[LINK] WebSockets

[rene]

On Tue, 29 Mar 2011 09:03:36 +1100, Kim Holburn wrote:
[...]
> Personally I will be hanging out for some way of blocking stuff like
> that.  I hate websites that push stuff at me when I don't want it.
>
> They really don't get it that people want to decide what they want
> and when they want it.

Apparently versions of Firefox and Opera that have support for Websockets, 
also enable the user to disable Websocket support, although typical of 
these types of features, it's not readily obvious how to do that, although 
it's quite easy to do.

Methods of disablement do not facilitate selective disablement depending on 
the web site, but for people who don't have need or want to have stuff 
pushed at them at all (which includes me), the disablement methods appear 
to be adequate - apart from lack of obviousness that it can be done.

Apparently late last year, due to security issues in WebSockets protocol, 
various browsers including Firefox and Opera disabled default support, 
which resulted in web pages about how to re-enable support. Doing the 
opposite, ie. in terms of ticking/unticking a box or changing a true/false 
field, will disable Websockets:

http://techdows.com/2010/12/enable-websockets-in-opera-11.html
http://techdows.com/2010/12/turn-on-websockets-in-firefox-4.html

I've no idea whether the security issues have been resolved, nor what the 
default state of enablement is in various browsers. Nor do I know whether 
Websockets can be disabled in IE or anything else.

I knew about Opera because when I install a new version I typically look 
through the "config" local page for new stuff that I might not want. Since 
Firefox and Opera quite often have similar enable/disable options in the 
"config" page, I guessed Firefox may, and looked for that. Haven't bothered 
to search for whether any browser enables disablement.

Irene