Ungoogled-chromium: UI links to support.google.com are broken

[nchv]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
The "Learn more" link in the "You've gone incognito" page leads to trk:247:https://support.9oo91e.qjz9zk/chrome/?p=incognito - obviously a non-existing address.

Describe the solution you'd like
Remove the "Learn more" link.

Describe alternatives you've considered
Replace the link and point it to a page in the documentation of ungoogled-chromium explaining better what incognito does (not).

[qvint]

How about completely removing all broken links from Chromium including its online help pages? (e.g. F1) See the screenshot for more examples.

[nchv]

How about completely removing all broken links from Chromium including its online help pages?

I have thought about that too but it may also be confusing for someone who may have just started using UC. Perhaps it will be better to have them display a UI element saying "In UC all links pointing to Google have been removed deliberately". Then it will not create the impression of something broken. Ideally the info from each link should be available inside the browser itself, not on some external host, but that may be too much work. Also some of that info may not apply to UC itself, so it would need additional maintenance.

[qvint]

I don't see much difference between _"support.9oo91e.qjz9zk Blocked by client"_ and _"Link is deliberately not working"_ messages... In both situations user will get the impression of something [deliberately] broken. If we remove the links, he won't see any error message at all--there will be no link to click.

[nchv]

"Link is deliberately not working" messages...

But I have never suggested that. Deliberaterly removed != deliberately not working.

Also a layman doesn't know what a "client" is. So any message should be clear enough for everyone, not just for experts. Currently it is not, hence the issue.

[Eloston]

I could change the error message for BLOCKED_BY_CLIENT (which I don't like too much because it is conflating a standard error with an error we introduced), or I could add a new NET_ERROR that has its own message. I'd like to leave the links in because it's nice to know where to look for more information about certain features.

Alternatively, I could write a system that does something crazier:

1. Find all support.google.com help URLs in the source code
2. Download these help pages and modify them to depend on local resources only (also maybe run DOM Distiller over them?)
3. Dump all these documentation files into an extension (or embeds them into Chromium itself)
4. Modify the support.google.com URLs to point to the local help files (in the extension or embedded within Chromium)

I like this alternative solution more because it's more fun to implement, but also because I'm not sure of the reprecussions of modifying code related to NET_ERROR. What do you guys think?

[nchv]

Be careful when downloading Google owned content. It may be copyrighted (and risky for this precious project).

Perhaps the safest (and maybe easier for you) would be to display a special page explaining (for all links) that this is ungoogled chromium and that's why it has no links to Google whatsoever, underlining that it is not an error (broken) but that it is so by design and concept.

If the user should be given the option to find more info: That info page may contain a link to a search URL, e.g. https://searx.me/?q=chrome+incognito (using whichever search engine the user has specified in settings) giving the user a possibility to search for himself - the way he wants.

[Eloston]

Be careful when downloading Google owned content. It may be copyrighted (and risky for this precious project).

Good points.

Perhaps the safest (and maybe easier for you) would be to display a special page explaining (for all links) that this is ungoogled chromium and that's why it has no links to Google whatsoever, underlining that it is not an error (broken) but that it is so by design and concept.

In that case, adding a new NET_ERROR error may work pretty well. This way, I'll be able to have a custom message explaining what is going on, including a link explaining what to do to.

Another idea is to combine the two ideas I had. I could replace all the support.google.com URLs to a new internal Chrome page that tells the users why it's blocked, and what to do to view the actual page (maybe even provide the real link to view the page?). That way I don't need to add or modify anything related to NET_ERROR.

[qvint]

a new internal Chrome page that tells the users why it's blocked, and what to do to view the actual page (maybe even provide the real link to view the page?)

I like the idea. How about prefixing all help URLs with "chrome://unsafe-nav?url=" and splitting them up to prevent domain substitution?

• Before: "https://support.google.com/chrome/?p=settings_password"
• After: "chrome://unsafe-nav?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsupport" ".google" ".com%2Fchrome%2F%3Fp%3Dsettings_password"

In this case we could display a typical Chrome's "Back to safety" page with our own danger text and additional "Proceed anyway" button.

[nchv]

Re. Any type of error message creates the impression of something broken - it seems we agree doesn't sound good.

and what to do to view the actual page (maybe even provide the real link to view the page?)

A link to Google in an ungoogled project - hm, please don't do it :) That's why I suggested a search link instead.

The very fact that you would have to handle separately actual "real links" and other links too Google (which you replace currently) is prone to errors which can lead to leaks in other parts of the project. Not worth the long term risk for something cosmetic like the current issue. That's worse than showing an error message (or having things as they are right now).

[Eloston]

I'm not sure when I will have time to implement this.

[theel0ja]

I think the F1 to support shortcut should be disabled, have clicked it accidentally too many times.