ηMatrix/eMatrix support thread

[doofy]

You can do it directly from the toolbar popup while on the page with the warning message, unless I misunderstood what you mean.

As I said: I'm not an eM user, but I value and follow your work here.
In uM, I don't get a toolbar popup - I simply get this:

If I want to continue, It takes me 3 clicks (and it took me a long time to realise this, which is probably why the behavior irritates me).
What I'd like is how uB0 handles this - which is a dialog box under "go back" offering me the option to disable filtering temporarily or permanently. Which is one click.
I'm happy to acknowledge that I learn slowly, but it took me well over a year before I realised that clicking the toolbar icon allowed me to bypass the error if I wanted to.

A problem with uM is that once you've learnt how to drive it, it is incredibly easy. The initial learning curve however is a bit steep. Witness the amount of noobs who walk away in favor of the non configurable POS that is NS.

[vannilla]

Yes, using the toolbar icon to open the popup with the matrix and enabling the blocked domain is the intended way to deal with these situations.
eMatrix inherited this directly from uMatrix.

The initial learning curve however is a bit steep. Witness the amount of noobs who walk away in favor of the non configurable POS that is NS.

uMatrix, and especially eMatrix, was designed to be used by people that understood how HTTP requests works, and how websites use them to do what they do.
With this knoweledge, it's trivial to understand what the matrix does. At best, a short tutorial to learn the conventions used within the matrix might be needed (e.g. why there are two shades of green and two shades of red), but a certain previous knoweledge is required before the extension can be used at all.
Sorry, that's how things are and they are not changing. If noobs can't deal with it, it's their loss not mine.
What does need to change is that the tutorial mentioned earlier is missing, though most of the pages in the uMatrix wiki still apply. You can reach it from the extension's dashboard (you can reach it also from the add-on manager.)

[doofy]

Sorry, that's how things are and they are not changing. If noobs can't deal with it, it's their loss not mine.

S'OK. I've been using uM for abt 5 yrs and am perfectly happy.
Just you asked for feedback on the icon, so I thought to share.
And then I thought to share additional feedback...
I apologize for wasting your time, and thank you for the work you are doing here.

[vannilla]

Even if I end up not using it, any kind of feedback is appreciated.
It definitely gives an insight in how people use the extension.

Anyway, some updates about the future:
The next version will have a major refactoring in the code and might perform differently in some cases.
This refactoring is needed in my opinion, because the original codebase is a mess and also doesn't make use of the full power of the platform, preferring some magical hacks to do things.
I'm also attempting to write a wiki like uMatrix has, though it's very low priority right now.

[plushkava]

Mini-poll:
Does anyone care about the toolbar icon changing based on how many elements are blocked?

I don't. I dislike it greatly because it often results in icon flicker. That is, between the icon transitioning from one form to the other, it may not be rendered at all for a brief instant, with only the toolbar background being visible. I find that to be jarring. Also, there is already an option to show the number of blocked elements, in which case the nuances of the icon are obscured by the overlay anyway. I consider the total number of requests that were blocked to be completely irrelevant - certainly in the case where it is a non-zero value - and especially as the matrix itself shows a per-cell count.

[moonbat]

Mini-poll:
Does anyone care about the toolbar icon changing based on how many elements are blocked?

I don't. I dislike it greatly because it often results in icon flicker.

No flicker here, on either Linux (current) or Windows 10 earlier.

[plushkava]

No flicker here, on either Linux (current) or Windows 10 earlier.

Well, good for you. I should add that this isn't actually an issue with ηMatrix per se; it can happen with any number of add-ons that frequently update their icon state. It just so happens that ηMatrix and Cookies Exterminator are the ones that most commonly exhibit this effect in my case. Not constantly, mind, but frequently enough to be noticeable. The easiest way to reproduce the effect that I am referring to is to refresh a page that supports RSS. Almost invariably, the already-drawn RSS icon in the location bar will vanish before being drawn again. It is exactly like that, only less frequently occurring and with a shorter interval. The point is, it informs my preference for toolbar icons that aim to be relatively 'quiet'.

[moonbat]

No flicker here, on either Linux (current) or Windows 10 earlier.

Well, good for you. I should add that this isn't actually an issue with ηMatrix per se; it can happen with any number of add-ons that frequently update their icon state. It just so happens that ηMatrix and Cookies Exterminator are the ones that most commonly exhibit this effect in my case. Not constantly, mind, but frequently enough to be noticeable. The easiest way to reproduce the effect that I am referring to is to refresh a page that supports RSS. Almost invariably, the already-drawn RSS icon in the location bar will vanish before being drawn again. It is exactly like that, only less frequently occurring and with a shorter interval. The point is, it informs my preference for toolbar icons that aim to be relatively 'quiet'.

Plenty of pages including this very forum support RSS and nobody here has reported a problem like this - apart from which it is quite unrelated to nMatrix and I wonder why you expect nMatrix to change because of a glitch in your setup.

[plushkava]

Plenty of pages including this very forum support RSS and nobody here has reported a problem like this - apart from which it is quite unrelated to nMatrix and I wonder why you expect nMatrix to change because of a glitch in your setup.

That isn't the only reason. I can already sense that nothing productive will arise as a result of continuing this discussion with you. You stated your opinion in response to the poll and I stated mine. I shall leave it at that.

[moonbat]

It is not about opinions, it is about staying relevant to the topic. Your problem as stated is unique - nobody else faces it and it isn't a problem with Pale Moon or nMatrix, so why don't you open a thread asking for solutions to the icon flickering if you're serious about getting it fixed?

[plushkava]

It is not about opinions, it is about staying relevant to the topic. Your problem as stated is unique - nobody else faces it and it isn't a problem with Pale Moon or nMatrix, so why don't you open a thread asking for solutions to the icon flickering if you're serious about getting it fixed?

The question was "Does anyone care about the toolbar icon changing based on how many elements are blocked?" If that is not actively soliciting an opinion, then I don't know what is. My response can be boiled down to the fact that I do not, and that I supported his judgement in this regard, even though he may have ultimately decided to acquiesce to the opinions of several others (which, of course, is entirely his perogative). Let me make one thing clear: I do not require your permission to volunteer my opinion in this thread. I care not one iota as to whether you consider my post to be on-topic or not. Further, how - and when - I go about reporting and/or resolving bugs is my business and not yours. Now, kindly get off my back.

[doofy]

Your problem as stated is unique

I see flicker on the rss icon, and uMatrix icon.

[vannilla]

I suppose this could be "fixed" by adding a preference to disable the icon change, but first I'd need to see where the "grey icon" is set and make that a special case.
If I'm successful v4.0 will have this preference.

[vannilla]

I managed to add said preference.
Those suffering from flickering that feel particularily adventurous, can test it out by cloning the git repository, switching to the "modulize" branch and building the xpi from that revision of the source.
There are some unrelated changes there, though nothing should be visibly broken.

[plushkava]

Those suffering from flickering that feel particularily adventurous, can test it out by cloning the git repository, switching to the "modulize" branch and building the xpi from that revision of the source.

Thanks. I'll give it a try.

[plushkava]

Thanks. I'll give it a try.

I didn't end up using it for long, as the modulize branch is clearly a work-in-progress. Still, within its intended scope, the disableUpdateIcon setting worked exactly as expected here.

[vannilla]

I left it sitting while thinking of possible improvements for too long, so here's the test release for 4.0.0

https://gitlab.com/vannilla/ematrix/-/tags/4.0.0

As usual with any major version change, be aware that things coming from previous versions might not work. I don't expect any major incompatibilites, but beware nonetheless.

There is one known bug that prints an error message in the browser console saying that "messenger" is null, but I could trigger it only under very specific conditions that shouldn't happen at all under normal circumstances and apparently it doesn't significantly affect the extension's behaviour, so I didn't try to fix it before the release, especially since the only solution I could think of didn't work.

As usual try to test it as much as you can, so maybe use a new profile and change some settings from the dashboard, add some hosts list, change the blocking of requests temporarily and permanently.
Also check that the extension is still responsive as you expect it to be (e.g. it's not suddenly slower.) There were many internal changes, some of which pretty radical, and it's probable that resource usage (processing speed, memory, ...) has increased. On the other hand it might've been even reduced, I didn't really run any tests on the matter.

Thanks.

[plushkava]

I left it sitting while thinking of possible improvements for too long, so here's the test release for 4.0.0

https://gitlab.com/vannilla/ematrix/-/tags/4.0.0

Thanks for the new release. There are some issues with editing rules. Here are the steps I went through:-

1. Install eMatrix in a profile that has no prior extension data stored
2. Navigate to the "My Rules" editor
3. In the "Temporary rules" list, edit out the last two (first-party) rules and click Save
4. Click the Commit button if all appears well

In prior versions, doing this behaves as expected. Here is a screenshot from just after the third step:-

ematrix-3-rule-editing-good.png

Clicking the Commit button also behaves correctly.

In version 4.0.0, this happens instead:-

umatrix-4-rule-editing-bad.png

Note that the buttons are actually still there; I just had to scroll a little to ensure that the screenshot still included all of the rules that appeared. As can be seen, the extension is implying that that many of the other rules would be deleted by a commit. Apparently, this is as a result of the unexpected appearance of variant rules that are distinguished by an "xn--" prefix.

[vannilla]

Interesting... apparently the "xn--" prefix is prepended any time the rules are edited, so "xn--behind-the-scene" would become "xn--xn--behind-the-scene" and so on.
The problem is most likely in one of the new modules that handle URLs.

[Moonchild]

xn-- is the prefix for IDNs, so you should focus on the code handling punycode.