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Active Content

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The Active Content plugin options

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There are three sections to the Active Content plugin options:

1 - Category pane

The first thing to do with the plugin is to configure your default filtering options. The left hand side of the 'Web' tab lists the different categories for filtering. These are Mail, News and Web Pages. To view the current filtering for a category highlight it and you will see the different filtering options selected for that category on the right hand side of the 'Web' tab. Mail, News is, as you might have guessed, for E-mail and Newsgroup posts and the filtering you select will be applied to all mail. Web Pages is for web sites and the options you see on the right hand side are the default filters applied to all sites that you don't create a specific entry for.

2 - Filtering pane

The right hand side of the 'Web' tab lists the different elements that can be filtered. These are: ActiveX controls, Cookies, Referers, JavaScript and VB Scripts, Popup windows, and Java. Outpost can't, unlike AtGuard, filter Referers on a site-by-site basis at the moment but all other elements can be altered for specific sites. You can choose whether to Enable an element (allow it) or Disable an element (block it), or you can get Outpost to Prompt each time an element is parsed.

3 - 'Add' and 'Remove' buttons

These buttons become active when you select the Web Pages category or a specific site entry. They are used to add and remove sites from your sites list.

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Creating site specific filtering

You may not want a web site to have the same filtering applied to it as the default filters and Outpost allows you to create filters for a specific site very quickly. Just highlight Web Pages and the 'Add' button will become active. Click on 'Add' and the Add Site window will pop-up:

Enter the name of the site you want to create filtering rules for, in this case the Google search engine, and click on 'OK'. The new entry will appear under the Web Pages category. If you now click on the new site entry you can alter the filtering for it by toggling the different options in the Filtering pane.

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Deciding on what to allow a site

How do you decide what to filter and what not to filter? Well some people set all the default filters to Disable and while you will find most sites are still functional, aesthetically they may not look to great and some sites may not function at all, they then create entries on a site-by-site basis and allow that that site access to specific Active Content elements. Others prefer to Enable everything and add entries for sites when they want to block something. How you decide on what to block and what to allow is up to you and the way you want to use the Internet. If your not sure what Active content is, you might want to check out the FAQ section to read up on what each one does.
FAQ

I've decided to block everything, how do I allow a site to then use Active Content?

Imagine you have just visited www.alltheweb.com and you have found that popup-windows don't work. You visit there all the time and so need these popups to function. You create an entry for www.alltheweb.com and Enable Popup windows, but something is wrong, the popups are still not being displayed. Why not? Well the quickest way to find out is to check Outposts logs for the Active Content plugin. Select the Active Content branch in the Plug-Ins tree, the logs for Active Content filtering appear on the right side of the main Outpost window. Looking at the image below you will see the default filters are blocking JavaScript, but there are no entries for popup windows.

How come? Well designers sometimes create popups using JavaScript (like this site), because opening a window with JavaScript allows the web designer to remove unnecessary elements such as address bars, menu items, close buttons etc. that would just add clutter to a window and ruin the effect the designer wants which is to have a small window appear to display information about something your have just clicked on or to display a bigger image then the one you have just clicked on. In this case, because there are no blocked popup entries, it's a pretty safe bet that they are using JavaScript popups. Go back to your filter you created for www.alltheweb.com and then Enable JavaScript.

Reload the page (don't just refresh the page as your browser will just show you the cached version which will still have its JavaScript blocked) and you will find that those popup windows now appear.

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Active Content Log

There are 4 columns in the Active Content log

1. Date/Time
   This is the Date and Time the Action occurred.
2. Action
   This is a description of what was blocked.
3. URL
   This is the web site where the block happened.
4. Details
   This is the detail of the block (if any are needed). Usually this will only apply to Cookies where it will show the Cookies name and content.

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This is an unofficial guide, the information expressed here may differ from Agnitum's. There is a support forum (no longer run by Agnitum, but by users) if you need more help this is a good place to start. Where information here conflicts with what Agnitum have told you always go with the information given to you by Agnitum.

Guide/site and images ©Stephen Cox