Wikir1. Introduction
It's been increasing clear to me that I've been remiss in providing sufficient documentation for PithHelmet, so here is the survival guide. Hopefully this will get you up to speed with minimal difficulty and allow you to take full advantage of PithHelmet's extensive functionality.
PithHelmet is shipped to work "out of the box," but occasionally it can make a mistake. Luckily, there are ways to let you minimize any potential inconvenience.
2. Reload Unfiltered
One feature people sometimes miss is Reload Unfiltered (Command-Shift-R). This reloads the current page with PithHelmet turned off. This is handy if you get to a page that looks a little strange and you think PithHelmet might be involved. If you reload unfiltered and things look better, you might want to unblock that particular site. (see below for instructions)
3. Turn Off PithHelmet For A While
It might become necessary to turn off PithHelmet for a short time. Unchecking Block Filtered Content (Command-Shift-K) in the PithHelmet menu basically toggles PithHelmet on/off. You might also notice that the PithHelmet icon in the menubar flips around and becomes black-and-white when you turn it off.
4. How do I block an image?
The best way to create a new rule is to right-click the image that you want to block and select "Block Images from <domain name>". That will bring up the new rule wizard which will let you edit your rule and test to see what images and other files it might block on the current web site. Blocked urls will appear with an "x" in the left-most column. Once you are satisfied, you can click the "Add Rule" button.
If you go to the Rule Editor (Command-Shift-E), this new rule will be at the bottom of the list. You can also use the Rule Editor to fine-tune this rule if you need to.
5. How do I unblock a particular web site?
Sometimes PithHelmet's rules make mistakes - they can be a bit naive and come across as overly aggressive. So, there are ways to get around that. Let's say you are having trouble with your banking site (it doesn't really matter what kind of site, it just turns out that banking sites can be more finicky than most).
The best way to handle this is just to tell PithHelmet to leave this site alone - it's actually easy. Go to your banking site and right-click somewhere in the page (not on an image) and you will see a menu item "Never block content from <domain name>". Selecting that creates a new rule that turns off PithHelmet only when you visit this particular site.
If you go to the Rule Editor (Command-Shift-E), this new rule will be at the bottom of the list. You can also use the Rule Editor to fine-tune this rule if you need to.
6. Login/Cookie Problems
Some sites may have issues with the way PithHelmet handles cookies. PithHelmet is designed to be far more conservative in terms of which cookies it will send and receive. This is mostly to prevent various types of potentially malicious behavior. However, from time-to-time, this will cause a site not to work (a common symptom is login information being "forgotten") as expected. The easiest way to solve this is to use the Cookie Privacy slider in the PithHelmet Preferences Pane and set it to the minimum value "Use Safari Settings" - this effectively turns off PithHelmet's cookie filtering.
7. I Screwed Up My Rules
Mistakes happen. If you think you messed up the rules and that has in turn caused some strange behavior, there is a menu item called "Revert to Factory Rules..." This will delete all of your custom rules and leave you with a fresh copy of the default rules set.
8. Log file too big?
If Safari seems to hang when trying to access sites, try disabling Logging. If that helps you may want to delete your log file as it may have gotten very big: ~/Library/Application Support/PithHelmet/com.apple.Safari/PithHelmet.log