[Edbrowse-dev] adblocking ? was: experimental JS console patch

[Edbrowse-dev] adblocking ? was: experimental JS console patch

[Peter Billam]

Greetings,

It's been fascinating to lurk here recently, thanks everyone.

Kevin Carhart wrote:
> [voluminous output of about 100 objects and scalars,
>  most having to do with google ads and god knows what]

I think this raises the question of adblocking for edbrowse ...

Regards,  Peter Billam

http://www.pjb.com.au      pj@pjb.com.au     (03) 6278 9410
"Follow the charge, not the particle."  --  Richard Feynman
 from The Theory of Positrons, Physical Review, 1949

Re: [Edbrowse-dev] adblocking ? was: experimental JS console patch

[Chris Brannon]

"Peter Billam" <pj@pjb.com.au> writes:

> I think this raises the question of adblocking for edbrowse ...

Hi Peter,
Sorry I didn't reply to this one earlier.  Nope, I didn't miss it, I was
just holding back.
You know, I've looked at a lot of JavaScript in recent weeks, and a
surprisingly large amount of it is related to, you guessed it, ads.
I wonder what the percentage is?
We aren't quite at a point where we really have to worry about it, but
I'm sure that whenever we can browse very "rich" dynamic sites with
edbrowse, online advertising is going to be a problem.

I have no idea how adblocking would work for edbrowse.  How does it work
in the mainstream browsers, exactly?  I think it's usually an extension
written by a third party, isn't it?  The only thing stopping us from
building it into edbrowse will be lack of developers.  At one time,
there used to be proxy servers for this sort of thing.  I remember one
called JunkBuster.  It would be nice if we could just install a proxy
server and point edbrowse at it, but I think that the proxy server
technique is no longer used.

-- Chris

[Edbrowse-dev] adblocking ? was: experimental JS console patch

[Karl Dahlke]

Most ads now adays are served by efficient third parties such as google.
You can block the most ads for the least effort
by building and maintaining a list of ad servers and putting them in nojs.
I have google ads on my websites, and at the risk of reducing my revenue,
all you have to do is

nojs googlesyndication.com

By the way, my revenue has been decreasing,
so maybe ad blockers are working better and better.
It's all cat&mouse, isn't it.

This one doesn't block ads but sure speeds up websites.

nojs = google-analytics.com

Also
nojs = pubads.g.doubleclick.net
nojs = www.adfusion.com
nojs = bannerads.zwire.com
nojs = images.zwire.com
nojs = partner.googleadservices.com
nojs = media.fastclick.net
nojs = advertising.com

And many many more.
Maintaining this database might be part of what you hire
your ad blocking company to do.

Karl Dahlke

Re: [Edbrowse-dev] adblocking ? was: experimental JS console patch

[Peter Billam]

Greetings Chris,

> Nope, I didn't miss it, I was just holding back. ...

Of course of course, it was intended as a "question on notice",
a "just put it at the back of the queue" thing.
You've all got _lots_ of core code up in the air, fundamental stuff,
it's most impressive.
You're also way ahead of the other non-gui browsers, as far as I know.
(Indeed hopefully they will be able to reuse your JS and DOM work ...)

> How does it work in the mainstream browsers, exactly?

I'm no expert at all, but I just installed adblock-plus on my
debian stable iceweasel, and it has improved my quality-of-life.
See:
  https://adblockplus.org/en/about#workings

prompt>  aptitude show xul-ext-adblock-plus
  New: yes
  State: installed
  Automatically installed: no
  Version: 2.6.6+dfsg-1
  Maintainer: Debian Mozilla Extension Maintainers
    <pkg-mozext-maintainers@lists.alioth.debian.org>
  Architecture: all
  Uncompressed Size: 2,665 k
  Enhances: iceape, icedove, iceweasel
  Provides: adblock-plus, iceape-adblock-plus, icedove-adblock-plus,
          iceweasel-adblock-plus
  Description: advertisement blocking extension for web browsers
   Adblock Plus is a content-filtering extension for Iceweasel, Firefox,
   SeaMonkey, and several other apps; it allows users to prevent webpage
   elements, such as advertisements, from being downloaded and displayed. 
   On the first run, Adblock Plus will ask you if you want to subscribe to a
   filter list, which is automatically updated and blocks a lot of common
   advertisements. Additional filters can be added at will, and it's
   also possible to use wildcards in order to block e.g. all images
   or JavaScript files from specific servers or directories.
  Homepage: http://adblockplus.org/
  ... implemented-in::ecmascript ...

Perhaps it even could be possible to hook adblock-plus into edbrowse ...
eg:  edbrowse-adblock-plus  ?  But I have no idea what's involved.

> I'm sure that whenever we can browse very "rich" dynamic sites
> with edbrowse, online advertising is going to be a problem.

It'll have to be tackled eventually, just like spam filters for email.

> The only thing stopping us from building it into edbrowse will be
> lack of developers.

I can't volunteer, I'm sorry :-(
I'm getting a bit old, and maintaining too many things already.

Regards,  Peter Billam

http://www.pjb.com.au      pj@pjb.com.au     (03) 6278 9410
"Follow the charge, not the particle."  --  Richard Feynman
 from The Theory of Positrons, Physical Review, 1949