Browser settings

Owned by Stanislav N. (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Feb 22, 2022 by ZL Support
12 min read

Table of contents

Description

The browser is the main part of ZennoPoster automation. The action contains various actions for changing the options and properties of the browser. Some of them can also be found in the Project Settings, but you should distinguish between them - the project settings are set at the start of the template, and using the settings in this action, you can change the options right during the execution of the template. For example, you can turn on and off the display of pictures in the browser at any time when necessary.

How to add an action to a project?

Via the context menu Add Action -> Browser -> Settings

Or use smart search .

Where can it be applied?

  • Change various browser settings in real time.

  • Application to the bot of various settings for the security and anonymity of the project.

How to work with an action?

Let's take a look at each action option in detail.

AudioContext

This setting makes the browser profile more unique and can have two values: default and emulation. In the first case, it is taken from the project settings, in the second, it is randomly emulated.

Canvas

Another of the properties of the browser helps to give the created bot individuality. It is a WebGL-based web page rendering element for hardware-accelerated 3D graphics, which has its own unique fingerprint. Three actions are possible with it: allow based on the main project settings, emulate and block.

The "Super-emulation" mode was added in ZennoPoster 7.7.0.0.
It works only in the Chromium engine.

Read more in the article Profile | Canvas/WebGL

Basically, Canvas transmits data about the characteristics of the web system and this data is widely used on many sites to provide protection against fraud or other automation methods.

ClientRects

Another of the prints based on obtaining hashes when scaling an image. Emulated or used by default.

Flash/Java/Silverlight

Disable or enable once popular browser plugins. It will help in working with old sites, reducing the load on resources, and the volume of transmitted traffic.

If Flash is enabled by this setting, but for some reason does not work in the Chrome browser, add the launch arguments --enable-system-flash --disable-software-rasterizer --disable-smooth-scrolling to the launch. Read more: Flash does not work in the browser

JavaScript

Enables/disables browser support for JavaScript.

All modern sites practically lose their functionality when JavaScript is disabled, because these scripts often form not only the layout, but also the content, not to mention the numerous protection through JS scripts. However, sometimes it is useful to use this action to temporarily disable JS, perform some actions on the site (for example, log in), and then enable it again. This hack will help you with "buggy" and especially tricky resources.

Javascript Authorization

Sometimes sites offer users to log in through a Javascript rendered modal window. Especially often this form of authorization is used in server panels, in the admin panels of routers, etc. This action is allowed to transfer the login and password to the script and perform authorization. You can add the corresponding project variables to the login and password fields.

Javascript Confirm

This function confirms the Javascript output of the modal. In this case, you can click either "OK" or "Cancel" by selecting the desired item in the action.

Javascript Prompt

Almost the same as the previous property, but with the ability to pass some value, which can be in a variable or be entered in a text field.

Block pop-up windows

This setting prevents the opening of new tabs in the browser.

If by clicking on the link it should open in a new tab, and this setting is enabled, then the opening will not occur.

Geolocation

For correct working on some sites, for working with maps, and in general for better emulation of a bot as similar as possible to a real user, it is advisable to emulate geo-locations that coincide as much as possible with the country/city of the emulated user, as well as coincide with the GEO of the used proxies. Using the “Geolocation” action, you can substitute pre-calculated coordinates (latitude and longitude), coordinate accuracy, altitude with its accuracy, as well as direction and speed of movement.

Coordinates

  • Latitude and longitude are set in degrees

  • Accuracy - meters

Additional

  • Height in meters from sea level.

  • Height accuracy - meters

  • Direction - degrees (0 - north, 90 - east, 270 - west).

  • Speed is in meters per second.

Load plugins in the same window

The option allows you to take screenshots of Flash and other plugins; if loaded in another window, an empty square will be displayed instead of the plugin image.

Load CSS

This property can be used to disable CSS styles on the page. This method will help to slightly reduce the consumed resources, but it can also change the layout of the page and lead to errors on it. Use the shutdown method carefully.

Load frames

Frames often display HTML from other sites, various social media widgets, advertisements and other unnecessary junk. Therefore, by disabling frames, you can significantly speed up website loading times and reduce resource loading.

Run instance

Sometimes in templates working on requests, it is required to run an instance for a short period of time (for example, the user logged out to the service and needs to re-authorize through the browser) and then turn it off again. This property serves precisely to solve such a problem.

To run the browser, you need to select it in the drop-down list and set the arguments, if necessary. You can run the browser using the current profile, or generate a new one based on the project settings.

After completing the task, you can return the work to browserless mode by inserting this cube again, but this time with the “Without browser” property.

Arguments

Arguments can be specified when starting an instance. The list of available arguments can be found at the links:

Use the path to the profile-folder

When this option is activated, you must specify the path to the profile folder that will be loaded for this instance.

Path

Full path to profile-folder (variables can be used).

Create folder if it doesn't exist

If the setting is disabled and no folder profile is found at the specified path, the action will fail.

If the setting is enabled and no folder profile is found at the specified path, a new, empty folder profile will be created.

Create missing variables on load

When saving a profile-folder through an action, you can also save project variables.

If you enable this setting, the variables saved with it will be loaded into the project together with the profile folder.

Apply the current browser profile

Enabled

The profile that was in the project at the time the instance was run will be bound to the run instance.

Disabled

When you run the instance, a new profile will be generated.

Pictures

Disabling pictures helps a lot to save resources. If your task is not to use graphics, then feel free to turn off pictures.

Media (Video/Audio)

Enable / disable media content with HTML elements <video> , <audio> , etc. It also helps to save traffic and resources.

Waiting for user actions

 

This function is useful if, for some reason, you need to interfere with the process of the project and do something by hand in the browser.

  1. Timeout during which all necessary actions must be executed (if it is unknown, set 99999, for example). After the timeout expires, the template will continue working further.

  2. A message that will act as a hint. It will be displayed at the top of the instance window.

When you run this action in ZennoPoster, an instance (browser) window will open, where you will need to perform the required actions and click the "Continue" button in the upper right corner.

Window expectation action

After this action is running, the browser window opens.
At the top of the window (on orange background), the name of the project is located on the left above, which caused this window (in this case ProjectM).
Under the project name, the text that was specified in action.
On the right button "Continue" and in brackets the number of remaining seconds, before the automatic closing of the window.

Clear cookies

A cube with this property will clear browser cookies completely for all sites or only for specified domains using regular expressions .

Clear cache

Cache is a special place on your computer's hard drive where previously visited pages, images and any other data from the pages viewed are stored. For better anonymity, it is advisable to delete the cache before each session (which is solved by a special option in the project settings), but you can also clear the cache while the template is running. Just like "Clear Cookies", the cache can be cleared for a specific domain or groups of domains defined by a regular expression .

Download directory

By selecting a local folder on your computer, you can set the directory where files, pictures, videos and other documents will be saved when downloading. Otherwise, if you do not define such a folder, the files will be downloaded to the ZennoPoster temporary folder.

Restart the instance

Closes and reopens the project instance without losing data. Sometimes, in projects using the browser in a loop for a long time, failures and errors are observed due to lack of memory. In this case, this action helps. It reloads the instance and frees memory at the same time.

Content Policy

This action also helps both in project security and in saving traffic and resources. It can be used to block requests to user-specified URLs and domains. Also, this tool is available in the traffic window .

There are three options:

  1. Without blocking is the default mode.

  2. White list - all requests will be blocked except for the specified addresses and domains.

  3. Blacklist - all specified requests will be blocked.

Advertisment

Disables banner ads to save traffic.

Busy status

Allows you to disable waiting for a full download of each separately of the listed components: Ajax, Flash, GET/POST requests, FRAME.

Browser notifications

Disables/enables notifications about geolocation, about accepting push notifications and other elements that interfere with parsing or posting on the site, and often block work with the site in general.

Emulation level

The setting is similar to that in the project properties, but in this case you can flexibly adjust the emulation level during the execution of the template. Using the slider, you can either focus on the speed of processing elements, or on quality, or choose the middle ground.

Set proxy

A cube with this property sets a proxy and, if necessary, immediately automatically emulates the geolocation, time zone and WebRTC for the installed proxies (the required options are determined by checkboxes). Proxies can be set by passing a value through a variable, or by a string in the desired format.

Set certificate

Some sites (for example Webmoney) require an installed certificate to work with them. To do this, specify the local path to the certificate file and the password for it.

Files for upload to the server

This cube will define the local paths to the files that will be uploaded to the server in the next steps. For example, when attaching an image to a letter, an exploratory Explorer window opens in a regular browser, in which the user selects one file or several, and when clicking "OK" these files are uploaded to the resource server.
In ZennoPoster, this window does not open, and the files are loaded immediately after clicking the corresponding HTML element.

For multiloading multiple files, the paths are separated by commas.

Time zone

Allows you to emulate the time zone according to the hours and minutes entered in the fields.

Emulation of timeouts

Sets the emulation settings common to all cubes, both between the input of each character and before switching between fields. With the help of two sliders (engines) you can give priority to either speed or quality.

Touchscreen emulation

To correctly emulate Touch events in the browser, instead of using the mouse, you must enable this option. This action is added automatically when recording in “Touch Event” input mode in the browser window .

Usage example

Let's take a look at one of the examples of using this action.

Let's say our task is to generate the most chaotic coordinates or coordinates that change when the bot is on the site (the bot is supposedly traveling).

To do this, activate the " Browser settings " cube and turn on Geolocation . To generate random numbers, you can use the {-Random.Double- | --10- | -10-} macro (this macro will randomly output non-integer numbers in the range from -10 to 10) or calculate the latitude and longitude values in advance (calculate adding a certain counter to them in a loop) and substitute the obtained values in the appropriate fields.