Website Options:
You can selectively enable and disable StopTheMadness features. Your custom options can be configured to apply to every web page or just to web sites that you specify. To change the options, open the Extensions window in Microsoft Edge, click the Details button under StopTheMadness, and then click "Extension options" on the Details page.
There are a number of protection features that you can enable and disable. By default, the "Recommended" features are enabled. These provide you with a high level of protection while also maximizing website compatibility. The features labeled "Use with caution" provide even higher levels of protection, but there may be more sites that don't work right when they're enabled, which is why they're disabled by default. Any and all of the features can be enabled or disabled as necessary or desired. Below is an explanation of each feature:
- ⌘-click: When enabled, ⌘-click always opens links in a new tab. When disabled, websites can prevent you from opening links in a new tab.
- ⌘-key shortcuts: When enabled, ⌘-key shortcuts always go to Edge. When disabled, websites can hijack or disable keyboard shortcuts.
- Autocomplete: When enabled, autocompletion and AutoFill of user names, passwords, and other information always works in web forms. When disabled, websites can prevent AutoFill.
- Contextual menus: When enabled, you can always open Edge's contextual menu. When disabled, websites can prevent you from opening the contextual menu or substitute their own menu for Edge's.
- Cut, copy, and paste: When enabled, you can always cut, copy, and paste text on a web page. When disabled, websites can prevent you from doing cut, copy, and paste.
- Drag and drop: When enabled, you can always drag and drop on a web page. When disabled, websites can prevent you from doing drag and drop.
- Input maxlength warning: When enabled, StopTheMadness warns you if the characters you type or paste into a password field or other input field exceed the maximum length of the field. If this feature is disabled, then some of the characters you type or paste into a password field can get silently lost, with no warning.
- Privacy: When enabled, your privacy is protected on the web in a a number of ways:
- Stops hyperlink auditing by removing the anchor "ping" attribute on link clicks.
- Stops tracking beacons (
Navigator.sendBeacon) from firing. - Prevents hijacking/rewriting of clicked links in Google Search results.
- Prevents hijacking/rewriting of clicked links in Gmail.
- Removes tracking tags such as
utm_source(Urchin Tracking Module),gclid(Google Click ID), andfbclid(Facebook Click ID) from the end of the URL when you click, drag, or open a contextual menu on a link.
- Tab closing and visibility: When enabled, you can always immediately close a tab. When disabled, websites can stop you from closing a tab or window. Instead, the site may show a popup alert that asks "Are you sure you want to leave this page?" when you try to close a tab or a window.
The Tab closing and visibility feature also prevents websites from observingvisibilitychangeevents, which are part of the Page Visibility API. Using this API, websites can learn when a tab is visible on your screen and when the tab is hidden. When Tab closing and visibility is enabled, websites can't observe when you show or hide a tab or your screen. - Text selection: When enabled, you can always select text on a web page. When disabled, websites can preventing you from selecting text.
- Force links to open in current tab: Websites frequently add
target="_blank"to a link to make the link automatically open in a new tab when you click. If you prefer to open links in the current tab instead of a new tab, you can enable this feature, which removestarget="_blank"from links. When enabled, normal link clicks always open in the current tab. (You can still ⌘-click to open the link in a new tab.) When this feature is disabled, some links may automatically open in new tabs when clicked. - Mouse movement: When enabled, websites cannot use JavaScript to track the movement of your mouse pointer on the web page. You may want to enable this feature to protect your privacy. It can also stop popups from appearing when hovering over links on sites such as Wikipedia and Twitter. When this feature is disabled, websites can use JavaScript to track the movement of your mouse pointer.
- Scrolling: When enabled, smooth scrolling should always work on websites. When disabled, websites can prevent or hijack scrolling. This is known as "scrolljacking". Scrolling protection is disabled by default, because it causes incompatibilities with a number of websites. See Known Issues for a few examples.
- Stop video autoplay: When enabled, videos are prevented from autoplaying. When disabled, websites can autoplay videos without any user interaction. This feature is disabled by default.
Warning: Stop video autoplay can interfere with Edge's native video controls "play" button. - Show video controls: When enabled, video controls are shown by default, and you can always click on a video to control it or show the contextual menu for videos. When disabled, websites can cover videos with a transparent overlay that prevents you from directly controlling the video. This feature is disabled by default, because a lot of websites have custom video controls and don't use the HTML5 default controls.
- Textarea: When enabled, multi-line text editors (HTML
textareaelements) are also protected by the website options "⌘-key shortcuts", "Cut, copy, and paste", and "Text selection". By default, only single-line editors (HTMLinputelements) are protected, because multi-line editors don't usually prevent copy and paste, and a lot of websites have special multi-line "rich text" editors with highly customized editing that can break with the textarea feature enabled. However, you may need to enable this feature on certain websites if they disable copy and paste. - All key presses: When enabled, stops websites from hijacking key presses on the page. This feature cannot be enabled with the Default options for all websites, because it would cause breakages on too many sites. It usually shouldn't be necessary, but in some rare cases a website will go to extreme lengths to interfere with your typing. (Note: textareas are not covered by "All key presses" unless the "Textarea" option is also enabled.)
- All mouse clicks: When enabled, stops websites from hijacking mouse clicks on the page. This feature cannot be enabled with the Default options for all websites, because it would cause breakages on too many sites. It usually shouldn't be necessary, but in some rare cases a website will go to extreme lengths to prevent you from selecting text on the page. If the Text selection feature is not sufficient to enable text selection on a page, you may need to enable All mouse clicks too in order to select text.
- Focus and blur: A focus event occurs when a website element gets the keyboard focus, and a blur event occurs when a website element loses the keyboard focus. When enabled, the Focus and blur feature stops websites from capturing these events. This feature cannot be enabled with the Default options for all websites, because it would cause breakages on too many sites.
When you change the website options in StopTheMadness, those changes will apply the next time you load a web site in Edge. If you already have a web site open in Edge, and you want the changes to apply immediately to the web site, you need to reload the page in Edge.