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Minor gripe: I wish people would stop talking about Ad-Blocker. Pretty much since i started using the web (back when with Opera) I've had a tool available that

Minor gripe: I wish people would stop talking about Ad-Blocker. Pretty much since i started using the web (back when with Opera) I've had a tool available that is much more general and has given me much more control about how the web uses my bandwidth: An URL-Blocker. I don't use it for ads, exclusively, although lots of those fall under it too. I use it to block anything i find annoying when i use the web, be it overly big header images, fonts i don't like, Javascripts that are used by many pages to "enhance the experience", and sometimes ads too. Thinking about it as a tool to only block ads, instead of one to customize the web and block urls themselves seems narrow-minded to me and misses the point.

stephengillie 11y ago
Please give us more details about the URL blocker you use. Is it a browser plugin? Is it a network change at the OS level (HOSTS)? Is it a firewall or routing block? Is it middleware in a container running in your VPC?
- Mithaldu 11y ago
  I still use Opera 12 and it's built-in. You can give it a file like this: https://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/opera/urlfilter.ini https://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/opera/urlfilter.ini And it'll apply black/white-listing in whichever way you configure it before actually getting data from any URL. Editing features are built into the browser. To have it available on a more global scale, you could probably use something like squid proxy, but i don't know if it gives power quite like that. URL-Blockers however are a thing that by all rights should be built into the core of any browser, just like number-black-listing should be a default feature of every phone (but isn't).
  - mtone 11y ago
    I do this directly on my router running Tomato firmware. The initial setup is a bit more involved, but it applies equally to all browsers and mobile devices in the home. The script I use is http://www.linksysinfo.org/index.php?threads/script-clean-lean-and-mean-adblocking.68464/ http://www.linksysinfo.org/index.php?threads/script-clean-le...
    - Pyxl101 11y ago
      Ad blockers are more sophisticated than that these days, or at least support features that are. For example, they can hide a specific DOM element on a web page within a larger page according to its path or other characterization. I don't know what percentage of total effective rules these capabilities comprise, though, but it's something you cannot do with host level blocking alone.
      - Mithaldu 11y ago
        Does that mean they preempt the network request to the div's contents completely, they only hide the div via css/js, or both?

stephengillie 11y ago

Please give us more details about the URL blocker you use. Is it a browser plugin? Is it a network change at the OS level (HOSTS)? Is it a firewall or routing block? Is it middleware in a container running in your VPC?

Mithaldu 11y ago
I still use Opera 12 and it's built-in. You can give it a file like this: https://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/opera/urlfilter.ini https://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/opera/urlfilter.ini And it'll apply black/white-listing in whichever way you configure it before actually getting data from any URL. Editing features are built into the browser. To have it available on a more global scale, you could probably use something like squid proxy, but i don't know if it gives power quite like that. URL-Blockers however are a thing that by all rights should be built into the core of any browser, just like number-black-listing should be a default feature of every phone (but isn't).
- mtone 11y ago
  I do this directly on my router running Tomato firmware. The initial setup is a bit more involved, but it applies equally to all browsers and mobile devices in the home. The script I use is http://www.linksysinfo.org/index.php?threads/script-clean-lean-and-mean-adblocking.68464/ http://www.linksysinfo.org/index.php?threads/script-clean-le...
  - Pyxl101 11y ago
    Ad blockers are more sophisticated than that these days, or at least support features that are. For example, they can hide a specific DOM element on a web page within a larger page according to its path or other characterization. I don't know what percentage of total effective rules these capabilities comprise, though, but it's something you cannot do with host level blocking alone.
    - Mithaldu 11y ago
      Does that mean they preempt the network request to the div's contents completely, they only hide the div via css/js, or both?