Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by nicoburns 519 days ago
I believe they're doing a meta-tag redirect (possibly inside a noscript tag?) in at least some cases. Source: I'm developing a web engine that doesn't have JS support.
2 comments
ronjouch 519 days ago
That's exactly what they are doing:

    <!DOCTYPE html>
    <html>
      <head><title>Google Search</title>...</head>
      <body>
        <noscript>
          <meta content="0;url=/httpservice/retry/enablejs?sei=..." http-equiv="refresh">
          <div style="display:block">Please click <a href="/httpservice/retry/enablejs?sei=...">here</a> if you are not redirected within a few seconds.</div>
        </noscript>...
link
superkuh 519 days ago
You're correct.

    <noscript><meta content="0;url=/httpservice/retry/enablejs?sei=a3qIZ42cGcvcp84P5p_mwQI" http-equiv="refresh"><style>table,div,span,p{display:none}</style><div style="display:block">Please click <a href="/httpservice/retry/enablejs?sei=a3qIZ42cGcvcp84P5p_mwQI">here</a> if you are not redirected within a few seconds.</div></noscript></header>
link
superkuh 519 days ago
Here's a skeleton overlay.js for an old style firefox extension to mitigate the meta-redirect part of the blocking.

    var remover = {
        init: function() {
            var appcontent = document.getElementById("appcontent");
            if(appcontent) {
                appcontent.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", 
                    function(e) {
                        var doc = e.originalTarget;
                        if(doc instanceof HTMLDocument) {
                            var noscripts = doc.getElementsByTagName('noscript');
                            for(var i = 0; i < noscripts.length; i++) {
                                //if(noscripts[i].innerHTML.indexOf('meta content="0;url=/httpservice/retry/enablejs?sei=') != -1) {
                                    noscripts[i].parentNode.removeChild(noscripts[i]);
                                //}
                            }
                        }
                    }, true);
            }
        }
};

window.addEventListener("load", function() { remover.init(); }, false);

link
nicoburns 519 days ago
Have you tested this? I don't think this will help much because you'll just get a page that requires JavaScript to function.
link
superkuh 519 days ago
That depends. It works on setups where google still gives you the old html results but not one setups where it sends you to the js application. So on 3 out of 5 of my desktop setups it works. On the ones where, for some reason, google only sends me to the JS app, it doesn't work like you suggest, or, it does, but I'm just left looking at a blank page.
link
ronjouch 519 days ago
This won't help indeed, the noJS page now is only this redirect and contains no search results.

It’s a blank page with one line of text: “Please click here if you are not redirected within a few seconds”.

link