Reuters.com refreshes continuously

[Bertrand Russell]

I had a similar concern where I am seeing a page continually refresh even though I did not enable any scripts via NS. Rather than start a whole new thread I think the issue is similar enough to add to this one.

I am using NS 1.9.1.4, and when I go to
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRel ... RN20080603
this page refreshes every 5 minutes. I had been under the impression that blocking javascript, via NS, disables page refreshes.

Does anyone else see this, or are my NS settings messed up?

Thanks.

[Alan Baxter]

I had been under the impression that blocking javascript, via NS, disables page refreshes.

Not necessarily. JavaScript is just one way to implement auto refresh. But in this case an examination with the JSView extension seems to implicate the external script http://www.reuters.com/resources/js/refresh.js. It appears to have code which may refresh the page every three minutes. It shouldn't execute unless you have reuters.com Allowed in NoScript. If you need to Allow reuters.com, the refresh can still be blocked with the Adblock Plus extension. Just add http://www.reuters.com/resources/js/refresh.js to your filter list.

Hope this helps. Please let us know whether it does.

[Bertrand Russell]

Yes that does help, in that I now know that it is javascript that is refreshing the page. But I certainly did not click on "allow reuters.com" or "temporarily allow reuters.com". NS does block javascript by default, right???

I also went to the NS options and clicked on "reset", but this page still refreshes every few minutes for me. Can you let me know if NS blocks the refresh script for you?

[Nan M]

No auto refresh here.
No scripts permitted on the page.

No auto refresh begins with 'allow reuters.com' .

There are some 3 or 4 redirects even without any scripts allowed by NS. And some frame stuff going on that I can't tease out from the settings in my own config.

It needs the Prof to have a look I believe.

While you're waiting - - Any other extensions?
Tried the Standard Diagnostic?
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Standard_diagnostic_(Firefox)

I'll give it a test in a clean install of NS alone now.
EDIT: AFter a test in a clean NS with all defaults, I couldn't observe the refresh either with or without reuters.com allowed.

[Bertrand Russell]

Thanks for the link to the standard diagnostics steps. I disabled all other extensions(Delicious Bookmarks, FireGPG, Selinium IDE, RealPlayer and some .Net Framework thing) but I still get page refreshed every 5 minutes. I didn't pursue any of the diagnostics further at this point, but I did try testing a completely fresh install.

I started a VM of Windows XP SP3 that had never had Firefox installed previously. I downloaded firefox, loaded the reuters page http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRel ... RN20080603 and waited to see if it refreshed, and it did. I then installed NoScript from noscript.net and restarted firefox. When I reloaded the reuters page NoScript popped up and said "Scripts Currently Forbidden | <SCRIPT>:89 | <OBJECT>:0". But the page still refreshes.

There's also something else funny I noticed. After the page refreshes, the NoScript banner near the bottom of the screen no longer shows, but I can get the same info by hovering the mouse over the NoScript icon in the lower right corner of the browser. When I do this, I see different numbers of scripts reported. Right now I see ""Scripts Currently Forbidden | <SCRIPT>:150 | <OBJECT>:0" and earlier I also saw "Scripts Currently Forbidden | <SCRIPT>:124 | <OBJECT>:0". I haven't changed any of the default settings in the mean time. I'm not sure that's expected, but it might be related.

I hope someone else will be able to confirm this behavior and prove that I am not crazy

[GµårÐïåñ]

Confirmed that it does NOT auto-refresh without site allowed and even with it allowed I waited 5 minutes, nothing. So not sure what's going on but not an NS issue.