Steam Overlay Browser

[loftie]

So I've been forced to use the overlay browser as Satisfactory seemed to like to crash if I alt-tabbed, and suddenly became (re)aware that fandom sites are ad infested without an adblocker. Now I'd solved this a while back when I started using a modified hosts file, which is still there and updated and yet seems to have no effect on it now. Going to Chrome with ublock disabled and I get no adverts, so the file seems to be working, just not for the overlay browser.

Any thoughts? TIA

 

[loftie]

As an update to this, I tried to block both google.com and bbc.co.uk. None of the chromium based browsers I tried on my PC gave a **** and loaded the page fine, firefox took a while and then loaded it. So it seems browsers have ways around a hosts file block. What's odd is that Chrome fails to load the ads on fandom (specifically the NMS wiki), whereas Edge/Steam will happily load them.

Half tempted to add Ublock Origin Lite to my steam browser.

 

[Orcvader]

I would be more curious to work out why the game is crashing when you alt-tab. A quick search, it seems to be a long time bug, and some people recommend using windowed fullscreen for the game instead of normal fullscreen.

 

[andshrew]

As an update to this, I tried to block both google.com and bbc.co.uk. None of the chromium based browsers I tried on my PC gave a **** and loaded the page fine, firefox took a while and then loaded it. So it seems browsers have ways around a hosts file block. What's odd is that Chrome fails to load the ads on fandom (specifically the NMS wiki), whereas Edge/Steam will happily load them.

Half tempted to add Ublock Origin Lite to my steam browser.

The hosts file is only for specific hostnames, so for example if you add bbc.co.uk that isn't going to affect www.bbc.co.uk. You would need to use a DNS server if you want to completely prevent access to a domain.

But your browser may also be using some kind of secure DNS (like DNS over HTTPS) which would bypass any hosts or local DNS settings you may have set up, if your browser has those options enabled. It looks like the Steam browser has this enabled by default now (at least for me).

In Steam if you right click something on the main Steam Store page and click Open in New Tab you'll get a browser window with the address bar accessible. Type chrome://settings and install Ublock Origin Lite via the Extensions page. For some reason it asks you to download the extension file somewhere when you click Add to Chrome, but after saving it loads into Steam automatically.

 

[loftie]

Yea I guessed it might be DNS related, but it's a bit beyond me. I thought I'd disabled the DNS options in chrome, I did in FF and it didn't seem to make a difference.
For note, adding BBC did affect FF, but it didn't stop it loading in the end. It just took about 30 seconds.

I did add ublock, but I was in two minds about it as I suspect it'll be running on Steam and not just the overlay browser. I guess there's no great option.
Cheers

 

[andshrew]

Yea I guessed it might be DNS related, but it's a bit beyond me. I thought I'd disabled the DNS options in chrome, I did in FF and it didn't seem to make a difference.
For note, adding BBC did affect FF, but it didn't stop it loading in the end. It just took about 30 seconds.

I did add ublock, but I was in two minds about it as I suspect it'll be running on Steam and not just the overlay browser. I guess there's no great option.
Cheers

Yeah, it's not ideal especially since you can't easily access the extensions settings.

One option though is set the extension so that it only works on specific websites rather than everything, so for example https://*.fandom.com - you get to that from the Extensions page where you installed it.

 

[loftie]

I did think of adding a filter but didn't think it'd accept wildcards tbh. I tested in Chrome (UBOL), while it told me it wasn't allowing stuff to run, it quite clearly was, Edge (UBO) seemed to handle it correctly. Unfortunately, after finally getting it to reinstall the extension on steam, the overlay browser acts the same as Chrome - not sure if it's because of it being Lite or some other reason.

Yea accessing the extension settings is a pain, it closes the overlay if I try to access it via the extensions page. Last time I uninstalled/reinstalled it so I could get the Chromium window to pop up so I could access it.