FreeSpeechMe installer inaccessible

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Z9zDrBdU
Posts: 4
Joined: Sun Mar 15, 2015 4:02 pm
os: linux

FreeSpeechMe installer inaccessible

Post by Z9zDrBdU »

My attempts at searching DuckDuckGo (and Google, much to my shame) have brought up nothing recent about FreeSpeechMe, let alone mention of the issue I'm experiencing: I can't access the installer. Using GNU/Linux with Firefox (version 47.0), here's what I've tried...

From https://bit.namecoin.org/freespeechme.html, I clicked the "Install FreeSpeechMe" link to https://dot-bit.org/files/FreeSpeechMe.xpi, but it came up as "Your connection is not secure". So, I tried adding a temporary exception, which then resulted in a page "Forbidden".

Next, I tried the insecure version of that URL, which resulted in a message popping up in the address bar stating "Firefox prevented this site from asking you to install software on your computer", then again the "Forbidden" page. Adjusting the Security pane check boxes and popup-blocking permission failed to change this outcome.

Are the designers of Firefox making things difficult for FreeSpeechMe? Is the project still alive? Is it being actively suppressed by search engines? Am I paranoid?

biolizard89
Posts: 2001
Joined: Tue Jun 05, 2012 6:25 am
os: linux

Re: FreeSpeechMe installer inaccessible

Post by biolizard89 »

Z9zDrBdU wrote:My attempts at searching DuckDuckGo (and Google, much to my shame) have brought up nothing recent about FreeSpeechMe, let alone mention of the issue I'm experiencing: I can't access the installer. Using GNU/Linux with Firefox (version 47.0), here's what I've tried...

From https://bit.namecoin.org/freespeechme.html, I clicked the "Install FreeSpeechMe" link to https://dot-bit.org/files/FreeSpeechMe.xpi, but it came up as "Your connection is not secure". So, I tried adding a temporary exception, which then resulted in a page "Forbidden".

Next, I tried the insecure version of that URL, which resulted in a message popping up in the address bar stating "Firefox prevented this site from asking you to install software on your computer", then again the "Forbidden" page. Adjusting the Security pane check boxes and popup-blocking permission failed to change this outcome.

Are the designers of Firefox making things difficult for FreeSpeechMe? Is the project still alive? Is it being actively suppressed by search engines? Am I paranoid?
Yes, Firefox has made things very difficult: they removed the relevant API's. I made a new version from scratch, and a couple weeks before I intended to release it, those API's also got removed. There's in theory a way to do it still, except the API's used for that 3rd way have been deprecated and will be removed from Firefox soon as well.

I met some Mozilla people at DWS 2016 and I'm hoping that we can coordinate efforts on getting stable and supported API's into Firefox that make this use case easier.

In the meantime, I'll be releasing something for Chrome (Windows only) which is similar to FreeSpeechMe, hopefully within a few weeks. (The code is written, I'm just working on getting it reviewed by other devs.)

Removing the link to the (currently broken) Firefox installer is on my to-do list; I've just been overwhelmed with other tasks for the past month or so.

Cheers!
Jeremy Rand, Lead Namecoin Application Engineer
NameID: id/jeremy
DyName: Dynamic DNS update client for .bit domains.

Donations: BTC 1EcUWRa9H6ZuWPkF3BDj6k4k1vCgv41ab8 ; NMC NFqbaS7ReiQ9MBmsowwcDSmp4iDznjmEh5

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