Getting Around the LinkedIn 3rd Degree Connection Paywall

Posted on Mon 20 May 2013 by Joseph Scott

Last week I linked to Ted Dziuba’s post, The Speculation Trap. I noticed a LinkedIn profile link on http://teddziuba.com/, which I clicked on, curious to know a little bit more about Ted. Off I go to http://www.linkedin.com/in/teddziuba and I get presented with this really annoying message:

I’m already signed into LinkedIn, and apparently Ted is a 3rd degree connection for me. This triggers a response on LinkedIn that hides all of the profile information unless I upgrade to a paid account. I like LinkedIn, but don’t have an interest in paying $20 – $75 per month for it.

Turns out there is a very simple work around to the 3rd degree connection paywall. Logout of LinkedIn, then view the profile page again. You will be able to see the bulk of the profile information.

In my case I use Chrome as my main browser, which means a Shift-Command-N ( on the Mac ) brings up an incognito window where I’m not signed into LinkedIn. Toss in a copy-and-paste and you have a quick way around the LinkedIn 3rd degree connection paywall.

It feels wrong for a site to be more useful when I’m signed out than when I’m signed in.

Chrome 19 Beta Crashes on stevesouders.com

Posted on Mon 30 Apr 2012 by Joseph Scott

I’m using Chrome 19.0.1084.36 beta as my primary browser, and I noticed something really odd recently. Chrome 19 beta crashes any time I visit stevesouders.com (Steve is the web performance guru at Google).

This isn’t an isolated single tab crash, the whole Chrome browser comes tumbling down. I tried it with Firefox 12 and Safari 5.1.5 and both worked fine.

I think this makes Chrome 19 the worst performing browser when viewing stevesouders.com :-)

Automatic Incognito Mode For Specific Sites In Chrome

Posted on Tue 28 Feb 2012 by Joseph Scott

There are some sites on the web where I always use the Chrome incognito feature. It got to the point where I realized I only wanted to see those sites (like facebook.com) in incognito mode. So I went looking for a way to force Chrome to open an incognito mode window anytime I went to one of those URLs. Fortunately someone else had the same idea.

A few minutes spent hunting around the Chrome web store turned up an extension called Incognito Regex.

Incognito Regex

The Incognito Regex extension was exactly what I wanted. You enter in URL regular expressions that you want to trigger incognito mode and it makes sure that any request that matches one of those is opened in an incognito window.

Don’t like how Google is now tracking you in more detail across their properties? Add some of their sites to the Incognito Regex list and let Chrome help you keep things separate.

Until we see something like this become a standard feature in Chrome the Icognito Regex extension is going on my must have list for Chrome extensions.

What Is Broken In Chome 18 Beta?

Posted on Mon 27 Feb 2012 by Joseph Scott

I’ve been using the Chrome beta channel for quite awhile, and with the exception of a few specific issues (*cough* breaking copy and paste of URLs *cough*) I’ve been happy with it. When the upgrade from version 17 to 18 happened things got worse.

I’m currently on 18.0.1025.39 beta and I’ve run into two different pages where Chrome suddenly started to eat all available memory (and keeps going into swap) and will burn about 30% CPU. Both pages work fine in Chrome 17 and Safari (and every other browser I’ve tried), but suffer from this same crippling issue in Chrome 18. Debugging why Chrome is doing this has been very difficult since my machine grinds to a halt trying allocate all memory to Chrome.

Has anyone else seen this type of problem with Chrome 18? Probably time to go searching through tickets for Chrome 18 to see if this has been reported already.

Firefox Desperate To Mimic Chrome, Even Their Mistakes

Posted on Tue 27 Sep 2011 by Joseph Scott

Recently Firefox has been pushing a more aggressive upgrade schedule. There is little doubt that they are feeling the pressure from Google Chrome, which is becoming increasingly popular and has an aggressive upgrade cycle as well.

In the last year Chrome has become nearly as popular as Firefox. Many of the recent changes with Firefox, like the shorter release cycles, make it look like it is trying to play catch up with Chrome. Perhaps desperately so. Unfortunately with release of Firefox 7 it appears they are also desperate to copy the same mistakes Chrome has made.

It is no secret that I really don’t like the way Chrome broke copy and paste in the URL field. That was a horrible decision that irritates me on an almost daily basis. When I select something to be copied I expect to have an exact copy of what was selected, altering that under the hood completely breaks the concept of copy and paste.

So guess what new “feature” was added to Firefox 7? You got it:

The ‘http://’ URL prefix is now hidden by default

And it behaves in exactly the same broken way that Chrome does.

To the Mozilla team: look, I understand that you’re concerned about losing market share to Chrome, but please, please, please don’t mimic their mistakes. Now in order to copy and paste the URL properly I have to copy everything but the first character of the hostname, then manually type in that first character then paste in the remainder. Absolutely horrible. This is one feature of Chrome that no one should ever copy, and I’d be thrilled to see it removed from Chrome as well.

If you want to no longer show ‘http://’ in the URL field, fine, but please stop breaking copy and paste.

UPDATE: Turns out Firefox has an option for disabling this “feature” ( kudos to @ozh ):

Enter about:config in the URL field
Filter on browser.urlbar.trimURLs
Set the value for browser.urlbar.trimURLs to false

Not great that this is on by default, but at least there is an easy way to turn it off. Now, if only it were that easy to turn off this “feature” in Chrome.

Diff Colorizer for GMail

Posted on Tue 21 Jun 2011 by Joseph Scott

I get emails with diffs in them every day, and Gmail does really horrible things to them. In the Gmail web UI diffs inside emails are nearly unreadable. I don’t know why they choose to mangle them in this way, but thankfully there is a work around: Beanstalk SVN Diff Colorizer for GMail.

I use Google Chrome as my main browser, so I installed this as a user script, clicked reload on my Gmail tab now diffs in emails are much easier to read again.

The CSS is very simple:

  ins { background-color: #cfc; }

  del { background-color: #fcc; }

Chrome, How Being Clever is Worse Than Being Simple

Posted on Fri 17 Sep 2010 by Joseph Scott

Many people have already complained about Google Chrome leaving off the http:// in the URL field (there are certain cases where it does display, that is now the exception though, not the rule), here is my take on why this move was not only wrong, but worse than what we had before.

Initially the complaint was that without the http:// in front copy-paste will be a problem, because other systems use that to detect strings that look like URLs. So Google got clever (this should be the first clue of something bad happening, picking a clever solution over a simple one), when you copy the URL it magically inserts the http:// at the beginning so that it shows up when you paste.

Problem solved right? No, it actually made things worse.

It is not unusual for me to copy just the host name portion of the URL from my browser (Chrome is usually my default browser), but since Chrome silently adds the http:// in the background it is not impossible to copy just the host name. Using this site as an example, copying josephscott.org from the URL results in http://josephscott.org/ when I paste. Not only does it prefix http:// it also adds the trailing slash.

This ends up being super annoying. I’ve looked for options to disable this feature of Chrome and just always show http:// in the URL field and not to mangle copy-paste. So far I haven’t found a way to do this. My work around for now is to copy all but the first character of the host name, type that in manually and then paste the rest of the host name.

Was mangling the copy-paste buffer in the background a clever hack? Yes. Is it better than the simple solution just showing http:// in the URL field? No, not by a long shot.

CSS Border Radius Percentages and Elliptical Borders

Posted on Thu 28 Jan 2010 by Joseph Scott

When using CSS border radius I’ve always specified the radius in pixels (px), something like this:

.round-box {
    border-radius: 5px;
    -moz-border-radius: 5px;
    -webkit-border-radius: 5px;
}

This got me to wondering, does it support percentages as well? So I tried this:

.round-box {
    border-radius: 5%;
    -moz-border-radius: 5%;
    -webkit-border-radius: 5%;
}

This worked in Firefox 3.6 but not in Chrome. Some searching around revealed the Mozilla -moz-border-radius page. For border radius it specifically mentions that it supports length units as well as percentages:

A percentage, relative to the width of the box (the percentage is relative to the width even when specifying the radius for a height).

That page also mentioned support for elliptical borders. To do that you add another radius value separated by a slash:

.round-box {
    border-radius: 15px / 50px;
    -moz-border-radius: 15px / 50px;
    -webkit-border-radius: 15px / 50px;
}

The elliptical border worked on Chrome as well. If you bend this tight enough you can get pretty close to a circle.

I wanted Internet Explorer to add support for border radius before; now that I’ve got even more radius toys to play with I’m practically begging. I’m sorry Internet Explorer users but I’m tired of various border hacks when there are simple and clean CSS methods available.