Firefox 78 comes with option to view blocked resources

Martin Brinkmann
May 24, 2020
Firefox
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12

Firefox 78 Stable will support options to view website resources that were blocked during page load.

Some site content may not be loaded; a common reason for that is that users make use of built-in on third-party content blocking options. While content blocking, e.g. to block ads or tracking, are common, there are also other reasons such as resources that time out or cut server connections.

Up until now, Firefox did not list the blocked resources in the list of network connections when opening sites in the web browser.

firefox 78 blocked resources

The information may be displayed by the used tools but that depends on the used tool.

Firefox 78 comes with a new option to analyze blocked connections; the information is useful to site owners and developers for the most part, but home users may also find it useful if they notice that content is not loaded on certain sites.

All that is required is to tap on the F12 shortcut to open the Developer Tools of the web browser. Select the Network tab when the Developer Tools interface is ready. Every item that is listed in red has not been loaded.

The reason for that is provided as well, e.g. Firefox might display "blocked by uBlock Origin" if the extension is installed and active. Users may also see Tracking Protection or other blocker extensions as the reason for the blocking.

A click on the "transferred" column sorts the entire listing of connections based on the data of that column so that it is easy to analyze all resources that were blocked in the browser during connection to the site.

The developer tools provide no option to allow blocked connections; this needs to be managed in the blocking options of Firefox or the extension instead.

The new feature is already available in developer versions of the Firefox web browser. Firefox 78 Stable will be released on June 30, 2020 according to the browser's release schedule.

Closing Words

Extension developers and webmasters may appreciate the new option the most but it may also be useful for home users who want to figure out why content is not loaded on a specific site.

Now You: How often do you run into content loading issues on sites caused by content blockers? (via Sören Hentzschel)

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Firefox 78 comes with option to view blocked resources
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Firefox 78 comes with option to view blocked resources
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Firefox 78 Stable will support options to view website resources that were blocked during page load.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. if said on May 25, 2020 at 3:48 pm
    Reply

    Have they removed the telemetry task spyware yet?
    Have they removed the sketchy persistent connection uncovered in that university study?

    Several versions have happened since, did they reverse those malfeatures or are they the new norm?

    1. Iron Heart said on May 25, 2020 at 4:24 pm
      Reply

      @if

      > Have they removed the telemetry task spyware yet?

      They haven’t.

      > Have they removed the sketchy persistent connection uncovered in that university study?

      They haven’t.

      > Several versions have happened since, did they reverse those malfeatures or are they the new norm?

      It’s the new norm for them.

      Solution: Use a browser with saner, more-privacy friendly default. If you want to stick with something Firefox-based, then Waterfox is good, Fennec F-Droid would be good on mobile.

      If it doesn’t have to be based on Firefox: Brave (also on mobile) or Iridium, Bromite on mobile – those have a good privacy level and are ready to go out of the box. Use Ungoogled Chromium only if you are okay with updating it manually, and if you are OK with adding extensions manually:

      https://www.ghacks.net/2020/05/21/chrome-83-google-starts-rollout-of-redesigned-privacy-and-security-settings/#comment-4463560

  2. John said on May 25, 2020 at 12:25 am
    Reply

    I like it. Seems like a cool feature. It’s probably going to be useful for people to see how much the extensions they have installed are really doing and if they have unnecessarily duplicative extensions or not, among a lot of other things.

    It also seems discrete enough that no one who doesn’t care will even notice it.

    So, it’s all roses from where I’m sitting. People who are interested get more information about what their browser and it’s extensions are doing and people who aren’t interested don’t.

    One of the cool things about Firefox is that they sometimes do give you windows into the innerworkings of browser development and how your browser and it’s extensions are working for you personally on your device day to day or even webpage to webpage- and it does it in such a way that you don’t need to be particularly well educated about these things to get the gist of them. No coding ability required. :)

    1. Prefersplants said on May 29, 2020 at 12:53 am
      Reply

      Agree with your point about allowing non-techs a window into the workings of a browser, my understanding of what the 20 000000+ lines of code are actually doing has increased simply by being able to poke around in about:config.
      That said, I still utilise another browser in the interest of diversification, 50% of the time.

  3. ShintoPlasm said on May 24, 2020 at 5:25 pm
    Reply

    Hasn’t Chrome had this for over a decade?

    1. Emanon said on May 24, 2020 at 11:43 pm
      Reply

      This has been available in the developer tools for over a decade yes…

    2. Yuliya said on May 24, 2020 at 7:30 pm
      Reply

      It does: https://i.imgur.com/j5JxciL.png
      Performance tanks to a grind though on both my 6950x and 8750h machines while this monitor is running. Chromium v81

  4. Nando said on May 24, 2020 at 5:07 pm
    Reply

    That’s the trouble with trying to keep on top of ads and spying, it’s not just more effort but it’s also becoming more difficult not to break things. You can understand why so many don’t bother. As for this, I don’t think it will help the average user as they won’t know what to do with with that list (presuming they even know it’s there) but useful for the more technical ones.

    1. The Equestrian said on May 25, 2020 at 8:36 am
      Reply

      You can’t really escape tracking and spying, you can only reduce it. The only way to escape it is to go live in the forest and never touch technology again.

      This feature is obviously not for the average user, but mostly for web developers and other such people, personally I don’t use Firefox so this means nothing to me. I would not trust them to protect my privacy or then bother to look at what’s been blocked by their tracking blockers.

    2. Iron Heart said on May 25, 2020 at 8:15 am
      Reply

      @Nando

      I think a setup with the following extensions…

      – uBlock Origin, or Nano Adblocker
      – HTTPS Everywhere
      – Decentraleyes, or LocalCDN (would recommend the latter, since it is more active now and supports more libraries)

      …should suffice for enhancing your privacy considerably already, and this combination of extensions is very unlikely to break things (I run all of them and have yet to see any breakage on any website).

      I think a higher expertise is required only if you are changing browser settings (e.g. about:config), you ought to know what you are doing here. But for „normies“, I‘d say these extensions are already quite good for a start.

      It‘s also imperative not to pick a browser that is spyware to begin with (Chrome, Edge, Opera), good „normie-safe browsers“ are Brave, Iridium, Waterfox. Easy to set up, they work with all extensions you will ever need. Firefox is okay as well, as long as you are willing to learn about:config.

      1. Sebas said on May 25, 2020 at 10:44 am
        Reply

        For Brave you don’t need HTTPS Everywhere, it’s built in. CDN seems an interesting alternative for Decentraleyes.

      2. Iron Heart said on May 25, 2020 at 11:01 am
        Reply

        @Sebas

        I know. Brave has HTTPS Everywhere built in, but might be a good info for others still. All other browsers except Brave would obviously need HTTPS Everywhere.

        And yes, development of Decentraleyes seems to have stalled(?), that‘s why I have switched to LocalCDN.

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