> wrap all the outgoing URLs in click-tracking garbage then uses JavaScript in an attempt to hide it, with no way to opt-out
Speaking of which, is there any way to disable or bypass that kind of crap? (e.g. with a user-script or something?) It's incredibly obnoxious. And sadly Google's not the only on that does it.
Frankly, it seems like a major design mistake from my perspective that Javascript is allowed to manipulate the status bar at all. It'd be nice to be able to remove that ability, if not "un-wrap" the links entirely.
> Speaking of which, is there any way to disable or bypass that kind of crap?
If you have JavaScript disabled, or these particular event handlers somehow blocked, the href is never replaced.
> Javascript is allowed to manipulate the status bar
That's disabled by default in most browsers (see in FF about:config, dom.disable_window_status_change -> true). Look at the mousedown handler of links to see that the href attribute is changed on mousedown.
The problem is blocking google.com javascript will also block recaptcha on any domains that use it (a lot do), which they ever so helpfully moved from recaptcha.org to google.com.
The href attribute is still changed. While javascript can't change the status bar explicitly any more, they can set the link's href to the fake URL and change the link's target in the click event.
Speaking of which, is there any way to disable or bypass that kind of crap? (e.g. with a user-script or something?) It's incredibly obnoxious. And sadly Google's not the only on that does it.
Frankly, it seems like a major design mistake from my perspective that Javascript is allowed to manipulate the status bar at all. It'd be nice to be able to remove that ability, if not "un-wrap" the links entirely.