldn't be when it's applied to all the non-pre-fetched results.

--
-Rich
Re:Watch for this... by nautical9 · 2005-03-31 03:18 · Score: 1

I'd expect that Google has better figures on where people go to from Google's search pages than anyone else.

I've always wondered about this. A lot of sites and search engines will have each URL point back to a redirect script on their site, so that they can track the clicks. Others will use some javascript to do the same thing.
Google does neither, so how would they know what people are clicking on? It seems to me to be incredibly valuable data, especially for a search engine. They could weed out the obvious spam links because so few would be clicking on them.
Re:Watch for this... by harrkev · 2005-03-31 03:21 · Score: 1

I know people who sometimes connect with a 56k modem, and me myself, sometimes I connect with my mobile phone (GPRS, 10kb/sec max as far as I could see).
It wouldn't be so nice to have bandwith sucked up by all those prefetching (and no, I don't want to change, neither the browser neither the Search Engine).
It is for people like you that the created pre-fetching. If you actually click on what is pre-fetched, the page loads faster. If you click on something else-the pre-fetch is aborted. Nothing to loose.

Of course, this assumes that you do NOT pay by the byte (as you might on a mobile phone). For a modem connection, it is OK. Also, it assumes that you have nothing going on in the background. If all you have running is Firefox, this is a good thing. On the other hand, if you have a torrent running in the background, then Firefox gets faster at the expense of the torrent.

--
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Re:Watch for this... by arkanes · 2005-03-31 03:21 · Score: 1

You've already acomplished what you wanted with your anti-OSS troll here on Slashdot, but I'd just like to point out that IE has exactly the same text-scale behavior as Firefox. So it's hardly the biting, pithy condemntation of those amateur OSS developers that you no doubt imagine it to be.
Re:Watch for this... by cthrall · 2005-03-31 03:24 · Score: 1

not real software engineers who have been trained to really think through the consequences of certain design decisions.

Sweeeeet jebus, this has to be a troll...or you've never encountered any software written by "real" software engineers that had made poor design decisions, in which case you should go spend $100 on lottery tickets because you are, obviously, the luckiest person alive.
Re:Watch for this... by TimeTraveler1884 · 2005-03-31 03:24 · Score: 2, Insightful

From the FireFox prefetch FAQ:

Is there a preference to disable link prefetching?
Yes, there is a hidden preference that you can set to disable link prefetching. Add this line to your prefs.js file located in your Mozilla profile directory:

user_pref("network.prefetch-next", false);

We are considering adding UI for this preference (see bug 166648); however, our theory is that if link prefetching needs to be disabled then there must be something wrong with the implementation. We would rather improve the implementation if it does not work correctly, than simply expect users to locate some obscure preference in the preferences UI. Heck, the Mozilla preferences UI is already crowded enough ;-)

I find this statement particulary interesting:
We are considering adding UI for this preference (see bug 166648); however, our theory is that if link prefetching needs to be disabled then there must be something wrong with the implementation.
Um, that is pretty arrogant to assume why people would want to disable things. Until I read this article I didn't even know that Firefox did this. I don't like it one bit from a security standpoint. I don't want my browser running around going to sites that I don't intened to visit. And certainly, not because Google tells my browser to do so.

I suppose at the very least, it can be disabled.
Re:Watch for this... by cyt0plas · 2005-03-31 03:26 · Score: 0, Insightful

Actually, google does log search results, just not all the time. Occasionally, I will see them do a redirect in the search results of stuff I search for. Also, it shows up in the log files as a google referer without a query.

I don't remember the exact tracking URL they use, though.

--
Contact Me (got tired of viruses emailing me).
Re:Watch for this... by ockegheim · 2005-03-31 03:33 · Score: 1

Perhaps amazingly, the first three results in Google are the e-Print archive mirror, the coming Diesel movie sequel, and the original Diesel movie. Only after that is Jay's XXX links, a mathematical site, and "The #1 christian porn site".

I haven't had so much fun with Google for a while

--
I’m old enough to remember 16K of memory being described as “whopping”
Re:Watch for this... by delymyth · 2005-03-31 03:34 · Score: 2, Interesting

Of course, this assumes that you do NOT pay by the byte (as you might on a mobile phone). For a modem connection, it is OK. Also, it assumes that you have nothing going on in the background. If all you have running is Firefox, this is a good thing. On the other hand, if you have a torrent running in the background, then Firefox gets faster at the expense of the torrent.
Luckily I "flatted" myself for GPRS (I have 400MB for 30 days at a flat rate), but it would be better if I can chose search by search if it has to prefetch or not.
I don't have always bandwidth-sucking processes running, and I'd prefer to have a "prefetch" checkbox near the search box.
Am I only searching? Prefetch them!
Am I doing too many things at the same time? Leave it all alone, maybe the search isn't my primary task.

--
-- Personal Blog: http://www.delymyth.net/ (italian)
Re:Watch for this... by pjrc · 2005-03-31 03:39 · Score: 1

Look out, look out, the sky is falling...
so many people are moving from professional browsers to more amature ones ... whose maintainers and coders are just "hackers" or college kids ... not real software engineers.
Yeah, everyone's gonna be a lot safer staying with IE, right? Certainly the track record on critical vulnerabilities should be a strong indication.

--
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Re:Watch for this... by iibbmm · 2005-03-31 03:50 · Score: 1

I think employees shouldn't be looking up info on the movie 'XXX' just as much as they shouldn't be looking at porn. Now if you will excuse me, I'm supposed to be preparing for a meeting.
Re:Watch for this... by njchick · 2005-03-31 03:51 · Score: 1

To be fair though, it's never appropriate to search for Vin Diesel.
... or for Internal combustion license plate
Re:Watch for this... by Kergan · 2005-03-31 03:51 · Score: 1

extensive studies from third parties on what people look at and do when they search on google

Do you mean this hoax?
Re:Watch for this... by tomhudson · 2005-03-31 03:51 · Score: 1, Interesting

So turn it off in about:config, nothing lost.
And just what fractional part of 1% of the population even knows about about:config?
It's not in the regular menu structure to keep people from fiddling with it, but it really DOES need to be better exposed.
Re:Watch for this... by tomhudson · 2005-03-31 03:57 · Score: 1

Why does everyone assume that the poster was referring to Firefox when he said "more amateur browsers". I would have assumed he meant IE, since it's the one that has the most suckage, sploits, least features, etc.
Don't be so defensive, people! If you really believe Firefox is better, why are your nuts in a bind over this comment?
Re:Watch for this... by elgaard · 2005-03-31 03:58 · Score: 1

But if you _are_ confronted for browsing pages you are not supposed to, you can now blame it on Google prefetching.
Re:Watch for this... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 04:05 · Score: 0

There is another way to look at it. When you get caught browsing porn or another inappropriate material at work, you can claim that this was this stupid prefetch feature and you never clicked on any of the improper links.
Re:Watch for this... by gnuman99 · 2005-03-31 04:11 · Score: 1

In OSS, a lot of the maintainers and coders are just "hackers" or college kids contributing bits and pieces of less broad knowledge over a bigger project team, not real software engineers who have been trained to really think through the consequences of certain design decisions.
Thank you for making the Stupid Comment of the Day (TM).
I assume that the real software engineers, like the ones at Microsoft, really thought out the entire future when they introuced us to such beaties as ActiveX or the well designed IE. Let's not forget about the Win32 API and the most flexible Microsoft BOB! Let's not forget about other great innovations brought to us by the forward looking engineers at Microsoft http://www.vcnet.com/bms/departments/innovation.sh tml
I don't know what people like Linus were thinking when hacking their hobby OS. By your statements, it cannot ever surpass the stability of the well-designed Windows XP. Now, what happened to my well engineered Windows 2.0.. Hmmm...
....rant terminated... [beep]
Re:Watch for this... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 04:13 · Score: 1, Insightful

I guess you've never heard of a little 45,000 person company called Sun Microsystems.
Re:Watch for this... by argent · 2005-03-31 04:28 · Score: 2, Insightful

Do you mean this hoax?

What hoax? He disagrees with the basis of the study. That doesn't mean the study is fraudulent (that IS what the term "hoax" implies) nor that his disagreement is valid. In addition, his complaint is that the study may not actually be useful for marketeers... NOT that it's irrelevant to this discussion.
Re:Watch for this... by Relgar · 2005-03-31 04:30 · Score: 1

If you're on a low bandwidth connection, what about using www.google.com/palm ? Presumably someone at Google has/will make the connection that if you're going through there, prefetching probably isn't a good idea.
Re:Watch for this... by Bert64 · 2005-03-31 04:31 · Score: 1

It only does it when idle, so it's prefetching while you're reading the search results and deciding which one to visit, all going well it will have prefetched the one you visit and it will load instantly when you select it.

--
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Re:Watch for this... by B5_geek · 2005-03-31 04:35 · Score: 1

...turns up a nice mix of Vin and pr0n...

Repeat after me: There is NEVER a nice mix of Vin & Porn...

--
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Re:Watch for this... by monkeydo · 2005-03-31 04:43 · Score: 2, Funny

If he's the luckiest person alive, wouldn't he just need one lottery ticket?

--
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
Re:Watch for this... by stewby18 · 2005-03-31 04:44 · Score: 1
Until I read this article I didn't even know that Firefox did this. I don't like it one bit from a security standpoint. I don't want my browser running around going to sites that I don't intened to visit. And certainly, not because Google tells my browser to do so.

How exactly is prefetching a security hole? It sounds like you are woried that you'll go to some innocuous-looking site, and it will prefetch a child porn site or something. However, the site could just as easily:
- meta-redirecty you to a bad site.
- have images pointing to images on a bad site.
- load a bad site in a frame.
- load a bad site invisibly in an iframe.
- ...
Unless you vet all sites with curl before you visit them, you are already wide open to loading content you didn't intend to. Heck, even then, someone could do something like have innocent looking image links that actually have .htaccess redirects to images on a completely different site.

Prefetching takes nothing away from your security.
Re:Watch for this... by t123 · 2005-03-31 04:45 · Score: 1

Perhaps this is why I keep getting odd sites trying to set cookies on my computer?
Re:Watch for this... by northcat · 2005-03-31 04:45 · Score: 2, Informative

I'd expect that Google has better figures on where people go to from Google's search pages than anyone else.

No. It doesn't have any way to know which result a user clicked. It doesn't link results to its own website which redirects to the actual website, like Yahoo does (or used to, haven't used yahoo in a while). Other than that, Google can't do a better job than anyone else.
Re:Watch for this... by Karma+Farmer · 2005-03-31 04:56 · Score: 0

That was beautiful.
Re:Watch for this... by damiam · 2005-03-31 04:57 · Score: 4, Informative

Google does use a redirect script, but only for a small percentage of sessions. And you probably wouldn't notice; they use Javascript to display the original URL in the status bar. (IIRC)

--
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Re:Watch for this... by damiam · 2005-03-31 05:06 · Score: 1

The point is that it gives your info to the prefetched site, even if you never go there. So if a site is prefetched by Google for a certain search, then they have in their logs the IP addresses of every Firefox/Mozilla user that ran that particular search. It's probably not a big deal in most cases, but there are occasions where that could be a bad thing.

--
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Re:Watch for this... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 05:11 · Score: 0

In my photo gallery CGI that I'm writing, prefetching makes slideshow mode very cool for FireFox users... they never see a blank page between slides.

Besides, it's not like lack of this prefetching header prevents web sites from doing it. Many sites use JavaScript hacks to prefetch data.

Using the prefetch header is a much better way. The browser waits until other pages are loaded and can properly prioritize the prefetch bandwidth. The prefetched data is properly cached. And it avoids CGI issues by not prefetching CGIs.

If you find that page designers are abusing it, then either complain to the site admin or turn off prefetching in your browser.

Just because you don't like something doesn't mean the rest of us should be deprived of a useful feature.
Re:Watch for this... by Scott+Hussey · 2005-03-31 05:14 · Score: 1

Unix versus Windows
Since Unix was written at Bell Labs (note you said Unix, not BSD), I think that it would qualify as "real software engineers". I don't think it matters whether the software is commercial or OSS, it matters who is doing the coding. Donald Knuth would be a "real software engineer" by most standards and certainly won't be outcoded by many. But the same can be said for Alan Cox, who falls on the OSS side of the tracks.

--
Scott, Keeper of the Crystal Flame
Re:Watch for this... by stewby18 · 2005-03-31 05:18 · Score: 1

Perhaps, but given that it only happens when you are statistically very likely to have clicked on that link anyway, I'm having a hard time imagining many problem scenarios. Anyone who's concerned about having their IP address recorded among the millions of others at the sites that are the most popupular Google results should really be browsing with an anonymizer (and maybe a tin-foil hat).
Re:Watch for this... by dirty · 2005-03-31 05:27 · Score: 1

Then I'm assuming you disable all images. They're a huge security concern since they can make your browser run around going to sites that you didn't intend to visit.

--

-matt
Re:Watch for this... by shaitand · 2005-03-31 05:31 · Score: 1

This happens in all of the above scerios as well. I would argue that this adds anonymity in the sense that it dilutes the strength of web logs as an indicator you saw the content whatsoever.

For instance the FBI demands the web logs from wethepeople.com. Previously your IP in the logs would mean you viewed the content of the site (although it does not prove it was intentionally) and that probably gets you on an FBI list somewhere as a potential terrorist. Now they can not even establish whether you viewed the content from the logs.
Re:Watch for this... by Kergan · 2005-03-31 05:32 · Score: 2, Interesting

As I reply on my blog:

We've a positively irrelevant methodology that leads to the presentation of a proof (as in the Cmabrigde uinervtisy rscheearch), and the meaningless proof is then served to customers as a sales argument. Isn't this a little bit of a fraud?

More precise:

Stopping to read upon seeing the top results doesn't mean you found what you're looking for; more likely, you quickly scan the first results, conclude on the relevance of your query, sometimes click on the first just in case, and search again.

But the Enquiro research merely emphasizes that users click on the first result -- a reasonably obvious result don't you think? -- and do not explore why users do so.

Moreover, the Enquiro research does not mention the conversion rate. Whereas, this is very much the only thing that counts if you're a webmaster.

Now, it is worth noting here that given 10 powerpoint slides, you tend to remember the first few and the last few. It is a perfectly normal pattern: It comes from 10 being greater than 7, plus or minus 2 -- the maximum number of items a typical individual can manipulate.

Likewise, if you feed 10 search results to a visitor, expect him to remember the first few (stored for comparing with the next result), the last few (the last seen), and one or two in the middle (the ones that left him least indifferent).

Likewise, when it comes to choosing which product to buy, expect a few visitors to go for one of the first results. But as the visitor compares more products, he is also more likely to act consistently and buy. Thus, expect many more to go for the last result, or for the last result left him least indifferent.
Re:Watch for this... by TobascoKid · 2005-03-31 05:42 · Score: 1

For instance the FBI demands the web logs from wethepeople.com. Previously your IP in the logs would mean you viewed the content of the site (although it does not prove it was intentionally) and that probably gets you on an FBI list somewhere as a potential terrorist. Now they can not even establish whether you viewed the content from the logs.

All that means is that they put more people on the 'do not fly' list. After all, you were searching for something that returns wethepeople.com at the top, so you must be up to no good.

--
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
Re:Watch for this... by anethema · 2005-03-31 05:42 · Score: 1

I was really just trying to help that one guy out..not the 99 percent.

--

It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Re:Watch for this... by HishamMuhammad · 2005-03-31 05:52 · Score: 1

Am I only searching? Prefetch them! Am I doing too many things at the same time? Leave it all alone, maybe the search isn't my primary task.

Which is exactly what Firefox does (see questions "How is browser idle time determined?" and "What if I'm downloading something in the background?" on the Mozilla FAQ linked on the story).

But sure, it has no way to know you're running wget in a terminal...

--
The filesystem is the package manager
Re:Watch for this... by argent · 2005-03-31 05:58 · Score: 1

We've a positively irrelevant methodology that leads to the presentation of a proof (as in the Cmabrigde uinervtisy rscheearch), and the meaningless proof is then served to customers as a sales argument. Isn't this a little bit of a fraud?

And as I wrote, I am not talking about whether the study is applicable to marketing. The term "hoax" has a very specific meaning, and implies that the study itself was either not actually performed, or that the methodology was deliberately falsified to produce invalid results. You haven't shown or even implied that the results are faked or even inaccurate, merely that they're being applied incorrectly.
Re:Watch for this... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 06:07 · Score: 0

I don't think people are looking for the Vin Diesel movie when they search for "XXX", are they?
Re:Watch for this... by tomhudson · 2005-03-31 06:08 · Score: 1

I agree. That's why I'm so pissed that about:config is hidden. The whole idea is to have an open environment where users CAN twig things as they see fit, rather than treating them like a bunch of ID-10-Ts, but hiding about:config is the sort of patronizing hand-holding we're used to seeing from proprietary, closed systems.
Re:Watch for this... by swb · 2005-03-31 06:13 · Score: 1

I guess you've never heard of a little 45,000 person company called Sun Microsystems.

Well, I'd hardly judge large business uptake of Firebox generally based on the sole and specific example of a company in direct competition with Microsoft and with a CEO known to hate Microsoft on a personal level.

It's a really poor example, as are most other computer industry businesses that compete with Microsoft. Show me the banks, insurance companies, real estate companies, etc. that use Firefox, not just those people with an axe to grind against MS.
Re:Watch for this... by SquadBoy · 2005-03-31 06:21 · Score: 1

Name something closed source that Don Knuth has written.

Also you do know that Unix started out basically as a "black op" at Bell Labs and has a very strong tradition of taking patches from all over and sharing source in a DFSG fashion up till the civil wars of the 80s and that after that it was OSS that arguably saved it from the aftermath of said wars, right?

So your point was?

--

Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Re:Watch for this... by mingrassia · 2005-03-31 06:22 · Score: 1

If you are really that worried about it, then turn on SafeSearch Filtering under Advanced Options.

Of course only use this option at work and not at home, sometimes the search results are fun :-) My favorite example was once I was searching for information about a place I had to travel on business. Funny thing was, Google returned a bunch of wife swapping websites when I searched for "southwood UK".

--
OS X, Linux, Tivo, Amiga, my fascination with cult-like technologies would intrigue any psychiatrist.
Re:Watch for this... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 06:31 · Score: 0

It only prefetches while Firefox is idle. Some of us, even on dialup, have other applications accessing the internet while we read web pages. This is discussed in the prefetch FAQ, but I didn't get the impression that the Mozilla developers think it is a big deal.
Re:Watch for this... by cicadia · 2005-03-31 06:59 · Score: 1

Well, Google isn't actually *doing* the pre-fetching for you; it's just a hint to the browser through the HTML that it might want to pre-load a couple of other pages. Presumably, the Palm browser wouldn't support these hints, so it's really not an issue regardless of what Google does with their HTML.

--
Living better through chemicals
Re:Watch for this... by DaggertipX · 2005-03-31 07:16 · Score: 0

Just a quick response to your sig :

"All you need to know about OSS: CTRL + "Scroll up" in FF shrinks text....."

Yup, because the downward scroll is the most natural and familiar to people and that increases text size, as would be the most common want of the user. It's called making software comfortable and usable... New rule - if you're going to target criticism at something, be informed enough to understand at least the basics of it.

Overall, good troll though - you managed to avoid making any form of valid point and got a lot of suckers like me to respond.
Re:Watch for this... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 07:16 · Score: 0

Side note: are moderators even paying attention here? The half of the parent post that isn't just completely inaccurate is a substance-free troll. Early moderators might be excused for not having done the necessary research to determine the inaccuracies, but the fact that the parent is still modified +5 insightful is kind of sad....
Re:Watch for this... by Relgar · 2005-03-31 07:49 · Score: 1

I know, what I meant was that the HTML for Google's version of its page for Palm is already different, so why not just drop the prefetch hints for that version of the page? So if I go to google.com/palm and make a query, why should the search result page that I get back have prefetch hints? We already A) know it's someone who wants low bandwidth, and B) generate specialized HTML for Palm browsers anyway.
Re:Watch for this... by smeenz · 2005-03-31 07:50 · Score: 2, Interesting

For the last several weeks at least, every google search I've done from work has had the click tracking links, and it never hides it on the status bar.
This doesn't happen at home... but always at work, and it's not cached, because the response is dynamic (it is a search engine after all)
For example, the first link returned from my work machie when searching for 'bob' (ignore the stupid space in the URL added by slashdot):

http://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=U&start=2&q=http:// www.bobthebuilder.org/&e=9901

but from home, it's just

http://www.bobthebuilder.org
Re:Watch for this... by b100dian · 2005-03-31 07:51 · Score: 1

..In IE's status bar, maybe..

--
gtkaml.org
Re:Watch for this... by roca · 2005-03-31 08:45 · Score: 1

> That's a flaw in firefox's prefetching logic, not
> in site-designers' use of rel=next, which was
> never intended to be used to indicate links the
> user was most likely to follow.

Actually if you read the comments, you'll notice that the HTML4 spec specifically says that rel="next" may be used for prefetching. So Mozilla is simply following the spec here.
Re:Watch for this... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 08:54 · Score: 0

It also doesn't always turn on prefetching for the top result. It only does so when it's significantly more relevant than the surrounding results. That is to say, if they're pretty damn sure you're going to click on it, they'll include a prefetch hint. And also, people who still use Seamonkey because it doesn't suck can turn off prefetching in the Advanced->Cache section of the preferences dialog.
Re:Watch for this... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 09:07 · Score: 0

No. If he's the luckiest person alive, he should buy tickets in several different lotteries in order to win multiple jackpots.
Re:Watch for this... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 09:13 · Score: 0

and don't forget loading (x)html documents in an tag
Re:Watch for this... by eggnet · 2005-03-31 09:16 · Score: 1

Unless you vet all sites with curl before you visit them, you are already wide open to loading content you didn't intend to. Heck, even then, someone could do something like have innocent looking image links that actually have .htaccess redirects to images on a completely different site.

Prefetching takes nothing away from your security.

I expect my browser to protect me from that, for example, not loading images that are from a different domain, etc., or prefetching sites.

And, I expect my browser to tell me what kinds of things it will protect me from, and specifically what it isn't protecting me from.
Re:Watch for this... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 10:04 · Score: 0

In OSS, a lot of the maintainers and coders are just "hackers" or college kids contributing bits and pieces of less broad knowledge over a bigger project team, not real software engineers who have been trained to
Yeah, sure. And I presume you claim to be one of these well-trained "software engineers" (which in itself is an oxymoron -- software development is not engineering, nor should it be, but I digress). And those other people you are not familiar with, must have some inferior skill set and expertise.
My experience leads me to believe that this is pure bullshit. Majority of active OSS participants are actually your regular experience software professionals (or, "software engineers" if you prefer); OSS just happens to be their hobby. In corporations, on the other hand, you do get all kinds of slackery slobs who neither have low-level technical expertise nor design, architectural or domain knowledge; mixed with more skilled folks.
And don't just take my word: the few studies that have been done regarding composition of the "Open Source" community actually did basically find that, gee, there is no separate OSS group (separate from "real" SEs employed by companies), but that it was mostly overlapping. The stereotypical "college student" image was found to be mostly an urban legend.
Re:Watch for this... by hawk · 2005-03-31 10:23 · Score: 1

If you assume a correllation between the choices of users that click on the link and those that click on the cached version, you can get a pretty good idea, unless there's also a correllation between sluggish sites and rankings . . .

hawk
Re:Watch for this... by mabinogi · 2005-03-31 10:47 · Score: 1

yup. the whole "We're now so user friendly because we've taken all the useful options out of the UI because they scare people" mentality bugs me.

Because it'll always end up with a user saying "I'd like to use this software, but it doesn't do X"
To which the response is "Yes, it does!, just open this obscure settings editor and scroll through the hundreds of arcane settings, and manually edit yyy by hand!"

I much prefer the approach that software like KDE takes where the policy is that _any_ instance in which the user has to manually adjust a setting in a configuration file is a bug. (and editing about:config is for all intents and purposes directly editing a configuration file)
The difficulty there of course is designing an interface that allows all the settings to be modified, but doesn't clutter the interface.

--
Advanced users are users too!
Re:Watch for this... by jesser · 2005-03-31 10:54 · Score: 2, Informative

Google occasionally makes search results go through a redirect, so it has statistics about which results users clicked on for maybe 1% of searches.

--
The shareholder is always right.
Re:Watch for this... by bfields · 2005-03-31 11:00 · Score: 1

Actually if you read the comments, you'll notice that the HTML4 spec specifically says that rel="next" may be used for prefetching. So Mozilla is simply following the spec here.

Well, I'd describe that as a bug in the spec. (In any case, there's a reason it says "may be used" and not "should"--and "simply following the spec" is no excuse for implementing something optional and dumb.)
But you're right, "never intended to be used" was probably too strong. Maybe "never should have been used" would have been better.
None of this, of course, is particularly relevant to the google case, since they're using "prefetch", not "next".
--Bruce Fields
Re:Watch for this... by camusflage · 2005-03-31 11:03 · Score: 1

And just what fractional part of 1% of the population even knows about about:config?

I'm not saying it's a good idea, but I think there's a pretty good overlap between this fraction of 1% and the great grandparent's percentage of the population using GPRS data service.

--
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
Re:Watch for this... by KZigurs · 2005-03-31 11:29 · Score: 1

You are saying that people are stupid, with short attention spans and highly trusting to the reccomendations from unreliable sources?

Whoa, what a concept!
Re:Watch for this... by anthony_dipierro · 2005-03-31 11:53 · Score: 1

No. If he's the luckiest person alive, he'd find the winning lottery ticket in the street.
Re:Watch for this... by Pseudonym · 2005-03-31 12:19 · Score: 1

I was thinking more of The Iron Giant, which is an animation geek's delight.

--
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Re:Watch for this... by Zirnike · 2005-03-31 12:52 · Score: 1

"downward scroll is the most natural and familiar to people"
Funny... My first impression was 'It acts that way? That's really counterintuitive...'
Why do you think FPS games generally bind zoom in to 'scroll up'? Or 'move forward' to the uppermost key? It's more intuitive to think of toward the screen as zooming, just like if you're leaning forward (which generally allows more detail in everyday life). Binding text size down to scroll down would make more sense from a user-interface standpoint.
Of course, I think IE started it, so it's their error initially.

--
I'm not shy, I'm stalking my prey
Re:Watch for this... by drsmithy · 2005-03-31 14:04 · Score: 1

I think you're making some huge generalizations here based on very little evidence.
How's that ? He's basically described the essence - and purportedly primary advantage - of Open Source development.
Re:Watch for this... by stewby18 · 2005-03-31 14:12 · Score: 1

So do you expect your browser to prevent sites from loading other sites in frames, then?
Re:Watch for this... by drsmithy · 2005-03-31 14:18 · Score: 1

I could go through a long list of brutal design decisions in commercial software that did not hold up in the real world but I'll just mention Clippy and the Windows registry as two high-profile examples.
IME Clippy and friends are quite popular outside of computer geek circles. More importantly, the AI and help system underlying them is very good.
Similarly, the Registry is only really criticised by unix people who do so because - like just about everything else they criticise - it's not unix. From a design perspective, a centralised, ACL-limited transactional database is an excellent way to store data.
If you want to talk about bad software design, it's probably better if you come up with actual bad software design (for example, a security model with a superuser that basically circumvents any and all restrictions it might otherwise impose), rather than things the OSS community - and largely only the OSS community - like to rag on because Microsoft did it.
Re:Watch for this... by bfields · 2005-03-31 15:31 · Score: 1

I think you're making some huge generalizations here based on very little evidence.
How's that ? He's basically described the essence - and purportedly primary advantage - of Open Source development.

What do you think the "puportedly primary advantage of Open Source development" is? I always thought it was that it produced open source software.... I don't like having to agree to a bunch of ludicrous proprietary licenses just to use my computer, thanks.
As for the "huge generalizations based on very little evidence", you're right, I'll take that back: strike "very little", replace that by "no"....
--Bruce Fields
Re:Watch for this... by ArtStone · 2005-03-31 16:18 · Score: 1

In addition to the fact that on some searches Google does implement a discrete tracking redirect URL, Google also has the Google Toolbar. While not a perfect statistical sample, the tracking information that Google gets from the URL tracking has to be a huge amount of useful information.

Ultimately, all SEO will become fairly pointless - as Google has the data to determine which web sites people choose and then stay at for a number of page views - as opposed to the content-free web sites just meant to boost page rank or link to affiliate programs.

--
Final 2006 "Proof of Global Warming" US Hurricane Count -> 0
Re:Watch for this... by drsmithy · 2005-03-31 17:31 · Score: 1

What do you think the "puportedly primary advantage of Open Source development" is?
"Anyone can contribute."
"Lots of eyes looking."
Tend to be the ones that are espoused ad-infinitum.
Re:Watch for this... by Knetzar · 2005-03-31 17:38 · Score: 1

So you think that "scroll down" should be used for zooming out instead of scrolling down?
Re:Watch for this... by Tzarius · 2005-03-31 20:43 · Score: 1

Indeed, I've sometimes noticed this. It's certainly better than full-time redirection (and the resulting link obfuscation).
Re:Watch for this... by smallpaul · 2005-04-02 07:13 · Score: 1

If Clippy is popular then why did Microsoft decide to hide it by default?
With regard to the registry: it violates two principles of good software architecture. First, you want to minimize the multiplication of namespaces and data access methods. Second, you don't want corruption of a single file to result in an inability to access your whole system.
You could argue that relational databases tend to violate these principles as well but the truth is that when they are used in volume applications they _are_ the data store and the metadata store and the single, unified namespace as well. They also have many more corruption-fighting features than does the registry.
Re:Watch for this... by runderwo · 2005-04-04 16:41 · Score: 1

"Anyone can contribute" does not imply that software engineering is not performed. It is possible for poorly engineered software to be released under this model, but why would properly engineered software be rejected in a meritocratic community? That seems to be a contradiction, and so far I've seen no evidence that it has actually happened (a well engineered component being rejected in favor of a poorly engineered one).

--
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
Re:Watch for this... by eggnet · 2005-04-05 07:46 · Score: 1

So do you expect your browser to prevent sites from loading other sites in frames, then?

If the browser could do so without me knowing, yes. If the "other" site could be potentially any site with or without my knowledge, you bet.
Re:Watch for this... by stewby18 · 2005-04-06 13:38 · Score: 1

If the browser could do so without me knowing, yes. If the "other" site could be potentially any site with or without my knowledge, you bet.

I'm not really seeing the point... Say you go to site A, and it chooses to load site B's objectionable/dangerouse/whatever content in a subframe. How is A choosing to load B in a subframe fundamentally different than A just putting up content you don't like? Either way it comes down to whether or not you think A is trustworthy enough to visit in the first place.

Even if there is a difference to you, it's pretty easy for A to instead set up a server that transparently to you is just as bad. All A has to do is make it so that A.com/foo/ fetches the content of B.com/ (while sending B whatever info they have about you in/along with the request), does some quick url mapping from B to A in the content, then serves that.

Or, A could just do everything malicious that B does all by themselves.

The point being that if A isn't trustworthy, and you go to A's site, you are screwed.

Links by Nos. · 2005-03-31 02:39 · Score: 0

Mozilla blocks refers from slashdot... you'll have to copy and paste the links to anyting at mozilla.org

Re:Links by sharkey · 2005-03-31 02:44 · Score: 4, Informative

BUGzilla blocks Slashdot referrers, not MOzilla.

--

--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Re:Links by Will2k_is_here · 2005-03-31 02:47 · Score: 1

The hell you talking about?
http://mozilla.org/
Google's the problem anyways.
I think the problem is those # symbols are translated to %23 in the URL which doesn't work (Firefox bug maybe?).
Re:Links by anethema · 2005-03-31 03:09 · Score: 2, Informative

Even if it WERE mozilla, rather than just bugzilla as mentioned above..

Install tabbrowser extensions (TBE), and right click your quicklaunch type link at the top of firefox(which we all know we all have right? :D)...click tab settings..and make it always block referer. Or you can just make TBE do it for every site, though i dont.

TBE and adblock make browsing in firefox about a thousand times better. Why firefox doesnt have good tab behavior in the first place is beyond me.

With TBE closing a tab doesnt just kick me to the last tab, goes to last selected. Also middle clicking links from within pages keeps proper sorting in TBE and colour codes it to show you whats going on.

You can drag tabs around and a million other little features that are missing from the default tab behavior. Good stuff.

--

It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Re:Links by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 03:12 · Score: 0

Nah, it's a bug in the post. The %23 in the links in the post should be converted to #
Re:Links by FuzzyBad-Mofo · 2005-03-31 04:43 · Score: 1

Or just disable 'referer' logging in your browser to avoid this kind of discrimination.

about:config
network.http.sendRefererHeader = 0

MSIE/MSN by mirko · 2005-03-31 02:39 · Score: 5, Insightful

Does somebody knows whether MSIE and MSN collaborate the same way?
Anyway it could be obvious that Google tries to establishes such alliances against his main concurrent (besides Yahoo).

--
Trolling using another account since 2005.

Re:MSIE/MSN by alexandreracine · 2005-03-31 02:46 · Score: 1

Microsoft and collaboration can't be in the same sentence, exept this one of course.

but... wait... no. Actually, there is this Agility Alliance thing :)

--
No sig for now.
Re:MSIE/MSN by Libr-Dir · 2005-03-31 02:48 · Score: 1

and let's not forget the connections between mozilla and google. That makes a substantive difference in how these things may play out. Gbrowser, anyone? I for one am ready for that...
It is, however, one of the problems with the MSIE and MSN search tool... no one can follow what might be happening very well, but I have seen no indication that the prefetch is connected in this manner. Of course, now they'll be looking at it, which isn't a bad thing, by any means. Speed is always nice, though I also have to hope that mozilla will allow us to turn prefetch off.
Re:MSIE/MSN by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 03:12 · Score: 1, Funny

The MSN homepage is actually built into the Windows Operating System.
Re:MSIE/MSN by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 03:38 · Score: 0

Listen, lifeless fanboi: there is no GBrowser.

There will never be.

It was just the mental ejaculate of a "blogger" who has never seen a live and warm female human pussy.

Get over it.

Why don't you write to Larry Page and ask him nicely if you can be his personal ass-whore?
Re:MSIE/MSN by m50d · 2005-03-31 03:54 · Score: 1

If IE added support it would work with them on google too. But given the speed at which IE gets new features, I doubt they'll be supporting prefetching any time soon.

--
I am trolling
Re:MSIE/MSN by mebob · 2005-03-31 10:01 · Score: 1

I realize your trying point out the relationship between google and mozilla, but I'm sure if IE(which I'm sure is still the most used browser on google) had the ability to prefetch they would take advantage of it. Microsoft does do things to make IE faster when connecting to IIS. I'm still amazed that the new msn search support other browsers so well.

Anyway this is hardly collaborating, mozilla didn't do this for google. It's something that existed.

Hardly a "sitfinder-esc" "feature"

--
=1000101
Re:MSIE/MSN by ChuckOp · 2005-04-01 04:37 · Score: 1

Does somebody knows whether MSIE and MSN collaborate the same way?
Imagine what the uproar would be if IE and MSN Search implemented this feature first.

Padding? by Quixote · 2005-03-31 02:40 · Score: 5, Interesting

Would prefetching pad the click count for the ads that Google shows along the side? I know, the client (Moz) adds a
X-moz: prefetch
header, but how many server admins log this?

Re:Padding? by nautical9 · 2005-03-31 03:10 · Score: 3, Insightful

If you're referring to the sites that google's adding the prefetch links for, then no - since there's no "clicking" happening for anything but the result page. If anything, the impression to click ratios will go down, because the page (and the google image ads on it) are being loaded, but the client will never click on it because he never saw it.
If you're referring to potential click-fraud that a malicious site may do by adding a bunch of "prefetch" links on their page that points to the ad, I seriously doubt it, since no one but the client's machine knows what the links are (since I believe they're loaded at the time the image is generated).
Perhaps an enterprising fraudster may write some clever javascript that waits for the google ad to load, and then generates the prelinks - but I doubt the browser would then notice the change and go prefetch them. Besides, it'd be easier to just make an invisible frame and set it's href location. But again, I doubt you can dynamically figure out what the google ad click URLs are with javascript alone.
Re:Padding? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 03:12 · Score: 0

Well, now they'll have to, won't they? If they see a huge jump in the amount of clicks, surely they'll investigate. If not, their problem.
Re:Padding? by wootest · 2005-03-31 03:38 · Score: 1

Uh, seeming as how it's the top result and not the ads that are being pre-fetched... no.
Re:Padding? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 03:42 · Score: 0

JS has timeout-functions.

JS has regex-support (it is even in the ECMA-spec).

I've done it for SEO-purposes and it worked out well for the sites I've done it for.
Re:Padding? by mpthompson · 2005-03-31 04:21 · Score: 1

As you indicate, prefetching links that may or may not actually be clicked will drive down click-through rates for the sponsored links that appear on prefetched pages. Once a sponsored link's click-through rate falls below a certain level that link is deemed non-relevant can be removed from the pool of sponsored links shown for certain keywords.

I'm not sure why Google would think that this is a good thing. They are very particular about making sure sponsored links requested from their system are actually shown in browsers as the click-through number is an important part of their ad relevancy algorithms. From an advertisers perspective, ad impression rates will be inflated because of prefetching, thus making it even more difficult to determine which ad keywords are performing well.

Bandwidth and other issues aside, I find it very difficult to understand why Google thinks prefetching is a good idea. Particularly if the prefetched pages have sponsored links on them -- as many do.
Re:Padding? by northcat · 2005-03-31 05:06 · Score: 1

C'mon, he just wants to Karma Whore. His post made no sense.
Re:Padding? by protactin · 2005-03-31 12:34 · Score: 1

Generally, and certainly in the case of Google AdSense, such adverts are loaded via JavaScript or an IFRAME. Thus the adverts won't get prefetched; only the raw HTML of the target page is downloaded and cached (if appropriate).

Awsome by nberardi · 2005-03-31 02:41 · Score: 1

This looks like it will be a really useful resource. Are there any other examples of the best way to do this? For other browsers. Also does anybody know of useful sites that list all these little known features that are available but never talked about?

Re:Awsome by Given+M.+Sur · 2005-03-31 02:49 · Score: 2, Funny

This looks like it will be a really useful resource. Are there any other examples of the best way to do this? For other browsers.

"Google uses a special prefetching feature in Firefox and Mozilla web browsers to provide this functionality, so results prefetching is not available in Internet Explorer or other web browsers."

Now, is it really easier to post a question and wait for an answer than to just read the article?

--
nil
Re:Awsome by xMilkmanDanx · 2005-03-31 04:24 · Score: 1

Apparently so...

And that's beyond not reading the article, that's not even reading the summary.

--
I am not in anyway affiliated with Max Cannon
Re:Awsome by nberardi · 2005-03-31 04:25 · Score: 1

Prefetching is available on IE, because I use to do it with Javascript to load images ahead of time. I was wondering if there is a solution that is easy to impliment and works across all browsers.

Link is broken by KinkifyTheNation · 2005-03-31 02:41 · Score: 5, Informative

Replace the %23 with a # and the url will work.

Re:Link is broken by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 02:59 · Score: 0

Replace the %23 with a # and the url will work.

I've hit this slashbug three times in the last day but I'd never seen it before. Is it a new problem?
Re:Link is broken by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 03:09 · Score: 0

Sad that the editor didn't even bother to click the link before approving the story. What stopped this from being a Goatse link?
Re:Link is broken by KinkifyTheNation · 2005-03-31 05:00 · Score: 1

Actually, I tried to post a new link but it still had the same problem, it's a slashcode bug, not error on the editor's part.
Re:Link is broken by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 05:04 · Score: 0

I'm not saying that the editor broke the link. I'm saying that it's completely obvious that the editor didn't even bother to click it before posting the story. That's definitely an error on the editor's part, since for all they knew, it could lead anywhere.

Re:Gone already? by kubrick · 2005-03-31 02:41 · Score: 2, Insightful

Not sure if it changed, or if the submitter or editor mangled the link...

http://www.google.com/webmasters/faq.html#prefetch ing

Based on where it's inserting the space, I'd say both. (Submitter mangled, editor posted without checking.)

--
deus does not exist but if he does

how about a link that works... by ...+James+... · 2005-03-31 02:41 · Score: 4, Informative

Slashdot kills the # character in the URL: prefetching faq

--
get nemulator

Re:how about a link that works... by xtracto · 2005-03-31 02:50 · Score: 1

man, I got really nervous when clicking your tinyurl link lol... i was affraid of the goatse...

--
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Re:how about a link that works... by tiptone · 2005-03-31 03:33 · Score: 1

Just curious, why tinyurl a URL that is already pretty small?

--
Please don't read my sig.
Re:how about a link that works... by maxwell+demon · 2005-03-31 03:37 · Score: 1

This is why it is a better idea to use makeashorterlink - they allow you to look at the URL before going there.

Here is the correct URL through makeashorterlink.

--
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Re:how about a link that works... by earthbound+kid · 2005-03-31 03:38 · Score: 1

Why respond to a comment without reading it?

As he said, /. strips the # signs from urls. Hence the need to obfuscate. In fact, this is the first time I've ever seen a non-shock site purpose for tinyurl.com. I'm pretty sure it's going to be the last time too.
Re:how about a link that works... by Lehk228 · 2005-03-31 06:49 · Score: 1

tinyurl is also good in places which only allow hyperlinking by posting a URL which becomes the content of the link as well as it's destinaiton, thus a long URL can wrap several times around the screen or widen the page horribly.

--
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Re:how about a link that works... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 07:54 · Score: 0

I'm pretty mad that tinyurl hides the target and claims it's good because it allows people to hide affiliate information. Those people are just spammers and shouldn't be helped.

I never thought speed was a problem with Google by harks · 2005-03-31 02:42 · Score: 1

but they seem very concerned. Why?

Re:I never thought speed was a problem with Google by TobascoKid · 2005-03-31 02:46 · Score: 3, Informative

It's not the speed of google - it's the speed of jumping off google and on to the website "most likely" to be what you're searching for.

--
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
Re:I never thought speed was a problem with Google by JanneM · 2005-03-31 02:47 · Score: 1

I never thought speed was a problem with Google but they seem very concerned. Why?

Perhaps it's never been a problem precisely because they are very concerned with it at all times.

--
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Re:I never thought speed was a problem with Google by ArsonSmith · 2005-03-31 02:55 · Score: 1

Like the dandruf shampoo comercials.

- "You use Brand X? You don't have dandruff."
- "Exactly."

--
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.

Not a good idea by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 02:42 · Score: 0

Great: so by using Google I'm wasting my bandwidth and eating into my monthly download limit. Is there anyway to disable this?

Re:Not a good idea by lbmouse · 2005-03-31 02:48 · Score: 0, Redundant

Yes... FTA:
In Firefox, you can disable prefetching by doing the following:

1. Type "about:config" in the address bar.
2. Scroll down to the setting "network.prefetch-next" and set the value to "False".
Re:Not a good idea by AndrewRUK · 2005-03-31 03:46 · Score: 1

If you're using Mozilla (rather than FireFox) you don't need to use about:config like the two posts above say, it's in the preferences, in the Advanced->Cache section.

Cool by Worminater · 2005-03-31 02:43 · Score: 0, Troll

Mozilla blocks /. referal; have to copy/past it for them to work.

This actually seems like a pretty good thin IMO. I already use a mozilla tweak to preload backgroudn pages, and this just seems like a logical web site based extension of that. If you've got the bandwidth; Flaunt it:D

I hope they let us turn it off. by Short+Circuit · 2005-03-31 02:43 · Score: 2, Interesting

I'm on dial-up at home, and the last thing I want is to download 500K of pages I might not actually view.

--
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)

Re:I hope they let us turn it off. by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 02:50 · Score: 0

RTA.
Re:I hope they let us turn it off. by fadir · 2005-03-31 02:53 · Score: 1

Just read the Google-Page provided above:

---snip---
In Firefox, you can disable prefetching by doing the following:

1. Type "about:config" the address bar.
2. Scroll down to the setting "network.prefetch-next" and set the value to "False".
---snip---

There you go ...
Re:I hope they let us turn it off. by Short+Circuit · 2005-03-31 03:04 · Score: 1

I don't want to disable it across the board. There are some situations, such as gmail (At home, I use both the web interface and Evolution as mail clients.), where I'd prefer to have prefetching enabled.

--
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Re:I hope they let us turn it off. by Binestar · 2005-03-31 03:21 · Score: 1

I'm on dial-up at home

Considering that prefetching happens while you are currently reading a page and presumably not using your bandwidth, users get better performance from their dialup than when prefetching isn't working. Think about it...

--
Do you Gentoo!?
Re:I hope they let us turn it off. by yincrash · 2005-03-31 03:30 · Score: 1

Many Internet "accelerators" use prefetching to "speed up" internet access. Mozilla just put it in your browser. Since it only uses bandwidth not used, then you're ok. Especially since the feature is MOST effective when you're using dialup.
Re:I hope they let us turn it off. by Short+Circuit · 2005-03-31 03:38 · Score: 1

My browser isn't the only application that needs my internet connection, or even the application that uses it the most. And Mozilla only knows about bandwidth that it's not using, not bandwidth other applications aren't using.

See some of the other responses to my comment for confirmation.

--
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Re:I hope they let us turn it off. by cirisme · 2005-03-31 03:45 · Score: 1

This only disables
<link rel="prefetch">
requests. I don't know much about the internals of Gmail, but I think GMail would be unaffected since they use xmlhttp.
Re:I hope they let us turn it off. by Short+Circuit · 2005-03-31 03:46 · Score: 1

I load links and searches in tabs, and try to do other things while those are loading. Sometimes, I won't reference a search tab for several minutes after launching it.

These "other things" I do typically involve IRC, instant messenging, email, or even installing packages with apt-get. A heavy bandwidth draw over a dial-up connection has a tendency to kill a lot of these tasks. gaim connections to AIM, Yahoo and ICQ frequently drop, evolution's send/receive process hangs, and I get dropped from IRC servers for ping timeouts.

Yeah, a lot of this can probably be fixed by setting up "fair queuing" or somesuch in netfilter, but I'm a netfilter newbie, and haven't had the time to do that yet.

--
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)

working link by dankinit · 2005-03-31 02:43 · Score: 1

working link for the Google Webmaster's FAQ you'll have to scroll to bottom of the page on your own.

Re:Gone already? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 02:43 · Score: 0

Expending a little brain mass would lead you to the correct URL, which is incorrectly encoded in the summary:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/faq.html#prefetch

I want this because... by Morrolan · 2005-03-31 02:44 · Score: 1

I need more crap streaming into my cache... Haven't looked yet so I hpe it is easy to turn off.

Re:I want this because... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 03:23 · Score: 0

in address bar, type in about:config

then change "network.prefetch-next" to false

This is Potentially Dangerous by cyranoVR · 2005-03-31 02:44 · Score: 5, Insightful

Ever heard of the concept "one click and you're guilty?" Users of this feature who unknowingly perform a search that returns results containting offensive/illegal content may find themselves being prosecuted by local, state or Federal authorities...

Proof of concept: Google caught in anti-Semitism flap. Replace "anti-semitism" with "child pornography" and you'll understand what I'm getting at...

Re:This is Potentially Dangerous by Rakshasa+Taisab · 2005-03-31 03:10 · Score: 4, Funny

Note to self; Remember to turn of network.prefetch-next when googling for "child pornography".

--
- These characters were randomly selected.
Re:This is Potentially Dangerous by AlanS2002 · 2005-03-31 04:11 · Score: 0

Scary shit that. I don't think the problem is the software though. More like crazy governments. People don't always know what a porn images is of before they download it. So therefore if it is right to charge someone who has inadvertently downloaded child porn and deleted it immediately with child sex crimes, it is logically implied that is right to charge anyone who has downloaded any porn at all (child porn or otherwise) with child sex crimes. Cause after all it could be child porn for all they know. Throws intent out the window as a question to be considered in deciding whether anyone is guilty of a crime. It all sound a bit to much like 1984.

--
Not all conservatives are stupid,
but it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
- Hume
Re:This is Potentially Dangerous by LordKronos · 2005-03-31 04:28 · Score: 1

I know you're being funny (hence the +5) but the truth is, you don't have to google for "child pornography". In the example cited, googling for "jew" brought up sites on anti-Semitism. I don't know what keywords would cause it, but it's just as likely that some other seemingly innocent keyword could bring up a high ranked site containing child porn.
Re:This is Potentially Dangerous by Pastis · 2005-03-31 04:28 · Score: 1

Just make a firefox plugin :)
I am sure it is very easy to do.

--
Sneak teach kids Algebra using a game
Re:This is Potentially Dangerous by stewby18 · 2005-03-31 05:06 · Score: 2, Insightful

How many innocuous Google searches return illegal content as the top hit and have data suggesting to Google that enough people follow that first link that it should be prefetched?
Re:This is Potentially Dangerous by cyranoVR · 2005-03-31 05:16 · Score: 1

Well, if you're a fan of Vladimir Nabokov, DON'T try googling for "Lolita" :\
Re:This is Potentially Dangerous by roca · 2005-03-31 08:50 · Score: 1

Also, Google already has some kind of porn checker for their safe-search service. They could use that to avoid having users prefetch porn.

broken link, here is the correct one by grandmofftarkin · 2005-03-31 02:44 · Score: 3, Funny

a href="http://www.google.com/help/features.html#pre fetch"

Re:broken link, here is the correct one by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 02:46 · Score: 0

oh the irony!
Re:broken link, here is the correct one by grandmofftarkin · 2005-03-31 02:47 · Score: 0

Google Pretech
Damn ... I swear I hit preview but I guess not!
Re:broken link, here is the correct one by -kertrats- · 2005-03-31 03:39 · Score: 1

Unintentional or not, that deserves a +5 for pure irony.

--
The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
Re:broken link, here is the correct one by Jugalator · 2005-03-31 04:20 · Score: 1

Why is that post modded Informative?
It became the exact bug as before. :-)

--
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!

Less bandwidth for me... not useful by felipe.ledesma · 2005-03-31 02:44 · Score: 1

I cant see why this is useful. I dont search for "britney spears" or stuff like this. This is going to eat my bandwitdh, and I just have a DSL 256Kbps connection, so I wouldnt install this. It would be nice if it prefetchs gmail, thought.

Link... by xtracto · 2005-03-31 02:44 · Score: 2, Informative

Here is The working Google link

--
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'

Re:Link... by xtracto · 2005-03-31 02:46 · Score: 2, Informative

well, somehow, slashdot or google manages to change the # witha %23... so:

http://www.google.com/help/features.html#prefetch

--
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'

No they don't... by Phil+John · 2005-03-31 02:45 · Score: 2, Informative

...that's just Bugzilla, anything else on the mozilla site accepts referrals from slashdot.org.

--
I am NaN

So did you by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 02:45 · Score: 0

Here's the actual link: http://www.google.com/help/features.html?#prefetch

Re:So did you by kubrick · 2005-03-31 02:48 · Score: 1

Yeah, but not the clickable version. Thus the reason for making it clickable. Otherwise we'd all have to recode our URLs to make them fit Slashdot's width limit... besides, your link is to a different page, with different content.

--
deus does not exist but if he does

But usually the top links on google by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 02:46 · Score: 0, Offtopic

are spammers, i rarely find relavent links on the first page thesedays, usually the first page is full of spammers and scummy affiliates, on some queries its not until you get to page 3-4 that you start to get what you want, i cant imagine how bad its gonna be in 5 years

maybe its time to offload that google stock because if they dont fix it (a really, really hard problem) its just gonna be another yellow pages, ie a database of adverts, perhaps a voting/moderation system would fix it, i dunno i cant see how they are going to stop its demise

--AJS

Re:But usually the top links on google by Anita+Coney · 2005-03-31 02:53 · Score: 2, Interesting

I agree with you. What's worse is sometimes the first several sites are all the SAME worthless pages but with different URLs.

I also like your idea of voting too. Every time you click on a site after searching Google you should have an opportunity to rate its relevance. That'd get rid of a lot of crap quite quickly

--
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Re:But usually the top links on google by md27 · 2005-03-31 03:10 · Score: 5, Informative

You do have this chance to vote, if you find a useful page clicking the "More like this" link, not only gives you pages tuned closer to that page, but it also tells Google that's what you wanted to see when you searched in the first place.
Re:But usually the top links on google by Anita+Coney · 2005-03-31 03:11 · Score: 1

Thanks for the tip!

--
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Re:But usually the top links on google by LoverOfJoy · 2005-03-31 03:18 · Score: 2, Insightful

Or it'd get a lot of spammers voting their crap in quite quickly
Re:But usually the top links on google by wowbagger · 2005-03-31 03:34 · Score: 1

That is great for marking a page as being relevant to the search in question.

But what I'd like to see is a "LESS like this" or "Not this!" link, to indicate the pages in question are NOT related to the link.

When I am searching for information on the Free Software package that implements the Microsoft Windows API under Unix-like systems, I do NOT want to be inundated with links for the beverage made from the fermented juice of grapes - so I want to be able to click on the myriad of vineyard links and say "NO! I meant WINE the Software, not the drink! That's why I included the term Software you NINNY!"

Better still would be if Google could come up with some form of automatic diambiguation page (like Wikipedia has).

--
www.eFax.com are spammers
Re:But usually the top links on google by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 03:55 · Score: 0

Nice idea until someone automates the process.
Re:But usually the top links on google by amembleton · 2005-03-31 07:38 · Score: 1

If this is true, then wouldn't all of the SEOs out there write bots to constnatly load up the More Like This URL of their site against certain search terms.

This would probably generate more spam on Googles pages, not less.
Re:But usually the top links on google by md27 · 2005-03-31 07:57 · Score: 1

I would assume Google is smart enough to watch for excessive or targetted clicking just like they do when crawlling said sites, AdWords, etc.

I think I'll leave it off by oneandoneis2 · 2005-03-31 02:47 · Score: 2, Insightful

I use FF in my job at a pharmaceutical company, and looking for some medical terms in Google can often bring up some results of sites I really don't want to be visiting (Well, not from work, anyway *ahem* )

The last thing I want is for those pages to show up in the company's web access logs, so I think I'll skip this feature when I'm at work.

--
So.. it has come to this

Re:I think I'll leave it off by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 02:59 · Score: 0

This is fetching GOOGLE, not any other sites. The sites themselves wouldn't appear in your web access logs unless you search for them and click on the link.
Re:I think I'll leave it off by sisukapalli1 · 2005-03-31 03:23 · Score: 1

I use LaTeX heavily for writing documents, and there is a good chance that google searches will bring up some pr0n sites. Example: there is a command \enlargethispage -- I can imagine what results one would get while typing "latex enlarge" in Google.

S

Ack! by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 02:47 · Score: 3, Interesting

I'm using a modem you insensitive clod!

Re:Ack! by KFury · 2005-03-31 03:31 · Score: 1

This feature is even more useful if you're on a modem, since you'd otherwise have to wait longer to get your content. If you have a broadband connection and a fast destination site, the service is less useful, but if you have a slow connection prefetching is all the better you, umm.. insensitive clod.

--

Kevin Fox
Re:Ack! by izomiac · 2005-03-31 05:29 · Score: 1

When I used to have prefetching programs and a modem they usually slowed down my browsing. Why? Because prefetching waits until the current page loads before it starts. Then it starts loading all these other pages that are currently downloading when I click a link. So I usually end-up waiting for the pages to finish preloading before I can get to a new page.
Re:Ack! by Per+Abrahamsen · 2005-04-01 22:20 · Score: 1

Modem users pay for the time the spend connected, including idle time, so this is perfect for modem users. It puts the idle time to good use.

The people who will want to disable this are those who pay for the amount the download.

Re:Who cares. by mirko · 2005-03-31 02:47 · Score: 1

You don't know what I am using. I just want to know if it's common practices to favor a client or not.
Anyway, as the service is free as in beer, I would not even imply it could be illegal to do so... What would rather (but not quite definitively, especially if we see a search engine as a free sample of a software company catalog) be would be to explicitely ban other browsers to imitate the favoured browser.

--
Trolling using another account since 2005.

Mix of both? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 02:48 · Score: 0

Meanwhile, people who actually followed the links know that only a single page is ever prefetched.

Yes - from the page with the bad link by slash-tard · 2005-03-31 02:48 · Score: 5, Informative

1. Type "about:config" the address bar.

2. Scroll down to the setting "network.prefetch-next" and set the value to "False".

Re:Yes - from the page with the bad link by anethema · 2005-03-31 03:18 · Score: 3, Informative

It is better to put this in a user.js along with all the other settings you want to keep between installations.

--

It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.

Comments by hendridm · 2005-03-31 02:48 · Score: 5, Informative

3. I want to block/ignore prefetch requests. What should I do?

To block or ignore prefetch requests (from Google and other web sites), you should configure your web server to return a 404 HTTP response code for requests that contain the "X-moz: prefetch" header.

Sucks for those of us on shared providers, I guess, who don't want this so our bandwidth costs don't increase.

I wish they had an option in the Google preferences to disable this, as I don't need a slower connection. Fortunately, you can disable it:

Yes, there is a hidden preference that you can set to disable link prefetching. Add this line to your prefs.js file located in your Mozilla profile directory:
user_pref("network.prefetch-next", false);

It would be nice if there was an option in Firefox prefs to do this so I don't have to remember it every time I reload.

Re:Comments by GweeDo · 2005-03-31 03:00 · Score: 1

What about via .htaccess? While I don't know if there is a way to block requested based on a header via .htaccess I would be somewhat suprised if you couldn't.

--
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
Re:Comments by justforaday · 2005-03-31 03:03 · Score: 4, Informative

It would be nice if there was an option in Firefox prefs to do this so I don't have to remember it every time I reload.

Doesn't changing this value on the about:config screen do that?

--
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
Re:Comments by slim · 2005-03-31 03:04 · Score: 2, Informative

Something like the following ought to work in .htaccess

SetEnvIf X-moz ^prefetch prefetch_deny
Deny from env=prefetch_deny
Re:Comments by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 03:12 · Score: 0

Sucks for those of us on shared providers

It doesn't matter whether you are on a shared provider. What matters is whether or not you can provide different responses depending upon arbitrary headers. Many shared hosts allow PHP, for instance.
Re:Comments by anethema · 2005-03-31 03:15 · Score: 1

I've kept my user.js from like a year ago. It has tons of little enhacements and speedups. Just create a user.js with all the settings you want, including network.prefetch-next false and just put it in the app dir for all your firefox installations. I recently went back to linux after a few year hiatus and it still works just fine. Burn it to cd even so you dont lose it.

--

It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Re:Comments by Have+Blue · 2005-03-31 03:26 · Score: 1

The Right Thing to do here is for Google to extend .htaccess or robots.txt to allow the site author to specify whether a URL should be prefetched. Doing it at the server config or client level is just silly.
Re:Comments by cirisme · 2005-03-31 03:37 · Score: 1

.htaccess [i]is[/i] a server configuration file(Apache).
Re:Comments by Mr+Guy · 2005-03-31 03:41 · Score: 1

Not really, it isn't google that's doing the prefetching, your browser is. The correct thing to do is to have Firefox put the prefetching config in an obvious place in Advanced preferences.

--
Never confuse volume with power.
Re:Comments by Phwoar · 2005-03-31 04:05 · Score: 1

They should allow for it to be blocked more passively, on their side. robots.txt, anyone? If I have a setting in my robots.txt next time they crawl my site that says they can't prefetch, then they shouldn't.

Now they just need to make up the setting.
Re:Comments by stewby18 · 2005-03-31 04:24 · Score: 1

Yes, there is a hidden preference that you can set to disable link prefetching. Add this line to your prefs.js file located in your Mozilla profile directory:

You should never edit prefs.js directly, actually. You should always use about:config, or change user.js.
Re:Comments by recursiv · 2005-03-31 04:29 · Score: 1

If you're on a shared provider, I'm guessing you're not going to be the target of any google prefetching.

--
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
Re:Comments by hendridm · 2005-03-31 05:05 · Score: 1

Doesn't changing this value on the about:config screen do that?

Yes, it does. But it's yet another thing I have to remember to change in about:config when I reload. Not impossible, but slightly annoying.
Re:Comments by hendridm · 2005-03-31 05:14 · Score: 1

Yeah, I hadn't thought of that. Somewhat annoying that I have to check for that on my sites now. As another posted pointed out, however, I probably won't have to worry as my sites aren't likely popular enough? :/

I can't imagine any organization would want potentially wasted bandwidth directed at their site. If it was me, I'd keep enough bandwidth and optimize the application to keep the load time minimized. Adding uneccesary traffic seems like it would only hurt this attempt.
Re:Comments by crayz · 2005-03-31 05:47 · Score: 1

The point is, someone does a google search looking for information on your page, your page comes up as the top-ranked result, and the person's browser begins to load your page while the person's neurons take a few seconds to decide to click on the top link

There's three "whys" involved here:
- why would google do this? because it makes their search engine better for people using it
- why would the person looking at your site want this? because it gives them a faster load time
- why would you, as the site owner, want this? because your site is loading faster for the people looking at it, which is going to give you some "positive vibes", and because turning it off is a small "fuck you" to the people looking at your page, which isn't really a signal you want to give

Frankly, if your site is coming up #1 in any reasonably popular google search, you ought to be bringing in enough bling that you can deal with a few erroneous page "views"
Re:Comments by crayz · 2005-03-31 05:50 · Score: 1

What do you mean by reload? Things set in about:config, for the most part, should stay set
Re:Comments by RichM · 2005-03-31 05:57 · Score: 1

Sucks for those of us on shared providers, I guess, who don't want this so our bandwidth costs don't increase.
If you use PHP, you can easily do this by adding this line at the top of each page:

<? header("X-moz: prefetch"); ?>
And with ASP:

<%Response.AddHeader "X-moz","prefetch"%>
Re:Comments by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 06:02 · Score: 0

When he nukes everything and re-installs he has to change the option again. about:config options only stay set if your profile stays intact.
Re:Comments by mikeswi · 2005-03-31 06:25 · Score: 1

"turning it off is a small "fuck you" to the people looking at your page"

No, it isn't, and I can't warp reality far enough to understand how you'd believe that. They can still browse the site if they wish. Nothing is blocking them if they click the link to see what's there. So it loads in 2 secs instead of 1 (or 20 secs vs 10 for dialup), so what?

Clearly you don't have a high-ranking site yourself. I do. It is an antispyware site that ranks highly on literally hundreds of terms relating to spyware, malicious file names, memory processes, BHOs, toolbars, etc etc etc.

When someone becomes infected with any sort of adware, spyware, viruses, etc and they realize something is wrong, or find a suspicious file name or memory process, they go googling. The same 2 or 3 dozen antispy message boards come up in most of those searches, with mine usually near the top.

Considering that millions of non-geek web surfers are hit with one sort of crap or another, millions of people search for these terms. Considering that nearly all antispyware sites are run as hobbies on the cheapest web hosting the owners can find and generally don't run advertising, they really can't afford millions of people prefetching their sites every day. Even worse, these are people who probably won't be able to block the prefetching as they don't control their shared web servers and may have hosts that restrict .htaccess functions.

Now of course, people infected with spyware are unlikely to be using Mozilla or Firefox anyway, but it should be obvious that the same thing could happen to other hobby sites with other search terms.

This is a bad move by Google and I will be blocking all prefetching requests. Which is a shame really, because I was actually using prefetching commands myself for some of the multipage articles on two of my sites.

--
Only on /.
Re:Comments by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 06:41 · Score: 0

SO, like all other preferences, it's in one file. Is he going to complain about trying to remember his bookmarks also? Just bring a copy of your bookmarks.html as well.

methinks it's someone looking to whine about something.
Re:Comments by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 07:05 · Score: 0

SO, like all other preferences, it's in one file. Is he going to complain about trying to remember his bookmarks also? Just bring a copy of your bookmarks.html as well. methinks it's someone looking to whine about something.

Well, I never took the time to find out where Firefox keeps its prefs, which I'll admit is my own laziness. I suppose I could save the config file and registry changes for every app I use like OpenOffice, Tbird, Mozilla, blah blah. But not wanting to bother, I generally just adjust the changes when I reload the apps. Apparently this is not advisable with Moz/Fox, and I should keep a copy of my config like all the other things I have to remember to save when I reload. I can accept that, but my bigger concern is stuff breaking when I use an older version my config with new versions of Firefox. Firefox is known for having version issues with other things like plugins. Hell, Firefox can't even install over itself. It must be uninstalled first to upgrade. Will my prefs file work problem-free with future versions?

Just seems like extra work for an odd default setting. Every little app that adds this extra work just makes it more of a pain to reload.

Anyway, I'll stop bitching and just live with it. Perhaps it's my own fault for using an OS that needs to be reinstalled regularly to run smoothly :P
Re:Comments by hendridm · 2005-03-31 07:10 · Score: 1

Frankly, if your site is coming up #1 in any reasonably popular google search, you ought to be bringing in enough bling that you can deal with a few erroneous page "views"

Maybe, by my puny personal site is brought up as the first hit when searching for "JSP MySQL Tutorial" (for example). I receive no bling for my site, and am flattered at the traffic, but it's not necessarily difficult to get a top hit on Google.
Re:Comments by hendridm · 2005-03-31 07:12 · Score: 1

Probably not, good point. Although my measly personal site is the first hit returned when searching for "jsp mysql tutorial". Not sure why.
Re:Comments by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 07:14 · Score: 0

Won't that just push the header to the browser? I think I would instead want to block a request that contained that in the header.
Re:Comments by recursiv · 2005-03-31 08:40 · Score: 1

Haha, no offense, but that comment on slashdot seems somewhat humorous coming from someone concerned about their bandwidth.

--
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
Re:Comments by hendridm · 2005-03-31 09:39 · Score: 1

Nah, now if it was something like "postgres perl DBI howto" I might be worried ;)
Re:Comments by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 09:39 · Score: 0

And your site isn't prefetched in that search, either (check the HTML). Google only sets the prefetch hint when the top result is much more likely to be relevant than the other results.

Result, not results, and then still not always by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 02:50 · Score: 5, Informative

Only when google is confident that the top result is the one you want - the one link that the vast majority of people actually click - do they include the prefetch link for that one resource. Go and try it for yourself, and look for prefetch in the source. For the vast majority of searches, it isn't there. Only when looking for the authoritive resource (such as stanford.edu for "stanford") is the prefetch link actually there.

Sure, their metrics might be off at times, but the way this has been implemented is definitely a good way, and will be very helpful for users of all browsers implementing prefetching (which currently is gecko-based only afaik, but could easily enough include opera and safari and such as well in the near future).

Re:Result, not results, and then still not always by northcat · 2005-03-31 05:19 · Score: 1

Actually, more often that you might think, people are looking for the non-obvious result. Do you think everytime someone searches for microsoft they want microsoft.com? Do you think the people who don't are such a small minority that they can be ignored? And of course, a lot of times Google can be very wrong (like the other poster pointed out about searching for the vin diesel movie 'XXX'). A lot of times.
Re:Result, not results, and then still not always by Rimu · 2005-03-31 16:17 · Score: 1

i just tried the stanford search...

i then clicked on the link to stanford university

i didn't notice any speed increase... the images still had to download as normal.

this makes me think that if there is any prefetching going on, it's just the HTML not the images too

so that rules out the inadvertant porn fear. you won't be littering your hard disk with child-porn-1.jpg files :)

--
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How to turn it off yourself by dave7e9q · 2005-03-31 02:50 · Score: 5, Informative

Type about:config ... then scroll down to network.prefetch-next ... double click it to "false" ... all done.

Re:How to turn it off yourself by cybermage · 2005-03-31 03:44 · Score: 1

Jeez! There's a lot of cool sounding options. Anyone know of an about:about:config?

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Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
Re:How to turn it off yourself by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 14:13 · Score: 0

Here's some:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_:_FAQs_:_About:c onfig_Entries

Googling on specific parameter names will find you more.

By the way, Firefox has an option in its preferences UI that lets you turn prefetching off. No tricks required.

PS... by argent · 2005-03-31 02:51 · Score: 2, Insightful

PS: Google on "google triangle" and you'll see why they picked this page to prefetch...

Though I'd like them to prefetch the "next search page" as well... at least, that would tend to speed up *my* googling. I'm probably atypical, though, if they don't do it...

Re:PS... by tdemark · 2005-03-31 03:16 · Score: 1

Though I'd like them to prefetch the "next search page" as well... at least, that would tend to speed up *my* googling.

In Firefox and Safari, I've set Google searches started with the keyword 'g' or the search bar to use this URL instead of the normal one (the @@@ represents the search terms).

Thus, my searches are for documents in English and I see 100 results per page... searching is so much quicker that I can see 10 pages of results on one page.

- Tony
Re:PS... by elgaard · 2005-03-31 03:50 · Score: 3, Informative

Isn't it simpler to set your google preferences to do that?

http://www.google.ca/preferences?hl=en
Re:PS... by tdemark · 2005-03-31 04:14 · Score: 1

Pretty cool.

My hat off to you, sir, I didn't know you could do that!

- Tony
Re:PS... by argent · 2005-03-31 04:20 · Score: 2, Funny

Ditto. Sometimes you actually learn something from slashdot... :)
Re:PS... by PhillC · 2005-03-31 04:55 · Score: 1

Once I'm sick of viewing Google in "Elmer Fudd" language, I can always change to "Bork! Bork! Bork!" for a while....

--
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Re:PS... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 06:27 · Score: 0

Isn't amazing how a trick you thought was very clever turns out to be something a child could do just by clicking "preferences"?
Re:PS... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 08:57 · Score: 0

That's how I tend to feel about Firefox's about:config vs Seamonkey's preferences ;)

They turn it off for you. by mathmatt · 2005-03-31 02:52 · Score: 1

Um, if you read the Mozilla Prefetch FAQ, you'll learn that this only happens when you are not using bandwidth for something else. Don't worry.

Re:They turn it off for you. by Short+Circuit · 2005-03-31 03:01 · Score: 1

My web broser isn't my primary user of my internet connection. My mail client and instant messenger are typically used more.

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Re:They turn it off for you. by otisaardvark · 2005-03-31 03:02 · Score: 3, Informative

Um, if you read the Mozilla Prefetch FAQ, you'll learn that this only happens when you are not using bandwidth for something else initiated by the current Mozilla application. Worry :-)
Re:They turn it off for you. by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 03:43 · Score: 0

I don't think your company IT administrator will care.

Re:Gone already? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 02:53 · Score: 0

Thanks for the link, that's so much better!

<link rel="prefetch" href="http://images.rottentomatoes.com/images/movi e/coverv/91/205691.jpg">

Not seeing this... by MirgNave · 2005-03-31 02:53 · Score: 1

Perhaps I'm understanding how this works wrong, but I'm not seeing the prefetch link tag showing up in the source for google search results?

Anybody know what's going on here?

Re:Not seeing this... by mr_sas · 2005-03-31 03:31 · Score: 1

it depends on what you search for. Google only offer this if they're reasonably sure that the first result is the one you want. Try searching for stanford.
Re:Not seeing this... by nandhp · 2005-03-31 03:34 · Score: 1

It's only installed in some result pages, when they are very sure that the first result is the right one. e.g. stanford or grand-canyon. It proably uses the same criteria for selection as browse by name: http://www.squarefree.com/2004/09/09/googles-brows e-by-name-in-firefox

This is great! by Slashcrap · 2005-03-31 02:53 · Score: 5, Insightful

Unless :

You have an ADSL line with a really stingy cap (for instance BT in the UK offer a cheap service with a 1GB/month cap). I'm sure their customers will be happy about downloading pages they won't read.

You're a web admin that pays a lot for bandwith. I bet they'll be really happy that lots of people will be downloading their pages without ever looking at them.

You're at work surfing through a proxy that does filtering / logging and there are some dubious sites that get pre-fetched for you. Enjoy getting sacked for something you didn't do!

Well, I don't know about you, but I'm struggling to see any drawbacks to this great new technology!

Re:This is great! by hazzey · 2005-03-31 03:33 · Score: 0

First, if you are that worried about your download limit, then why don't you just use a text based browser? Or even just stop searching constantly. Second, as someone above mentioned, google only does this for certain searches. Not every crazy search is going to be prefetched.
Re:This is great! by generic-man · 2005-03-31 03:34 · Score: 0, Troll

Good news! Google has automatically opted you in to this valuable new feature! You can opt out by mucking around inside the about:config screen.

If any other company besides Google had opted you into such a bandwidth-sucking feature with no end-user-friendly way to disable it, Slashdot discussions would have been unwaveringly negative.

--
For more information, click here.
Re:This is great! by n0-0p · 2005-03-31 03:36 · Score: 2, Informative

The above post could only be considered insightful if you didn't read the article. If you look at how Google implemented this feature you'll see that, with a possible rare exception of the first point on certain searches, none of these arguments apply.
Re:This is great! by Slashcrap · 2005-03-31 04:16 · Score: 1

First, if you are that worried about your download limit, then why don't you just use a text based browser?

Yeah, I can see the type of people who sign up for a 1GB/month ADSL service rushing to download Lynx. I expect they'll even compile it themselves! Maybe contribute some patches.

Or even just stop searching constantly.

Great idea! Everyone can change their behaviour to conform to your ideas. Are you a right wing Christian by any chance?

Second, as someone above mentioned, google only does this for certain searches. Not every crazy search is going to be prefetched.

That makes it alright then! I'm sure they wouldn't screw up in a way that could inconvenience or harm anyone. And if they did, I'm sure they'd respond to criticism and change the behaviour. Just like they have with the new Google Groups!
Re:This is great! by 192.168.0.1 · 2005-03-31 04:26 · Score: 1

for instance BT in the UK offer a cheap service with a 1GB/month cap

Wow! One could download 1 gigabyte in less than 3 weeks on dial-up. That 1GB/month cap is a bit too restrictive isn't it?
Re:This is great! by TobascoKid · 2005-03-31 05:52 · Score: 1

Second, as someone above mentioned, google only does this for certain searches.

Yes, but what's to stop some other site using prefetch in a malicious way?

I know that there are other ways that a site can do similar malicious things, but why give them extra tools to do malicious things with when there's soo little benefit to prefetch?

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At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
Re:This is great! by TobascoKid · 2005-03-31 06:03 · Score: 1

Good news! Google has automatically opted you in to this valuable new feature! You can opt out by mucking around inside the about:config screen.

I don't mind google using the feature - it's there so they might as well use it. What I don't like is that there is no user friendly way to disable the feature in firefox. If it was a simple check box to turn on or off I don't most people would care that much - the only argument would be wheter it should be on or off by default, but that would be part of a larger argument involving things like Javscript and cookies.

As it stands, there's a feature in firefox that downloads stuff without your knowledge, it's turned on by default, there's no easy way to turn it off and (I think one of the reasons for all the anger) most people never knew this feature existed.

--
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
Re:This is great! by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 06:23 · Score: 0

which is why anyone with any sense doesn't use one of those capped services :)
Re:This is great! by SirTalon42 · 2005-03-31 06:34 · Score: 1

Google didn't just create prefetching. Prefetching has been around for a while (use to you could only do it through javascript hacks, mozilla allows you to set a prefetch tag saying to prefetch something). If some site wants to use it maliciously they can use the mozilla prefetch value or just the javascript method, both ways work out the same.

How to turn off in firefox by MarsBar · 2005-03-31 02:53 · Score: 1, Redundant

type about:config into the address bar and scroll down to the network.prefetch-next entry. Ensure that this is set to false.

How to get it to work by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 02:56 · Score: 0

Replace the %23 with a # and the link will work.

Nice in theory... by tfountain · 2005-03-31 02:56 · Score: 1

It's great to see Google supporting these sorts of features, but this is one thing that doesn't really work in practice.

A search for 'stanford' is the example. If you do that on Google, Firefox then goes off and also loads the stanford uni homepage. But if you click on the top Google result (stanford uni homepage), your browser then loads the page again. Why? Because the page doesn't send any cache friendly headers (presumably because it is dynamically generated). So you don't actually gain anything.

Slashdotting a website by proxy??? by Leadhyena · 2005-03-31 02:59 · Score: 2, Interesting

This could turn a google-bomb into an effective DDOS attack... have all kind of blogs set up a google-bomb against a website and link to an image off of the page. Then, when that link hits the top it gets hit automatically, as well as with every other blog (that scales the pagerank for pointing to the popular hit) that puts that picture up. Since they all get prefetched, the images will load up and that page will get nailed by 100x requests. Google will end up shutting this service down before long because of similar abuses.

Re:Slashdotting a website by proxy??? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 03:23 · Score: 0

have all kind of blogs set up a google-bomb against a website and link to an image off of the page.

They could do this already, just by embedding the image. No need for Google or prefetching.

And, as with that attack, there is a simple way around it: close the connection for requests with a prefetch header. TFA even mentioned this, but I guess it was more important for you to post your "sky is falling" comment than RTFA and know WTF you are talking about, huh?
Re:Slashdotting a website by proxy??? by cirisme · 2005-03-31 03:42 · Score: 1

Well, no. Images/external scripts don't get prefetched, just the html file.

Working? by loconet · 2005-03-31 03:00 · Score: 1

Is the prefetching working for anyone? I've done some simple searches and none of the pages at the top of the result list loaded faster. I looked at the code and there doesn't seem to be prefetch attributes on the links either. I tried .com and .ca, same thing.

On a related note, I use a similar trick/hack with my photo gallery. When viewing an image at full size, the page loads up the next image wrapped around with a css display:hidden attribute so the browser fetches the next image without displaying it and saves it in its cache. When the user clicks on next to view the next image, the page loads really fast. Prefetching however has the benefit of being a standard, the browser downloads the file quietly, and it can be turned off.

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[alk]

Re:Working? by tfountain · 2005-03-31 03:11 · Score: 2, Informative

There's a Firefox plug called LiveHTTPHeaders which will show the requests/responses the browser is getting. Using this I can see that the browser only loads the HTML page for the prefetched page, not any associated images/javascript files etc. Because of this you'll only notice a difference if your browser caches the HTML file, and even then the difference in loading time is likely to be minimal.

RE: uhoh... by fshalor · 2005-03-31 03:00 · Score: 2, Insightful

So , that means if I *accidentidly* search for a pron related topic, or pron is definatly in the top responses from google, It gets downloaded without me doing anything?

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Re:Who cares. by geminidomino · 2005-03-31 03:02 · Score: 1

As someone who has not used windows in 24 months, and is somewhat behind in its development:

Does IE even support prefetching?

Trouble at work, trouble with law by rhh · 2005-03-31 03:02 · Score: 4, Interesting

Not only could this get you in trouble by inadvertently downloading porn at work, but you could download even more incriminating things.

Say for example you were searching for info on that convicted sex offender that moved into your neighborhood or searching for news on terrorist attacks. Prefetching could potentially have your computer downloading things you wouldn't otherwise download and that could get you in real trouble.

Re:Trouble at work, trouble with law by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 03:19 · Score: 1, Insightful

Please. Any website can download things that you don't want it to. All you have to do is a <img src="http://www.example.com/" alt="" width="0" height="0"> and access logs will "show" that you visited example.com.
If your boss or the police accuse you of something, then quite frankly they are clueless and would accuse you of the same thing on even flimsier evidence. The correct solution is to decapitate these clueless cretins, not disable useful technology.
Re:Trouble at work, trouble with law by Pascal+Sartoretti · 2005-03-31 03:30 · Score: 1

Not only could this get you in trouble by inadvertently downloading porn at work, but you could download even more incriminating things
I totally disagree. With Firefox, you now have the right to say "I didn't load this page, it has been automatically prefetched by my browser".
Still, it sucks, because bandwith will be used for nothing...
Re:Trouble at work, trouble with law by AnonymousJackass · 2005-03-31 03:32 · Score: 1

I don't like this prefetching stuff much, and I have disabled at work as a precaution. But honestly, I think the risk of inadvertantly downloading something that will get you in trouble is really small.

Quoting from Google: "Google ...[instructs] ...the browser to download the top search result..." The empahsis there has to be on the word "top". Unless you are doing some really unsubtle searching at work that would cause the top result to be dubious, you're gonna be fine.
Re:Trouble at work, trouble with law by Rommel · 2005-03-31 03:40 · Score: 4, Insightful

This is just another reason the current practice of criminalizing the possession of knowledge is crazy.
Re:Trouble at work, trouble with law by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 03:58 · Score: 0

It's so nice to live in a free country where a (potentially) time-saving feature is brushed aside over the fear it will incriminate the user by unknowingly downloading a stream of bytes.
Re:Trouble at work, trouble with law by Alomex · 2005-03-31 04:38 · Score: 1

It is exactly the opposite. If you have prefetch you can always claim that it wasn't you. The way things are you have no excuse for downloading those big mama porn pictures.
Re:Trouble at work, trouble with law by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 04:40 · Score: 0

Where did you get your law degree dude? Also can you tell me of some cases for child porn where someone has been convicted for downloading a webpage?
Re:Trouble at work, trouble with law by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 04:49 · Score: 0

You can claim that it wasn't you, but can you prove it?

I can claim that a stranger broke into my house and downloaded all that kiddy porn, but chances are that I'm not going to be able to prove it.
Re:Trouble at work, trouble with law by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 05:27 · Score: 0

You can claim that it wasn't you, but can you prove it?

Sure. I just show them the enabled "prefetch" box in the Tools/Options Mozilla menu.
Re:Trouble at work, trouble with law by davidkv · 2005-03-31 06:14 · Score: 1

Getting you in real trouble for surfing the web/clicking on politically incorrect links?
Man, you seem to live in a very sucky country.

Face it, surfing the web for whatever is no excuse for getting anyone into any kind of trouble, unless of course you are at work, with a fascist management.
Re:Trouble at work, trouble with law by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 07:51 · Score: 0

It's not just Google. Any website you go to can cause Firefox to prefetch any page. Some pages actually do things when you click on them.
Re:Trouble at work, trouble with law by anthony_dipierro · 2005-03-31 11:39 · Score: 1

Any website can download things that you don't want it to.

Sure, but I'd like to be able to trust google to not be one of them. Oh well, there goes that.

If your boss or the police accuse you of something, then quite frankly they are clueless and would accuse you of the same thing on even flimsier evidence.

True, and I think being worried about the police or your boss due to this is a bit paranoid. But still, having my browser automatically load pages without asking me first just strikes me as a security problem.
Re:Trouble at work, trouble with law by jasonjacks0n · 2005-04-03 07:31 · Score: 1

Not only could this get you in trouble by inadvertently downloading porn at work, but you could download even more incriminating things.

If your workplace is that draconian, they're probably already watching you carefully because the content filters have noticed verboten keywords in the page summaries google presents in the search listing, eh? ;-)
Seriously, haven't you ever clicked on a search result, got to the site, and realized that it wasn't what you wanted (perhaps even .. *gasp* .. pr0n)? You just click "back" and try the next result. If link prefetching was going to get you into trouble, so could a simple mistake just along those lines.
What's more, the prefetch feature can be turned off, whereas you'll never be able to "turn off" your accidental mis-clicks. So if you really want to worry, it should be about google including child porn in the results, not about moz prefetching the occasional top result for you.
Actually, since google uses the prefetch feature only on searches where the vast majority of users immediately follow the top result's "authoritative" link, if the prefetch ever loads anything like kiddie porn, you might want to start worrying more about your fellow man than your IT department. ;-)

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Nice by Turn-X+Alphonse · 2005-03-31 03:03 · Score: 1

Now every 56ker is going to move away from google. Not to mention these crappy ISPs which limit your bandwidth per month..

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Re:Nice by an_mo · 2005-03-31 03:17 · Score: 1

read the mozilla prefetch faq... you can turn it off.
Re:Nice by KFury · 2005-03-31 03:34 · Score: 3, Informative

Now every 56ker is going to move away from google.

Why?

Lie the article says, Moz/FFX only uses bandwidth you're not already using, so it won't make any other operation slower, and if you're on a slow connection then prefetching a page saves you even more time than if you're on a fast one. What's the use case that would have you moving to the door?

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Kevin Fox
Re:Nice by cirisme · 2005-03-31 03:39 · Score: 1

Only if every 56k'er is a Mozilla user, which wouldn't bet that bad :)
Re:Nice by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 03:43 · Score: 2, Interesting

Lie the article says, Moz/FFX only uses bandwidth you're not already using

no, it only uses bandwith _itself_ is not using.

so it won't make any other operation slower

yes, it can make everything else slower (IM, mail, P2P, updates, etc.)

What's the use case that would have you moving to the door?

slow connection, ISPs with bandwith cap, not wanting unwanted unvisited sites in your cache,

But, you can turn it off in FF, but unfortunately not on a per site basis

Re:Who cares. by mirko · 2005-03-31 03:03 · Score: 1

IRL or when associated to proprietary services that'd support it a very specific way, like an MS service developed by people who could access its internals?

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Trolling using another account since 2005.

No more Slashdot effect? by mattspammail · 2005-03-31 03:04 · Score: 0

Could this be the end of the slashdot effect (as long as people use Google as their portal-entry tool)?

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another embrace and extend by Jeff+Hornby · 2005-03-31 03:05 · Score: 1

Looks like the Mozilla team is donig yet another "embrace and extend" with features that haven't yet been officially adopted into the html standard...

Oh, wait, we're only supposed to complain when Microsoft does that

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Why doesn't Slashdot ever get slashdotted?

Re:another embrace and extend by Shinglor · 2005-03-31 03:28 · Score: 1

There is nothing non-standard about the way this was implemented by Mozilla, it's a perfectly legitimate use of the link element. What is wrong is Google only sending this element to Firefox/Mozilla user-agents, what if another browser decides to implement this feature?
Re:another embrace and extend by mr_sas · 2005-03-31 03:36 · Score: 1

Uhm, the HTML standard says that you can define your own rel= types
Re:another embrace and extend by n0-0p · 2005-03-31 03:49 · Score: 2, Informative

This has been in Mozilla for almost four years and it doesn't violate any standards. look at the "Is link prefetching standards compliant" item in http://www.mozilla.org/projects/netlib/Link_Prefet ching_FAQ.html.

"Stuff" on the background by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 03:07 · Score: 0

Is anyone else just plain uncomfortable with your browser doing "stuff" on the background? I'd like -no traffic- when I'm not doing anything with it.

Furthermore, how does Google define 'no activity'?
If I do a search while downloading the latest pr0n from Usenet or fetching the latest trojan horses from Kazaa, will downloadspeed suffer because the browser starts to do all kinds of thing I didn't order it to do?

This just in... by Anita+Coney · 2005-03-31 03:08 · Score: 0, Troll

France again sues Google for direct copyright and trademark infringement by downloading proprietary and copyrighted materials without the end-users specific permission. A spokesperson for France was quoted as saying, "Qui êtes-vous ? Que faites-vous ici ? Je me rends." More on this story as it develops.

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If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.

It should be off by default.... by jonr · 2005-03-31 03:08 · Score: 3, Insightful

I think it would make more sense if network.prefetch-next would be set to false by default. Then gearheads could turn it on if they wanted.

Re:It should be off by default.... by advocate_one · 2005-03-31 05:23 · Score: 1

correct, this is an unbelievably stupid thing to have set true by default...

--
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Re:It should be off by default.... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 05:24 · Score: 0

RTFFAQ - read the prefetching FAQ. It's on by default and ahrd to turn off because the Mozilla people think that if it has to be turned off, something is wrong with it and they want to fix whatever that problem may be.
Re:It should be off by default.... by Per+Abrahamsen · 2005-04-01 22:29 · Score: 1

Firefox is not made for gearheads.

Turning it off by default would be silly, making web browsing faster by utilizing the idle time of the connection is what most people want. The gearheads who think they are smarter than the prefetch algorithms may want to turn it off, but they are not the prime target for Firefox.
Re:It should be off by default.... by jasonjacks0n · 2005-04-03 07:38 · Score: 1

I think it would make more sense if network.prefetch-next would be set to false by default.

Finally, a complaint that deserves its "insightful" mod! =)
I'm a fan of the feature -- both in moz and of google's new use of it -- but I agree that it might have been a little wiser for moz disable it by default.
I wonder if it would be possible to make a "smart default" for features like this? For instance, maybe it could be enabled by default on broadband connections, but not dial-up. Or the browser could reverse-DNS its own IP and if a .com record is found (not likely for a home user), disable the feature, to avoid freaking out people who fear the prefetch downloading verboten content from a work machine .. dunno, just brainstorming. But I think that a lot of times defaults could be made more intelligent than they usually are, if software would consider its surroundings a little..

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s/Firefox/IE/ && s/Google/MSN/ by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 03:08 · Score: 1, Interesting

s/Firefox/IE/ && s/Google/MSN/ and the reaction here would change completely.

not trolling -- i haven't used IE in years and am a gushing firefox and google fanboy... but having browser-specific features on websites is generally not a good idea, even if it isn't that evil blue browser and is the good one instead. this also seems like an unfair burden to put on small websites..

this has some interesting ramifications though:
now you can really googlebomb a site you don't like. get them to be the top if-not-relevant result and their bandwidth usage increases without an increase in real visitors.. hmmm :)

Re:s/Firefox/IE/ && s/Google/MSN/ by m50d · 2005-03-31 04:15 · Score: 1

It's a standardised feature though. The way it works is published, and there's no reason IE couldn't support it.

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I am trolling
Re:s/Firefox/IE/ && s/Google/MSN/ by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 05:24 · Score: 0

It better fucking NOT!

It's the worst "feature" yet invented for a web brower.. KILL IT OFF NOW!

hehe by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 03:09 · Score: 1, Interesting

I DARE you to put the following link in firefox with this feature on

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=child+porn& btnG=Google+Search&meta=

Tell me how it goes when Bubba and his friends get hold of you, if you do so.

Re:hehe by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 04:16 · Score: 0

I DARE you to read those search results and find any "bad" ones.

Re:Gone already? by kubrick · 2005-03-31 03:11 · Score: 1

Worked for me before, directly from that link... I suspect Google.

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deus does not exist but if he does

Not for me it doesn't by koehn · 2005-03-31 03:14 · Score: 1

I've been googling, checking the source and my web proxy logs, and despite the fact that prefetching is enabled and it's not working.

There's no attribute in the document that comes down from google, there's no Link: header in the response, and (most convincingly) there's no entry in the proxy log. Nothing else is being downloaded, so it's not the browser waiting for idle time. I think Google's just not really using prefetch right now, despite their claims to the contrary.

This is under Windows Firefox 1.0.2 with prefetch enabled, searching with the FF search widget as well as through google directly.

Any idea what gives?

Re:Not for me it doesn't by an_mo · 2005-03-31 03:20 · Score: 1

Read TFA... try a search for Stanford

It's not browser specific by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 03:15 · Score: 1, Informative

Other browsers, like Opera or Safari, could easily implement the same next document pre-fetching. Next isn't something the Mozilla team made up, it's part of the w3c specs. Now, if Google started using the --moz CSS extensions to do things like round corners, THAT would be browser specific.

Cost to websites by Vodkaneat · 2005-03-31 03:15 · Score: 1

It seems to me that Google has just utilised a browser facility intended for site owners use only. Surely this precaching will increase traffic to websites without the website actually gaining the benefit of real user traffic, as many sites must pay for their own bandwidth is this really desirable? It worries me that to disable this, a webmaster must configure their server to return a 404 if the cache header is present in the request - how can Google justify implementing on a whim something that could inherently cost the industry millions of man hours.

Re:Cost to websites by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 03:45 · Score: 0

Surely this precaching will increase traffic to websites without the website actually gaining the benefit of real user traffic.

Cool ... that might mean artificially inflated figures for firefox in weblogs ... neat!

Your sig by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 03:16 · Score: 0

technocrat.net [technocrat.net] - /. for grownups

I assume since you are posting on slashdot, you aren't a grownup then?

Re:Gone already? by kubrick · 2005-03-31 03:18 · Score: 1

Weird... doesn't work with a Slashdot 'Referer:'. I wonder why? Anyway, change the %23 to a # when Google gives you a 404 and it should work.

--
deus does not exist but if he does

Good old /. effect! by trintron · 2005-03-31 03:22 · Score: 1

LOL! Before I came here I tried to go Mozilla's website with no luck. I did find explanation from here. ;)

Even More Problems by Valdrax · 2005-03-31 03:23 · Score: 4, Insightful

Forget the Feds, you're much more likely to get nailed by your IT department for this. I wonder if a user who was unaware of this feature and got fired thanks to links loaded by it could sue the Mozilla Foundation. I can just see some malicious little asshole putting hidden (via color) links in their webpages that download utterly offensive crap just to see if they can get someone fired. I especially expect this sort of thing from the same sort of Slashdot trolls who posted that infinite pop-up of gay porn thing in the Firefox Hacks story.

I also expect that this will be abused by unscrupulous websites who want to run up their ad revenue by having people preload a page full of ads. Many people have already expressed concerns for those who have slow connections or who do not have unlimited access. This could also be used by spammers to verify people who are smart enough to have web-bugs disabled via cookie and image blocking on emails but who don't know about preloading if the Thunderbird people enable this in email (which would be foolish beyond belief).

I just think this concept is a horrible idea.

--
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").

Re:Even More Problems by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 05:23 · Score: 1, Insightful

I also expect that this will be abused by unscrupulous websites who want to run up their ad revenue by having people preload a page full of ads.

Yeah, because Google adding a prefetch tag to the results will help the ad-spammers... what are you thinking?

Have you seen the web? There are plenty of web sites that load pages of ads without the need for prefetching (think JavaScript). The ad spammers could care less about prefetching.

Many people have already expressed concerns for those who have slow connections or who do not have unlimited access.

RTFA before you complain about it... Firefox only prefetches links when not downloading anything else. It will not slow down your browsing at all regardless of your connection speed.

This could also be used by spammers to verify people who are smart enough to have web-bugs disabled via cookie and image blocking on emails but who don't know about preloading if the Thunderbird people enable this in email (which would be foolish beyond belief).

Likewise, I think it's a bad idea for you to have email because it can be used for spam. Just think about all the spammers who can use your email account to send out junkmail (presuming that you don't have a password on your account).

Just because you post without thinking doesn't meann developers code without thinking!
Re:Even More Problems by Valdrax · 2005-03-31 07:17 · Score: 1

Yeah, because Google adding a prefetch tag to the results will help the ad-spammers...

I'm commenting on the very idea of the feature like the parent and not the fact that Google has taken advantage of it. Google's use of it is merely what brought my attention to its existence.

RTFA before you complain about it... Firefox only prefetches links when not downloading anything else. It will not slow down your browsing at all regardless of your connection speed.

RTFAQ yourself. Firefox will prefetch even when other programs are using the connection so long as Firefox is idle. (They do hope to fix this in the future.) This will not slow down browsing, but will slow down downloads via FTP, checking email, etc. At any rate, the fact that it only works when Firefox is idle makes no difference to my complaint about what this means for people who do not have unlimited internet access. It's downloading extra material (which they may have to pay for) without them needing to read it. These people (outside of the web-enabled phone market) are fortunately rare nowdays.

Likewise, I think it's a bad idea for you to have email because it can be used for spam. Just think about all the spammers who can use your email account to send out junkmail (presuming that you don't have a password on your account).

Now you're just being deliberately obtuse. Are you even familiar with the concept of web bugs in HTML email? I'll assume that you're not from your comment.

The basic idea is that a spammer wants to know whether or not an address that they send mail to is real or not. Fake addresses are a known waste of time and bandwidth to them. The best confirmation that you can get is if someone replies to spam from an account, but most people do not. However, there are other ways of getting a machine to acknowledge its existence. One current way is via web bugs. A web bug is an image (usually a transparent 1x1 pixel image) that is fetched via a URL that includes an ID string unique to the message. When you open said HTML email message to look at it, in the process of rending the message, you fetch that image and thus confirm your existence. This trick can be done with cookies too. However, if you have your client set to ignore all cookies and to never load images in HTML mail, you are completely safe from giving yourself away.

Previously, if you did this sort of trick with links in the message, it required the message recipient to manually click the link to uniquely identify the message and confirm their existence. Now, however, if you have prefetching turned on, even if you have images and cookies turned off, it is possible for a spammer to use this method to identify that you are real.

Of course, this is only a problem if Thunderbird enables this feature. Hopefully, they have thought this out and have not done so.

--
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Re:Even More Problems by roca · 2005-03-31 08:48 · Score: 2, Informative

> I also expect that this will be abused by
> unscrupulous websites who want to run up their ad
> revenue by having people preload a page full of
> ads.

They can already do this using hidden IFRAMEs, and it works on all browsers. Nothing new here, move along.
Re:Even More Problems by Valdrax · 2005-03-31 10:48 · Score: 1

Neat (sorta). You learn something new every day.

--
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Re:Even More Problems by 44BSD · 2005-03-31 13:32 · Score: 1

This is one of those great things, like the SMTP protocol, which work great in one environment, but become absolute nightmares in another, less friendly one. Difference is, the folks who came up with this feature should have known that today's network environment makes a feature like this stupid to the extreme. I guess it was just too cool not to put in. Sigh.
Re:Even More Problems by jasonjacks0n · 2005-04-03 07:19 · Score: 1

I can just see some malicious little asshole putting hidden (via color) links in their webpages that download utterly offensive crap just to see if they can get someone fired.
I also expect that this will be abused by unscrupulous websites who want to run up their ad revenue by having people preload a page full of ads.
I just think this concept is a horrible idea.

There are already numerous ways similar effects can be achieved -- a hidden iframe, "web bug" images (or CSS or JavaScript or any other page element loaded with an href or src attribute), XMLHttpRequest(), etc. And none of the things you're afraid of have happened.
What's more, the prefetching feature has been in moz for a while now -- maybe a year or so? I remember reading about how to enable it on my own sites (although it turns out that I use it pretty rarely, because on my sites it's generally not very clear where the user would go next). But so the point is, the feature's been there for a long time and yet none of the things you're afraid of have happened.
What's more, you can just turn the feature off if you don't like it -- I'm not sure about firefox, but the suite has a GUI pref for it, so you don't even need to get into about:config to change it.
So .. I humbly suggest that you rethink your assessment.
Thanks for listening,
A prefetch fan =)

--
This space intentionally left blank.

Google/Firefox "Synergy" by MongoMike · 2005-03-31 03:26 · Score: 2, Interesting

I wrote up a blog post describing how Google and Firefox are helping each other out.

The link prefetching stuff that Google's using? It was developed by a Mozilla programmer employed by Google. Interesting times!

http://www.jall.org/blog/2005/03/31/googlefirefox- cooperation-on-link-prefetching/

Or for more predictions on the Firefox/Google future in general:
http://www.jall.org/blog/2005/03/19/googles-future -plans/

Re:Google/Firefox "Synergy" by TheAwfulTruth · 2005-03-31 05:22 · Score: 1, Flamebait

"Helping" each other out?

You mean "Helping to destroy both Google and FF as they are now both completely untrustworthy".

Do you not see the huge evil that is the downloading of webpages that you never wanted or intended to click on?

The utter wasted bandwidth?

The unintentional DL or porn at a work site?

The fact that the FBI is asking for connect logs to certain sites they don't like and now your machine or your work may unintentionally be in those logs?

The only rational thing for anyone to do would be to immediately disable this "feature". So why bother implementing it in the first place?

Answer: Because most people probably wont disable it and when it is enabled, Google's paid ads will get more "clicks" and google can make more money of course.

Is this something we really want to participate in? It's "Synergy" allright, but the results are positively evil.

--
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!

google tracks clicks sometimes by slashkitty · 2005-03-31 03:28 · Score: 4, Informative

They do put in click tracking links sometimes.

For example if you search for: ~hot

You'll get the tracking links. I think it's random on many searches, but on ~ searches, they always have it.

--
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.

Re:google tracks clicks sometimes by wheany · 2005-03-31 04:48 · Score: 2, Interesting

What does that tilde mean?
Re:google tracks clicks sometimes by jericho4.0 · 2005-03-31 05:31 · Score: 1

I would like to know also. I coudn't find it on basic or advanced search tips, but that means little.

--
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Re:google tracks clicks sometimes by burner · 2005-03-31 05:36 · Score: 1

It seems to do some sort of stemming or dictionary lookup. So searching for "running" turns up pages with "running" in them first, but searching for "~running" turns up pages about runners.

--
MRSH-Recording device, corned beef sandwich with kraut, seafaring bird, and the foamy top of a beverage.
Re:google tracks clicks sometimes by red+tiger · 2005-03-31 05:54 · Score: 5, Informative

Actually the tilde-feature is properly documented.

It is called synonym search and it really does some dictinary lookup, as it doesn't search for just the term entered but also its synonyms.

Seems quite useful to me... To be honest, I had never heard of it before I read this thread here :)

PageRank? by brammo · 2005-03-31 03:29 · Score: 1

Well it used to exist.. I can remember not having Linux installed yet, and using IE + Google toolbar. I was able to click a happy or a angry face, which was used to determine the PageRank. I think sites with a high PageRank ended up higher in search results, I'm not sure about this.

Why isn't this for Mozilla? Does anyone know?

--
Tha-tha-tha-tha-that's all folks!

Just change your Google preferences by AnonymousJackass · 2005-03-31 03:38 · Score: 1

For anyone who's at work and worried about explicit content being 'prefetched', just go to the main Google search page and save your preferences to strictly filter all explicit text and content. Problem solved.

whiny users by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 03:39 · Score: 0

it seems like lots of slashdotters are whiny bitches, because without a really good reason for turning it off they're just like "quick go to about:config and turn it off!"

maybe i'm the only person who realizes that there are better uses of my time than waiting for a page to load.

Re:whiny users by pclminion · 2005-03-31 04:26 · Score: 1

because without a really good reason for turning it off they're just like "quick go to about:config and turn it off!"
The "really good reason" is frickin' obvious. It wastes your bandwidth, and it wastes the sites' bandwidth. Loading a page that you're never going to read is just rude. It's sort of like hitting "Reload" on a site out of spite. Sure, it's convenient for you. So is cutting in line, but that doesn't mean it's right.

Use IE by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 03:40 · Score: 0

Use IE. Internet Explorer does not have this bug.

Google's search isn't that good nowadays by TheLink · 2005-03-31 03:41 · Score: 1

At least for my queries. So prefetching the first result is a bit silly in my case.

I do pretty specific queries.

Nowadays my searches seem to turn up tons of mailing lists with the same messages.

If I wanted mailing lists, I'd do the search in google groups...

That said, the mailing lists sometimes don't show up in google groups...

I think Page Rank is starting to fail. I'm not surprised actually. I'm actually surprised it worked for so long. Probably all that tweaking by the Google folk is keeping it moderately useful.

Teoma is producing less redundant results in comparison. Though it's less comprehensive compared to Google.

Of course, sometimes there just isn't any answer on the Web...

--

Too many replies beneath your current threshold

Just simple google tactics? by dr_d_19 · 2005-03-31 03:41 · Score: 1

Isn't this just a way of promoting Google by increasing referers from the Google search engine to these sites? "Hey, this Google thingie attracts a lot of visitors, let's get some AdWords while we're at it!"

Of course, it CAN be distinguished by by the header, but how many of you check the X-mos: prefetch in your stats?

Don't look too much into this relationship by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 03:43 · Score: 0

I don't think the fact that google prefetching for mozilla based browsers is indicative of any "special" relationship between the two. Rather, google probably thinks something along the lines of "We should try out precaching pages. We don't want to do it for everyone ... hmm, 5-10% might be good. Hey! Mozilla browsers composed ~10% of the user base! Lets tryout precaching for for those browsers"

too bad its on by default by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 03:44 · Score: 0

and with mozilla not having corporate rollout kits, good luck in updating those 5000 workstations by hand

i can see a lot of people being either reprimanded or worse sacked
, i dunno what Firefox and Google was thinking adding stuff like this switched on by default
and we think MSIE can be bad

What if we don't want this? by EmagGeek · 2005-03-31 03:44 · Score: 1

There is a way to disable it, but it requires manual modification of the javascript config for that user profile...

The problem, especially with corporate users, is that you never know when google is going to return a work-unsafe document to a search. If your browser starts going after a porn site without your knowledge or consent, you still can nevertheless get in hot water with your company.

Here is the remark in the faq regarding this issue:

"We are considering adding UI for this preference (see bug 166648); however, our theory is that if link prefetching needs to be disabled then there must be something wrong with the implementation."

The theory is dead wrong for many reasons. Link pre-fetching may need to be disabled for professional reasons.

Re:What if we don't want this? by PigleT · 2005-03-31 04:06 · Score: 1

What about customizing your preferences with google, to keep safe-search on, and how about using squidguard as well?

Plus if you work for a sensible company, they should understand the increased risk of allowing pr0n into their organization, that it could happen more accidentally now than previously. Notably, I've used google for a fair few years and never yet had anything undesirable show up by accident, myself, yet...

--
~Tim
--
.|` Clouds cross the black moonlight,
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
Re:What if we don't want this? by Dopefish_1 · 2005-03-31 04:40 · Score: 1

"We are considering adding UI for this preference (see bug 166648); however, our theory is that if link prefetching needs to be disabled then there must be something wrong with the implementation."

And if you kept reading the FAQ, you'd see the following paragraph:

"Update: By popular demand, Mozilla 1.3+ includes a preference in the UI to disable prefetching. See Preferences->Advanced->Cache to disable prefetching."

--

#include <sig.h>
Re:What if we don't want this? by EmagGeek · 2005-03-31 05:25 · Score: 1

Try spoonfeeding that to 108,000 employees...
Re:What if we don't want this? by EmagGeek · 2005-03-31 06:34 · Score: 1

Well jesus christ... what do you expect me to do, read the entire document or something?

Hah.. :)
Re:What if we don't want this? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 11:42 · Score: 0

If your browser starts going after a porn site without your knowledge or consent, you still can nevertheless get in hot water with your company.

On the other hand, now that this is a standard feature, you've got someone to blame if you actually do go to a porn site from work.

But, but, google made me do it.

I would rather they were by bob670 · 2005-03-31 03:47 · Score: 1

seraching for XXX pR0n than anything to do with Vin Diesel.

not enabled yet? by morningstar8 · 2005-03-31 03:48 · Score: 1

Is the prefetch feature enabled yet? It doesn't seem to be enabled for me. I just pulled up Firefox 1.0.2, searched Google for "Java", then viewed source and tried searching for "rel=", and it wasn't on the page.

Re:not enabled yet? by Matt+Clare · 2005-03-31 04:15 · Score: 1

I had the same experience. I have the Google Preview extension installed. Could that affect things? Has anyone seen this in their search results source?

--
.\.\att Clare

First Pre-Fetch Exploit on its way? by DumbSwede · 2005-03-31 03:49 · Score: 1

So now instead of clicking on a link and getting some kind of web based virus or Trojan or exploit, we can just get it from Google's pre-fetching. Granted there are probably no viruses that work this way today, but how long before Slashdot is running a story with the headline "First Pre-Fectch Exploit" ?

Also while it may not actually show as loaded on your browser or history visits, I don't expect corporate would care to see all the Firewall hits that deny the pre-fetch, because they probably will still trigger the access denied mechanism.

Maybe this will work out for Google, maybe not. It could go either way.

--
Letter To Iran

Re:First Pre-Fetch Exploit on its way? by aleander · 2005-03-31 03:57 · Score: 1

Nah, there will be no exploits :

Firefox will only fetch & cache the stuff, not render it. Of course something could exploit the loader/cache/whatever, but that's pretty unlikely.

--
Segmentation fault. Ore dumped.
Re:First Pre-Fetch Exploit on its way? by anthony_dipierro · 2005-03-31 11:45 · Score: 1

how long before Slashdot is running a story with the headline "First Pre-Fectch Exploit" ?

Exactly 5 minutes after Microsoft adds the feature to IE.

Re: uhoh... by m50d · 2005-03-31 03:58 · Score: 1

Only if it's clearly the only response you're likely to want. Searching for something where it could mean something else, like, say "penthouse", won't trigger it. Searching for "Bianca's smut shack" probably would.

--
I am trolling

Re: uhoh... by StarManta.Mini · 2005-03-31 04:02 · Score: 1

No. Only the top result is linked, and even then, only if Google is confident you will click it.

tracking clicks by lixlpixel · 2005-03-31 04:05 · Score: 2, Interesting

you could do that with javascript.
just include an onClick XMLHttpRequest script which sends the coordinates of the cursor when the user clicks on a result.
Since the google page looks pretty similar on every browser, the y-coordinate should (could) tell you on which result the user clicked...

pretty hackish - but without any redirect and/or visible to the user.

Re:tracking clicks by raverbuzzy · 2005-03-31 04:44 · Score: 1

Alternatively you could attach an event to each of the links which would log the click to google.

follow the money by jacquesm · 2005-03-31 04:05 · Score: 1

Google goes out of their way to make their 'ad' clicks look like they are really search result clicks, /me thinks this is just another way of pumping up the ad revenue by suggesting that google is causing a lot more traffic than they really do.

I've been doing some advertising on google lately, and have yet to see any significant correlation between what google claims they're sending and what I'm actually receiving.

When contacted about this they come up with all kinds of lame reasons why this is the case...

This 'tactic' will make it look like I'm receiving far more traffic from google than I really do.

--
MP3 Search Engine

Wrong choices... by Reservoir+Penguin · 2005-03-31 04:13 · Score: 1

It aint cool to make this "feature" opt-in by default. I'm sitting here in the middle of Siberia paying 1.5c for every MB. Sure I quickly turned it off in about:config but what about dozens of the ppl I installed Firefox for??? What should I tell them when they start getting hit with higher internet bills? Sucks...

--
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil

Security Risks by alucard963 · 2005-03-31 04:14 · Score: 1

Does anyone know what kind of security risks there are with this? For instance, is there a way that some malicious code could be executed in the preloaded page that I would not have otherwise gone to?

http://maps.google.com/ by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 04:14 · Score: 0

Now if they can just get http://maps.google.com/ working on Mozilla again.

Is it just me or by TigerTime · 2005-03-31 04:19 · Score: 1

should you not be searching for non-work related stuff at work. You should actually be working if you're getting paid to do it. :-/ ....unless you are looking at Slashdot.

404? by Phroggy · 2005-03-31 04:28 · Score: 1

To block or ignore prefetch requests (from Google and other web sites), you should configure your web server to return a 404 HTTP response code for requests that contain the "X-moz: prefetch" header.

Wouldn't 403 be a more appropriate status code? Why are they suggesting 404?

--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;

No, it's not by stewby18 · 2005-03-31 04:31 · Score: 1

An obvious example: innocently searching for info on the silly Vin Diesel movie "XXX" turns up a nice mix of Vin and pr0n in the top results. Presumably a mix of both are loading up in the background

That's only presumable if you don't atually read the (extremely short) description on the linked Google page. It says that it loads the top result for some queries (presumably, those where they have data that suggests that you will be clicking the first link).

This sucks... by northcat · 2005-03-31 04:40 · Score: 1

..., it really does. This is one of those annoying 'features'.

yet another pref in the Suite UI buried in FF by markdowling · 2005-03-31 04:41 · Score: 1

Prefetching is an explicit Mozilla Suite UI Preference (advanced/cache) but you have to go to about:config to change it in FF.

We normally disable prefetch on our Mozilla 1.7.6 installs but we don't get a box to tick in FF 1.0.2, even in an "Advanced" submenu.

For those who want to jump up and down and say "if you don't want to change about:config you're not l33t enough to use Firefox" I say:

a) I thought FF wasn't aimed at the l33t
b) I have no problem changing about:config for myself
c) I do have a problem advocating a browser to non-technically comfortable users when options like this (as opposed to beta-options grossly affecting stability) are not in the UI.

If a solely about:config option is debuted in x.y and is still around in x.y+2 it should either be added to the UI or removed entirely and reworked. Since prefetch has been in Mozilla since 1.2 it should be in FF's UI.

But then, as a Suite Supporter I would say that, wouldn't I?

pre-fetching is just dumb by ccdotnet · 2005-03-31 04:41 · Score: 1

I don't want my browser running around going to sites that I don't intened to visit. And certainly, not because Google tells my browser to do so.

Agreed. In the age of broadband, this is just a bad idea. Latency is low enough that we can get that page quick if we want it, so why pre-download it. Waste of bits if we don't want it. And from a web site operator's POV, do I want my logs filled with these hits, which DON'T turn out to be real users?

Pre-fetching is evil by ccdotnet · 2005-03-31 04:51 · Score: 1

With prefetching enabled, you may end up with cookies and web pages in your web browser's cache from web sites that you did not click on since prefetching happens automatically when you view Google search results pages. You can delete these files by clearing your browser's cache and cookies.

Google's own words. So they know its a bad idea but they're doing it anyway.

Re:Pre-fetching is evil by ryanmfw · 2005-03-31 13:48 · Score: 1

Because Google wants to ruin people's lives! It's a google conspiracy, oh no! Run for the hills!

--
Hurricane Ivan: A 17th century prison collapsed. All of the inmates escaped.

Even worse by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 04:53 · Score: 0

You can use iframes to load entire sites.

Does it actually work??? by richman555 · 2005-03-31 04:59 · Score: 1

I have Firefox 1.0.2 and I checked my preferences under about:config , cleared my cache, did a google search for stanford, then did an about:cache to see the cached entries. Nothing was prefetched.... unless I am missing something.

So that explains it. by antizeus · 2005-03-31 05:03 · Score: 1

Yesterday I did a google search for "fink" and was asked to accept a cookie from fink.sourceforge.net when it displayed the search results. I was wondering about that.

--
-- $SIGNATURE

This is a huge privacy violation!! by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 05:03 · Score: 0

So every time I search on Google I will be visiting all sorts of web sites that I do not want to visit. Getting all sorts of cookies that I don't want to get. Does anyone else feel that this is a huge violation of online privacy? Or am I just paranoid? :)

Google needs to turn this off ASAP!

Re:This is a huge privacy violation!! by richman555 · 2005-03-31 05:10 · Score: 1

Or maybe the browser should disable the preference by default.

Anti-competative move by Nom+du+Keyboard · 2005-03-31 05:03 · Score: 1

Strikes me as an anti-competative move against Internet Explorer -- not that Microsoft has pulled tricks against other browsers (e.g. Opera). IE will not prove as nimble now in some circumstances compared to FF at one of the most visited Internet portals in the world. I expect howls of outrage any time now from MS.

--
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."

Re:Anti-competative move by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 06:22 · Score: 0

It's "competitive", you idiot.

Go back to first grade.
Re:Anti-competative move by porcupine8 · 2005-03-31 06:32 · Score: 1

No more non-competitive than all those sites that use IE-only tags.
Not that I'm complaining that I can't see "marquee"d text scrolling, mind you.

--
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.

Windows by hendridm · 2005-03-31 05:07 · Score: 1

Yep, as this post explained. However, I used Windows hosting, which is generally IIS.

Re:Windows by GweeDo · 2005-04-01 06:52 · Score: 1

Simple solution, switch to something using Apache (whether it is on Linux or Windows).

--
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck

Google Suggest? by octopi · 2005-03-31 05:10 · Score: 1

What happens to Google Suggest? I have tested on two computers, both MSIE and Firefox, Google Suggest does not "suggest" anymore. Do any of the FAQs talk about this? Whats going to happen to Suggest?

Wow... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 05:13 · Score: 0

I'm stunned.

This is so unmittigatedly evil that I am making up words to try to describe it.

I've said it a thousand times but Google is pure EVIL. I also mentioned numerous times about how they would lock themselves into FF/Moz to the exclusion of service for other browsers. This is jst the first baby step.

And lastly the fact that this feature exists/has existed in Moz/FF and is now actually being exploited means that using FF on Google is now the most insanely dangerous thing you can probably do on the net.

JUST SAY NO to the newly budding evil empire of Google/FF. Do it now before it's too late!

Sure, mod as flamebait, ignore all the warning signs, fall to the evil and be sorry later, see what I care :(

fat wallet by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 05:38 · Score: 0

Great. I plan on google bombing some links to my advertisers. Thank you Google for increasing my revenue!

Combine this with their cost-per-click and... by localman · 2005-03-31 05:41 · Score: 1

3. Profit!

This seems like a bad idea overall. Bandwidth wasted for everyone and ghost users on sites that need to track visitors.

And maybe I'm too old school (having been raised on a 14K modem) but my DSL is so fast I don't particularly feel the need for the pages to preload.

Cheers.

Google pusing invalid HTML by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 05:48 · Score: 0

Google's use of is invalid. is only allowed in they should be putting the rel on the itself.

opt-in by jiffyjon · 2005-03-31 06:01 · Score: 1

I LOATHE automatic "features" like this. This should be an opt-in feature. Let's think about how useless this actually is..

If you're going for the first result in google, you're likely to not have read the rest of the list. What would be the time between delivery of results and you clicking on the first result? 1 second? 2? 5?

So that's a big amount of time for preloading. Thanks guys! Those 2 seconds really helped me out. Not to mention a cache/history of sites i've never visited.

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Collective Type Project

Bugzilla vs. b.m.o by tepples · 2005-03-31 06:20 · Score: 1

Strictly, it's not Mozilla.org alone, and it's not Bugzilla alone either. Out of the box, the Bugzilla system does not block access from Referer: http://slashdot.org/* (for example see GNOME Bugzilla), but the specific instance of Bugzilla on mozilla.org does.

Re:Bugzilla vs. b.m.o by sharkey · 2005-03-31 06:39 · Score: 1

Whoops, too general. My bad.

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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.

It broke GooglePreview by Knnniggit · 2005-03-31 06:21 · Score: 1

I can't comment on any speed increase just yet, but all I know is that the GooglePreview extension doesn't seem to like it. It shows thumbnails of Google rather than the search results.

Current mood: Irritated

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Brain kills internet cells.

Re:It broke GooglePreview by Anonymous Coward · 2005-04-01 06:12 · Score: 0

To what of thumbnails are you talking about, we do not know unless you list them.

Nice! by bogie · 2005-03-31 06:31 · Score: 1

I like the way it gives you a chance to back out of t link. I see people posting tinyurl links all the time and just refuse to click them for obivous reasons.

Got to remember to start using that for long links. Thanks.

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If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch

it is not by LuckyStarr · 2005-03-31 06:35 · Score: 1

cross-domain prefetching is evil.

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Meme of the day: I browse "Disable Sigs: Checked". So should you.

Another concern by DaveJay · 2005-03-31 07:16 · Score: 3, Informative

Other people here have already discussed the "you'll get in trouble from work/authorities for prefetching things on to your computer you don't even know you're loading" deal, so I won't touch that. They've also discussed the "You'll use more bandwidth" thing.

Here's my complaint, from an entirely different direction: two years from now, is every default installation of Mozilla and/or Firefox going to require me to change a laundry list of preferences in order to avoid features I don't want?

I mean, go ahead and put these features in, but don't activate them automatically: do what Opera does (asks if the user wants to activate a feature) or just leave them off by default, and add a menu option to turn it on.

Having these things turned on by default is going to be an inconvenience going forward, and smacks a bit of elitist "we know what's better for your web browsing experience than you do" attitude, you know what I mean?

At this point, I'd be thrilled with setting optional parameters like this to 'off' by default, and updating the default installation home page (visible on first execution of the app) to a page listing "Great optional features", along with buttons to turn them on and a quick note on how to turn them back off if desired.

Re:Another concern by jasonjacks0n · 2005-04-03 07:47 · Score: 1

Here's my complaint, from an entirely different direction: two years from now, is every default installation of Mozilla and/or Firefox going to require me to change a laundry list of preferences in order to avoid features I don't want?

That's a little more valid than the other complaints you mention. On the other hand, if you get your way, am I going to need to tell my mom how to turn on some ever-growing set of default-disabled firefox options in order to get a decent browsing experience?
Also, while your concern does apply to the first installation of firefox/moz on any given machine, after that the user prefs are persistent, as they're stored in a user folder (at least under Windows), not with the app itself. So even if you uninstall and re-install months later, your prefs will be there waiting for you. My moz installation has prefs built up over time since 1.3, which is when I made it my default browser, or maybe even 1.1 on a couple of my machines.
The point is, most people (those not like us) don't ever really change defaults, so someone has to think hard about what those defaults should be. It's unavoidable, and turning everything off by default can be as bad as turning on things that shouldn't really be on by default. We just have to hope that our vendors (MoFo, in this case) make smart decisions. It's not elitist, really -- or doesn't have to be -- it's part of presenting the best possible experience to the widest possible range of users, with the least amount of tweaking necessary.
Maybe the Right Thing To Do would be one additional screen in the installation wizard that prompts the user if they want a "bare functionality" installation (for you), a "bells and whistles" installation (for my mom), or a "MoFo recommended" installation (embodying their best guesses)..

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LINK belongs in HEAD by booch · 2005-03-31 07:21 · Score: 1

It'd be nice if Google actually followed the HTML standard and put the <LINK rel="prefetch"> in the HEAD section, instead of in the BODY. Another problem is that most of the time spent downloading a typical page is the graphics, style sheets, scripts, etc. Just caching the page itself doesn't seem to do a whole lot in most cases.

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Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.

think of the advantages... by tinkerton · 2005-03-31 07:40 · Score: 1

you can now claim the pages got downloaded beyond your knowledge.

Vulnerabilities and prefetching? by Chris+Kamel · 2005-03-31 08:09 · Score: 3, Interesting

So what happens if you prefetch a page that stresses some vulnerability in the browser? Does it get to run even though you didn't really even browse to the page....

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The following statement is true
The preceding statement is false

What I want to see... by lamber45 · 2005-03-31 08:25 · Score: 1

...is support for this in automated tools like JavaDoc , Jade/OpenJade (for DocBook), and so forth. There are times when I want to read through a manual that's online, and waiting for the next page in an ordered manual really breaks my concentration sometimes. Sometimes it's so bad that I just run wget -r against the website in question in order to prime my proxy-cache.

On the other hand, it would be nice to be able to specify a maximum bandwidth to use for prefetching as another option. However, perhaps a proxy-cache (like Apache or Squid) could recognize the

X-moz: prefetch

header and give those requests lower priority and more-throttled bandwidth. Hey... the cache could even parse HTML requested from it and fetch those links; then users of older browsersw could get the same benefits!

This is a good thing for users by darinf · 2005-03-31 08:31 · Score: 1

I think Google has leveraged this feature in a very intelligent way because they only insert link prefetching hints when they are very confident that the target page is the one you are looking for. For the vast majority of searches, there are no link prefetching hints. Moveover, please understand that Google or any other site could just as easily use JavaScript to prefetch these documents (using XMLHttpRequest from an onload handler). The link prefetching feature in Mozilla is designed as an alternative to JavaScript based techniques. It is good because it gives the browser control over the prefetching process. That allows the browser to be smart about bandwidth usage. For example, Mozilla will only prefetch one document at a time, and it will cancel the prefetches whenever the user loads anything else. Mozilla will also tell sites that the request is a prefetch and not a normal request. That way sites can properly account for these requests in their traffic logging. If you've ever written code to prefetch images (using "new Image()") that will be shown later when the user mouses over some element in the page, then this feature gives you a better way to do that. In short, this is a good thing for users :-)

What's it worth? by Shotgun · 2005-03-31 09:11 · Score: 1

So, exactly how much time will a person save by having the first link (which will obviously be so authoritative that everyone automatically chooses it anyway) loaded before clicking it?

You type in your search terms - sanford
3 or 4 seconds expire before Google returns sanford.edu
You immediately click on sanford.edu.

The most you'll save is the few seconds it takes to read sanford.edu and click on it. Right?

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Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba

great for slashdot? by danharan · 2005-03-31 09:26 · Score: 2, Funny

We could do set this on /., so when you click on a discussion, it automatically pre-fetches the article!

Uhmm... actually, never mind

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Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"

Re:great for slashdot? by slavemowgli · 2005-03-31 15:37 · Score: 1

Why not? If you also modify slashdot's codebase so that it automatically converts link to the CoralCache equivalents, that'd probably be quite an improvement in browsing experience.

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quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.

Images too? by Advised+Wang · 2005-03-31 09:45 · Score: 2, Interesting

Does prefetching only fetch the html, or the images too? If no images are loaded the bandwith is minimal, no kiddy porn violation will exist, and you will not have downloaded anything that could *really* get you fired.

"vin diesel" by hawk · 2005-03-31 10:20 · Score: 1

Is that a cheap french wine, or some such?

hawk

Ehm... by KZigurs · 2005-03-31 11:27 · Score: 1

Stop shitting about windows registry. It's EXACTLY the same as ye old praised shitload of differently sintaxed plain texts.

Applications misue both of them. And to be honest - I prefer windows registry. In there, at least, I know I see it all. With plaintext configuration files I have spent far more time searching why something is shitting around, just to discover that yet another stupid app has decided that it should prefer .conf file in some obscure directory made by hacked rpm from different distro precedes both the one lying in /etc and in ./app/conf dirs.

Ahh, what a world that would be where each app would be running in it's small little jail. No corruption of system registry, clean uninstalls and possibly subjails for dependency software.

snurf... what a dream.

Anyway - it's not the windows registry that sucks. It's an excellent idea and magnificent implementation. It's just that WE WILL NEVER LEARN TO WRITE GOOD AND PROPER SOFTWARE. And this is the issue that has to be adressed.

Re:Ehm... by drsmithy · 2005-03-31 14:27 · Score: 1

Applications misue both of them. And to be honest - I prefer windows registry. In there, at least, I know I see it all. With plaintext configuration files I have spent far more time searching why something is shitting around, just to discover that yet another stupid app has decided that it should prefer .conf file in some obscure directory made by hacked rpm from different distro precedes both the one lying in /etc and in ./app/conf dirs.
More importantly, direct editing of the Windows registry is an uncommon task only done under extraordinary circumstances by the typical user and strongly discouraged by pretty much everyone. Fiddling with text-based config files on a unix system is practically mandatory and considered a "rite of passage" to most of the community.
Ahh, what a world that would be where each app would be running in it's small little jail. No corruption of system registry, clean uninstalls and possibly subjails for dependency software.
How would you handle global application settings ? How could per-user settings be portable between locations ? How would you use shared libraries ? How would applications running in a jail be able to save data to arbitrary user-specified locations ?
I think jails are a good idea in certain circumstances, but I'm not sure you could apply that model generally to every application that might run on the typical end user's computer...

UI Pref not in Firefox... by markdowling · 2005-03-31 12:56 · Score: 1

but Seamonkey still has it. Go Suite Go.

Opera users don't need no stinkin' prefetch. by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 13:06 · Score: 0

Bleah :p mozilla is so slow you have to resort to stuff like prefetching. For us opera users, we don't need no stinkin' prefetch, our browsers are still faster than bloatzilla.

holy shit by pyrrho · 2005-03-31 13:06 · Score: 1

the last thing I want is every page on a search result preloaded... sometimes I don't want to put my IP there! egad! run for the hills... shit, the hills are on fire!!!

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-pyrrho

Security 101 by ArtStone · 2005-03-31 16:44 · Score: 2, Interesting

One of the first things taught in Computer Security is that you should not enable features or services unless there is a need for them and justify why there is a need to assume the risks inherent in turning that feature on.

As others have pointed out, pre-fetching (especially now that the /. world knows about it) has many implications for virus propogation, affiliate program click fraud, distortion of traffic measurements, employee disciplinary legal issues...

For the Foxfire folks to have enabled this feature by default - with no reasonable preference/options interface for the non-geek user and nothing in the browser help (go to Help and search on "Prefetch") to document the functionality - this plays enormously into the hands of those who want to label FireFox (and more generally open source) as being insecure, reckless, and not appropriate in the corporate environment.

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Final 2006 "Proof of Global Warming" US Hurricane Count -> 0

Re:Who cares. by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-31 18:23 · Score: 0

Easy --- fetch the page with the XML object and it's stored in the cache.... clicking on the link will 302 it (okay, now I lost you)

Prefetch Example by zx2c4 · 2005-03-31 18:28 · Score: 0

I've created a prefetch sampler of the concept, check it out. http://zx2c4.com/documents/prefetch/

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ZX2C4

Great by ta+bu+shi+da+yu · 2005-03-31 20:07 · Score: 1

So we do a prefetch of an ad site, with related cookies so we can be tracked? No thanks! Is there a way of turning this feature off?

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XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.

Google that ~! by some+guy+I+know · 2005-03-31 22:46 · Score: 1

What does that tilde mean?

Google is your friend.

...

Whoops, looks like, in this case, it isn't.

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Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana

This is old technology by menix · 2005-04-01 06:58 · Score: 0

Fireclick used to do that. They had javascript tags in the web pages that would preload content for you before you clicked anything. Same concept but with a search engine. I wonder if there's patent issues... oh no more bad karma!

Re: uhoh... by fshalor · 2005-04-05 05:19 · Score: 1

er... yeah! That's the problem! If google is configent that I'll click it, then it gets downloaded. I'm sure enough people search for smut on google and then click the top results regularly for google to become confident that most people who enter in that sort of search click the results.

lol

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-=fshalor ::this post not spellchecked. move along::

Re: uhoh... by StarManta.Mini · 2005-04-05 05:23 · Score: 1

I expect that Google is smart enough not to include this tag on pages that would be blocked by SafeSearch, which would eliminate most porn sites.

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Google Prefetching for Mozilla Browsers

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