Foolsgold, your images from the Telegraph weren't working for me, or most other people I expect, because the Telegraph try to stop other sites from "hot linking" to their images. Their server can tell that we're using Bluelight because web browsers send a "Referer header" with each request. The request our browsers send look a bit like this:
"give me http://images.telegraph.com/images/some-picture.jpg
By the way, I'm reading Bluelight"
That's how web browsing works and there are more or less innocent uses for this information in the functioning of a website, such as gathering statistics and understanding technical issues, but there are also controversial uses. One such controversial use is to prevent "hot linking", where one web page (e.g. this bluelight page) is assembled from parts hosted by other websites (in this case the Telegraph).
When people make posts that link to images on other sites, everything usually looks fine for them. This is because they've already accessed the image with their browser and it's in their browser's cache; however other people reading the post won't have been to the original web site, so their browser must request it from the original site. In this example the Telegraph. And because web browsers tell web servers
what site they're displaying, the Telegraph are able to deny the request, because they don't want to allow Bluelight to use their images.
There is a way round this
There is a Chrome/Chromium extension:
Referer Control.
And a
Firefox extension.
I am not advocating the use of these as I've not yet read the code, but I will be taking a look at the chrome code. It's surprising how easy it is to review the code of a chrome extension.
I have installed the Chrome referer control and had a play with it and it can help. I'm going to use it. I have set my referer control status to active, and I have set the default referer to [TARGET_HOST]. This means any request to the telegraph will look like this:
"give me http://images.telegraph.com/images/some-picture.jpg
By the way, I'm reading the telegraph"
and a similar story for any other site. I like it %)
But be aware, it might break some web sites. Probably in a good way :D
Like I said I've not read the code yet, it might be sniffing for my passwords. edit: I have had a brief scan through the code and I don't see anything standing out that would give me cause for concern, but I haven't done a thorough analysis.
