Because of so many recommendations by people on the SDMB, I downloaded NoScript quite some time ago. Frankly, I’ve been more or less baffled by it ever sense and lately it seems to baffle me even more. I hope someone can offer me advice or just tell me what to do.
I haven’t listed anything at all in the “white list” even though I have a few sites I visit regularly. Some of my favorite sites throw up the “Scripts blocked” message and because of the number of scrips shown, I’ve fallen into the habit of simply choosing the “Temporarily allow all scripts.” I’m getting more and more paranoid about doing that.
I’ve made many efforts to read the “NoScripts” home page; the Q&A section and I’ve watched the damn video until I’m sick of it. I come away more baffled than ever.
Is there any help for me or am I just too damn dumb to get it?
Whitelist sites you trust. Temporarily allow sites you’re visiting temporarily, but only if you see no reason to distrust them and you need to enable it to view content.
Rarely should you ever need to “allow all.” Typically you’ll notice that the domains listed when you click on NoScript will be one or two primary content sites (for example, straightdope.com), and the rest will be adservers, datamining servers, or worse, like quantserve or googleanalytics or others.
Basically, if you don’t recognize a site, don’t allow it. If the content you’re trying to view is broken (usually you’ll see “you need Javascript to view this page” or a blank screen) you can make the choice whether or not to allow the site.
The intent behind NoScript is to keep potentially dangerous scripts from hitting your computer before you have a chance to understand what’s happening. Having that wall up in place allows you to visit a site and use your own judgment on how trustworthy it is, and which of the particular domains that touch that page are trustworthy.