Outfoxed User's Manual

Everything you want to know about using Outfoxed.

Installation

To do

Configuring FTP

You can upload your reports to any server that supports FTP.
To do this, open the Outfoxed Options window (Tools->Outfoxed->Options) and then click on the "Informing" Tab. Select "I can update my page via FTP" from the drop down menu, and then fill in the values according to the login requirements of your server. When finished, it should look something like this:



Double check that the URL you entered corresponds with the path on the server, and then click on "Test FTP Connection" to make sure everything works.

If the test was successful, you're finished with the options window. (If you are configuring Outfoxed for the first time, you should finish your setup here.)

If your page uploads successfully, but looks strange, try these steps:

• By default, your statement will look for an XSL stylesheet named "outfoxed.xsl" in the same directory as the statement. You can download a sample XSL file here. Feel free to edit this file to customize the look of your statement.
• Make sure you've configured your mime types for XML and XSL on your server.

Adding Informers

Adding an informer is simple. Any time you see an informer's name or picture, you can click on either to be taken to a page containing the informer's reports. On this page there should be a link or button saying "Add this Informer".

If this link isn't there, or if you want to include more information on an informer, open the Outfoxed sidebar while viewing an informer's page. (You can click on the Outfoxed status button to do this.) On the sidebar, click "Enter Report" and then fill out the form.

Adding del.icio.us users

Outfoxed is based on RSS 1.0, the same standard used by del.icio.us. (But with a few additions.) As such, you can add del.icio.us users (or any other RSS 1.0 sources) to your list of informers. To do so, you need to visit the RSS page of the user. This is normally done by clicking the button on the user's page. You should see something like this on your screen:



Then open the Outfoxed sidebar and click on the "Enter Report" tab.

Because del.ico.us does not support page ratings or scope, reports from these pages will always be assumed to be good and with scope limited to the single page.

Informers for del.icio.us users

If you would like to include informers in your del.icio.us bookmarks, simply create a del.icio.us bookmark for the RSS page of the user and add the tag _RSS. (Don't forget the underscore in front, and the letters must be uppercase.) You can include any valid informer file here, not just other del.icio.us users.

Creating and Editing Reports

• Title Your title for this report. For web reports, this will typically be the title of the page or website that the report is about. For files, this will typically be the name of the file.
• Scope Select whether this report is about the entire domain, a subdomain, or just one specific page. For example, you could report every page on getoutfoxed.com, or just this page that you are reading now (http://getoutfoxed.com/help/edit_report). This option is not available for informer pages, or for non-web reports such as files and processes.
• Quality Select the quality of content on the page or site you are reporting. There are no hard rules about what constitutes good and bad, but here are some guidelines:
  • Good Useful, funny, interesting or other high-quality content. For files, this rating indicates that it is virus-free and the unmodified.
  • Bad False information, too many advertisements, annoying pop-up windows, companies with bad social/political practices, or other poor content. For files, this rating indicates useless or annoying software, or somehow poor but non-dangerous content.
  • Dangerous Websites which install, or files which contain: Spyware, trojans, phishing, dialers, or other dangerous content.
• Comment (Optional) Enter any text to accompany your report. Only <a>,<strong>, and <br/> tags are allowed. Ideas for what you might write: What the page is about. Why you gave it the rating you did. Links to related pages. How you found the page. Links to discussions about the page, e.g. on metafilter or fark.
• Tags (Optional) Keywords that you associate with this site. You can then search and sort by these tags. It's the same idea as those used by del.icio.us.

Multiple Informer Files

The easiest way to maintain more than one informer file is use multiple Firefox profiles. Mozilla.org has a great tutorial on how to do so. Note that you'll have to re-install Outfoxed under this new profile.

Options

Basic

Maximum Hops This value indicates how far away from you Outfoxed will search for reports. If this value is 1, then you will only receive reports from the informers you choose. If this value is 2, then you will also receive reports from the informers of those informers. And so on. The recommended value is 3.

Show status of pages on toolbar button while browsing If checked, Outfoxed will indicate the status of the current page on the toolbar button.

Add reports to search pages If checked, Outfoxed will annotate your search results with reports from your informer network. Pages will be marked as Good, Bad, or Dangerous and links will be provided to the informer who made the report.

Promote pages rated good / Demote pages rated bad or dangerous If checked, Outfoxed will change the order of your search results within a given page based on reports. The next option determines how many slots search results will be moved.

Promote/Demote by ___ positions How many positions search results will be moved based on reports. If this number is greater than the number of results on a page, then pages reported Good will be first in your search results and pages reported Dangerous/Bad will be last.

Auto-scan files under ___ Outfoxed can automatically look for reports on files that you download. Because this process can be time consuming, you can specify the largest file that will be automatically scanned. If this value is 500K (recommended), then a 400K file would be scanned but a 600K file would not.

Advanced

Pre-defined values for these settings which are known to work for search engines can be found in the next section.

Regular Expression for detecting search page URL The name says it all.

XPath to search result nodes An XPath expression which will return elements which are search results when applied to the root element of the page document.

XPath to URL within search result Xpath expression that will give the <a> link which is the URL of the search result when applied to the Search Result Element found by the previous Xpath expression.

Search Result Markup The HTML which is added to a search result when a report is found. Valid variables are:
$TAB - good/bad/dangerous
$QUALITY - numeric quality rating of report
$USER_URI - URI of user giving the report
$USER_NAME - Name of user
$USER_IMAGE - URI of user's image
$PAGE_URI - URI that the report is about
$NUM_REPORTS - Total number of reports found
$REPORTS_PLURAL - "s" if there is more than one report.
$DELTA - How many slots the search result has been moved.
$USER_HOPS - How many hops the report-giver is away from the user.

Search Delta Function Javascript function which will calculate how much a report should be moved in the search results. Valid variables are:
quality - Numeric quality rating of report.
hops - How many hops the report-giver is away from the user.
magnification - Maximum number of slots a report can be moved, as specified by the user.
basis - Value of quality variable which should result in magnification slots of movement. Normally 50.

Codes for different Search Engines

Only codes for Google are known at this time. Sorry!

• Google
  Regular Expression for detecting search page URL:
  ^http://www.google..*?/search\?.*q=(.*)&.*$
  XPath to search result nodes:
  //*[@class='g' and not(//p[class='g'])]
  XPath to URL-contianing element within search result:
  descendant::a/@href
  Regular Expression to URL within Xpath result:
  &q=(.*?)&e=

Nerds: If you figure out the XPATH and RegExps for other search engines, please use the contact link to email me and I'll add it to this page.

Configuration of Random Reports

This option determines where the set of random reports will appear on your browser home page. Click on an option to make the change.

• On/Off
  • Turn ON random reports
  • Turn OFF random reports (You can turn them on again from the Options window.)
• General
  • Top of page
    *[position()=1]
  • Bottom of page
    leave field empty
• Google
  • Before input form
    //form
  • After logo, before form.
    //img/following::*[position()=1]
  • After form.
    //form/following::*[position()=2]
Nerds: If you figure out XPATH for other pages, please use the contact link to email me and I'll add it to this page.

Processes

Lists all processes currently running on your computer and any reports that your informers have made about them. Click the "Report" button to make a report about a process. Click the "Kill" button to end a process.

If this feature does not work: (1) Try reloading the page. (2) If you are not using Windows XP Professional: Find someone who is, copy the files tasklist.exe and taskkill.exe from their C:\windows\system32 directory to the same directory on your machine. Yes, this is dumb.

Recent Informer Activity

Shows all reports filed by informers in your network, new reports first.

Click on a link (begins with "http") to view the page.

Click on an informer name or picture to see their report page.

Click "Next 50" at bottom of page to see the next 50 reports.

Uninstall

Important: Make sure that the Outfoxed sidebar is not showing when you uninstall. There's a bug in Firefox that will cause a "ghost sidebar" if you uninstall an extension while its siderbar is showing.

Standard Uninstall

From the Tools menu, select Extensions. The Extensions window will appear. Click on Outfoxed, and then click on the Uninstall button at the bottom. You will have to re-start Firefox after uninstalling.

Complete Uninstall

To remove all traces of Outfoxed and you are running Windows XP, you need to remove the following directory:

C:\Documents and Settings\[your username]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[random chars].default\extensions\{04F36944-17DB-4069-A549-990A5CAE1C09}


Note that the "Application Data" is a hidden file. You'll need to change your folder settings to see it.
Important: Only delete this directory after you have uninstalled Outfoxed as described above.
Important: Make sure that the MDDB server is not running when you delete this directory. On windows, use the task manager and kill the process with the name "Outfoxed_MDDB_Server".