The debut of Google Chrome 5 a few days ago brought a new Content Settings menu that promised to deliver better content control to Chrome users. Back then the settings where not selectable which caused some confusion. The latest Google Chrome dev channel release however has filled those content settings with live.
The Content Settings in the Google browser are divided into the five tabs cookies, images, JavaScript, Plug-ins and Pop-ups each with the means to control the display or creation of those items in the web browser.
It is now for instance possible to disable JavaScript or Plugins globally and use an exception list to allow the execution only on trusted sites.
That’s however nowhere near as comfortable as it sounds. The exception list needs to be edited manually. This means that the user has to copy and paste (or write) the urls of all pages that should be excluded from the global blocking into the Content Settings form.
Google Chrome will display an icon in the address bar if a script was blocked on a website. This icon can be used add that website to the whitelist so that the content type will be loaded on future visits.
NoScript for Firefox for instance does that better by providing the controls in the web browser’s status bar and offering to block or allow scripts individually. But it is of course unfair to compare standard browser contents with an add-on.
If you look at how the Firefox web browser is handling those global settings by default you will notice that it uses similar options than the Chrome browser.
These Content Settings might however mark the first step of a conversion of the popular NoScript to the Google browser. Before that the developer simply stated that the Internet browser was not capable of blocking scripts like JavaScript (all those ad blockers and script blockers for Chrome hide the scripts which means they are still executed).
With those settings however it can very well be that the Chrome developer’s have created the foundation for a successful port of NoScript.
Enjoyed the article?: Then sign-up for our free newsletter or RSS feed to kick off your day with the latest technology news and tips, or share the article with your friends and contacts on Facebook or Twitter.Related Articles:
How To Open The Adobe Flash Player Settings In Google ChromeFinally: Google Chrome Extensions Turned On By Default In Dev Releases
Google Chrome Stable Updated
Google Chrome Backup
Google Chrome Adblocker
Martin,
The new Goggle Chrome 5 looks much secure,though not sure of privacy issues google has.I am using Firefox 3.6 and Opera 10.10.Which browser’s would you suggest considering maximum security and safety?[definitely not IE8]
Not true. When you run the extension, an icon appears in the address bar letting you know if the site has had JavaScript blocked. You can “allow always” and then manually reload the page – the address is then placed into the whitelist.
It’s not as fancy-dan as NoScript – the extension will allow all JS on a page regardless of the source domain as far as I can tell – but it’s a definite improvement.
Mosh thanks for that, I somewhat overlooked that. Edited the article accordingly.
No worries, Martin. It’s still a little flaky and I’ve found a couple of websites (avg.com for one) where the “Javascript was blocked” icon persists even though the site’s in the whitelist.
Well, it *is* a dev build!
My account in facebook texas poker has been banned!!