The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Since a few days, without announcing it to their paid users (for instance through en.blog.wordpress.com), WordPress.com has killed the “Press-This” bookmarklet button functionality.

Now you have to:

1. Navigate to the page you want to write about
2. Copy the URL
3. Go to the /wp-admin/press-this.php on your blog (in my case https://wiert.wordpress.com/wp-admin/press-this.php)
4. Wait for the page render
5. Paste the URL
6. Press Enter
7. Wait for the page to re-render
8. Start writing

The past bookmarklet behaviour was this:

1. Navigate to the page you want to write about
2. Click the Press-This bookmarklet
3. Wait for the page to render
4. Start writing

So the process takes twice the number of steps, and requires you to remember to copy/paste the URL, so in practice the new behaviour comes down to a process that takes 3 times as long:

1. Navigate to the page you want to write about
2. Go to the /wp-admin/press-this.php on your blog (in my case https://wiert.wordpress.com/wp-admin/press-this.php)
3. Wait for the page render
4. Remember you forgot to copy the URL
5. Hit the back-button
6. Wait for the page render
7. Copy the URL
8. Go to the /wp-admin/press-this.php on your blog
9. Wait for the page render
10. Paste the URL
11. Press Enter
12. Wait for the page to re-render
13. Start writing

Below are some notes on the new and old situation because the /wp-admin/press-this.php based URLs look very similar.

I’ve mangled the parameter values for _wpnonce and buster to prevent potential abuse.

URLs of the new “enter URL to scan” functionality and the old bookmarklets to blog about https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/214507138-How-do-I-install-Signal-Desktop-

• “enter URL to scan”: https://wiert.wordpress.com/wp-admin/press-this.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsupport.signal.org%2Fhc%2Fen-us%2Farticles%2F214507138-How-do-I-install-Signal-Desktop-&url-scan-submit=Scan&_wpnonce=1234567890&_wp_http_referer=%2Fwp-admin%2Fpress-this.php
• Bookmarklet V8: https://wiert.wordpress.com/wp-admin/press-this.php?v=8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fsupport.signal.org%2Fhc%2Fen-us%2Farticles%2F214507138-How-do-I-install-Signal-Desktop-&buster=123456789abcd
• Bookmarklet V4: https://wiert.wordpress.com/wp-admin/press-this.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsupport.signal.org%2Fhc%2Fen-us%2Farticles%2F214507138-How-do-I-install-Signal-Desktop-&t=How%20do%20I%20install%20Signal%20Desktop%3F%20%E2%80%93%20Support&s=&v=4

Below are the same URLs, but with the parameters spread over new lines for comparison.

• “enter URL to scan”:

https://wiert.wordpress.com/wp-admin/press-this.php
?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsupport.signal.org%2Fhc%2Fen-us%2Farticles%2F214507138-How-do-I-install-Signal-Desktop-
&url-scan-submit=Scan
&_wpnonce=1234567890
&_wp_http_referer=%2Fwp-admin%2Fpress-this.php

• Bookmarklet V8:

https://wiert.wordpress.com/wp-admin/press-this.php
?v=8
&u=https%3A%2F%2Fsupport.signal.org%2Fhc%2Fen-us%2Farticles%2F214507138-How-do-I-install-Signal-Desktop-
&buster=123456789abcd

• Bookmarklet V4:

https://wiert.wordpress.com/wp-admin/press-this.php
?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsupport.signal.org%2Fhc%2Fen-us%2Farticles%2F214507138-How-do-I-install-Signal-Desktop-
&t=How%20do%20I%20install%20Signal%20Desktop%3F%20%E2%80%93%20Support
&s=
&v=4

HTML fragment of the “enter URL to scan” functionality part of the page (it is called scanbar):

	<div id="scanbar" class="scan">
		<form method="GET">
			<label for="url-scan" class="screen-reader-text">Scan site for content</label>
			<input type="url" name="u" id="url-scan" class="scan-url" value="" placeholder="Enter a URL to scan" />
			<input type="submit" name="url-scan-submit" id="url-scan-submit" class="scan-submit" value="Scan" />
			<input type="hidden" id="_wpnonce" name="_wpnonce" value="1234567890" /><input type="hidden" name="_wp_http_referer" value="/wp-admin/press-this.php" />		</form>
	</div>

It appears that if you submit an empty or invalid _wpnonce value through a /wp-admin/press-this.php based URL, then the page will display just like the below HTML fragment.

The exception is a parameterless /wp-admin/press-this.php URL that does give a “Press-This” page with empty fields ready to start writing a fresh post.

<html><head><style type="text/css">
:root #mn div[style="position:relative"] > #center_col > div > ._dPg,
:root #mn div[style="position:relative"] > #center_col > ._Ak,
:root #mn #center_col > div > h2.spon:first-child + ol:last-child,
:root #mn #center_col > div > h2.spon:first-child,
:root #content > #right > .dose > .dosesingle,
:root #content > #center > .dose > .dosesingle
{ display: none !important; }</style></head><body><div class="error"><p>
						The WordPress bookmarklet was deprecated. Please delete it from your web browser.					</p></div>
					</body></html>

It renders as The WordPress bookmarklet was deprecated. Please delete it from your web browser.