this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/8834978

No need to remove the URL tracking parameters manually. πŸ₯³

Firefox copy link without site tracking

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I feel like it would be better as a toggle in the settings? I wonder if they envision it as something that's always enabled for everyone in the future.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago

Maybe it's already in about:config? Not sure.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It's a selection in the right click menu. How much more optional do you need it to be?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I would prefer to have only one of the options in the menu - the one I want to use. I'm not going to change my mind on whether I want trackers stripped on a day-by-day basis, and I think having both taking up space at the same time is bad UX.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

You can consider using Stonecrusher's "simpleMenuWizard" to apply custom CSS to hide a menu item. (Disclaimers: I'm not affiliated with the developer, and I haven't used this myself.)

https://github.com/stonecrusher/simpleMenuWizard

The simpleMenuWizard "link-context.css" file contains a commented list of the IDs of most of the menuitem elements of link context menus.

https://github.com/stonecrusher/simpleMenuWizard/blob/master/simpleMenuWizard/link-context.css

As listed there, the "Copy Link" menuitem element's ID is "context-copylink". If you want to hide that menu item, you would uncomment that line in the list (by removing the '/*' at the beginning of the line) as described in Step 5 of the simpleMenuWizard instructions.

At the time when I'm writing this reply, the aforementioned list hasn't yet been updated to include the "Copy Link Without Site Tracking" menuitem's ID. If you want to hide that menu item, sorry I can't check its ID for you right now, but here's how you can find it:

Enable and open the Browser Toolbox.

https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/devtools-user/browser_toolbox/

In the Browser Toolbox, click its 3-dots icon to get an options menu. Click "Disable popup auto-hide", to make context menus persistent. Invoke a context menu on a link (the menu should persist). Use the toolbox inspector's element picker to pick the menu item that you want to hide. Then you can find that menuitem element's "id" attribute in the inspector. (Open the 3-dots menu again and click "Disable popup auto-hide" again to re-enable auto-hide.)

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

How does it know the difference between functional and tracking parameters? Would it handle something like β€˜?page=1&order=desc&some_bullshit_marketing_param=kdnsskwjrjeisn’

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I assume they've modeled it after ClearURLs, which exists as an addon here, and as a uBlock filter here. The short answer is it's a ton of whitelisted regex.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

And the odd cases of false positives is probably why it's a separate field and not a replacement of the regular copy function.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

That sounds cool, but I'm imagining trying to explain this to a grandparent after setting them up with Firefox and they just want to copy and paste but are overwhelmed with options in the drop-down. I understand the idea you won't always want to remove the tracking, but maybe if it was a keybinding suggestion similar to using ctrl-shift-v to paste without formatting you could use shift to copy without tracking.

Edit: if someone else has another idea for making this easy to use but not confuse the tech illiterate and to still allow non-modified links to be copied when needed I'm open to ideas.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Its not complicated. They'll just ignore the options they don't understand, as always.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

No, I've shared my screen before to demonstrate in video call and I've had people try to click the screen I'm sharing. Buttons are rarely just ignored in my experience, especially when they're similar to another button.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This isnt a button, mate. Its a menu entry. And the entry they usually use is still right there, above it. Not everything has to be designed for people with a room temperature IQ.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

A menu entry is a button in a menu... And yes, that's why I said it could easily be a keyboard binding instead. That way it's designed for the people that actually know how to use it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Pretty sure ctrl+c is copy clean link by default in Brave already if you are copying from the url bar, so they could just copy that. But you want to copy a link that isn't in the url bar, then you have to right click and click the clean link option. Given some links are just text that also is a hyperlink, so it still needs to be a menu option imo so you can copy clean links without opening the link with trackers first.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

That's silly. You can right click anywhere on any website and view the source. People who don't use it just ignore it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Love you Mozilla

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Vivaldi has offered this option for a while now.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

In that case, I’m glad it’s catching on