ABP on Comics.com for Dilbert.com

Wladimir Palant · Post by **Wladimir Palant** » Mon Nov 20, 2006 12:20 pm

@sheepy: It shouldn't be. Unless I can't manage to get the redirect code from XMLHttpRequest that is used to download subscriptions...

Mad-Max · Post by **Mad-Max** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 12:35 am

Ad Muncher removes trackers all the time without breaking things like the dilbert button.

It's the main reason I use Ad Muncher over any firefox only ad blocking solution.

rick752 · Post by **rick752** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 1:14 am

Trackers are actually VERY easy to remove with ABP. This site is just very odd. It actually only affects 2 buttons that go to 2 different websites.

I find it hard to believe that AdMuncher can tell the difference between

Code: Select all

google-analytics.com/urchin.js

... in this site as opposed to any other site with the same string unless it is whitelisting all "https" (had complaints about that one) or is just not blocking "goggle-analytics" at all.

This can easily be fixed by just adding:

Code: Select all

@@https://*google-analytics

... to ABP (notice that this string is "https" ... not an "http" address.

Mad-Max · Post by **Mad-Max** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 5:37 pm

Not at all.

The default list just comes with some JS to fix these problems as they come up without the user ever needing to do anything.

Works out of the box.

Running Ad Muncher brings such peace of mind I can't even describe it.

rick752 · Post by **rick752** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 6:56 pm

Mad-Max wrote: Works out of the box.

ABP and a good set of filters work "out of the box", but things change and new things always appear. No one can possibly visit EVERY site ... everywhere.

The guys at AdMuncher go through the same things we go through here ... guaranteed! Works today .. not tomorrow. Things we catch that they haven't seen yet ... things they catch that we haven't seen yet. It's all about constantly finding and fixing.

As far as tracking sites go, it is not a matter of blocking them (that part is TOO easy in ABP). I have actually been pleaded with to not block some places stats. It's a matter of "where do we WANT to draw the line" ... not IF we can draw one! There has been much discussion about this in the ABP community. The main point of which is "should we be stepping outside of what ABP was really made for which was to just block ads"? This is a difficult question to answer because it involves a lot of different factors. People who use my EasyList throughout an office (or whole business) have been very disappointed because I added something like "sitestats" to the list and they use it for stats. It's a very hard decision for me to make still. Maybe the people over at AdMuncher don't care ... but I do.

Btw, are you part of the AdMuncher project just looking for the "Things we catch that they haven't seen yet..."?

*** ps: dilbert nav problem now fixed in easylist

Peng · Post by **Peng** » Tue Dec 19, 2006 2:08 am

Wladimir Palant wrote:1. Processing of these parameters requires some sort of server-side scripting. I don't think many list maintainers will like this but making Adblock Plus download several files for one subscription is worse IMO.

You could just use mod_rewrite. You'd have to have multiple files, which is kind of inconvenient, but it would work (and you could write a script to put them together to make it easier). It would be very easy to do it for just one optional feature. Two or would be more difficult, but should be possible.

Wladimir Palant · Post by **Wladimir Palant** » Tue Dec 19, 2006 10:18 am

Peng, mod_rewrite is also server-side scripting. Actually, this should be easier with SSI, but it is still by far more complicated than uploading a text file.

Peng · Post by **Peng** » Tue Dec 19, 2006 11:48 am

Wladimir Palant wrote:Peng, mod_rewrite is also server-side scripting. Actually, this should be easier with SSI, but it is still by far more complicated than uploading a text file.

I don't think mod_rewrite counts as server-side scripting. It's something, but server-side scripting is PHP or Perl or ASP or something. When using mod_rewrite, you can still serve a static file.

Hmm, I wonder what kind of performance impact mod_rewrite is, especially when it's in a .htaccess?

Wladimir Palant · Post by **Wladimir Palant** » Tue Dec 19, 2006 12:03 pm

Performance is my least concern with this. mod_rewrite has absolutely minimal impact on it by the way.

Peng · Post by **Peng** » Tue Dec 19, 2006 12:13 pm

Wladimir Palant wrote:Performance is my least concern with this.

Oh. It's always a major concern of mine with Web stuff, even when it really doesn't matter.

felbre · Post by **felbre** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 9:28 am

Hi,

I would just like to mention, that with Cédric's filter the button to Dilbert.com is working fine! Unfortunately with Dr. Evil's filter activated it isn't working any more (as described above). Any ideas about how this could be fixed?

I am aware that I should be using only one filter. This is why I have now switched to Cédrics list...

Have a nice day,
Felix

Dr. Evil · Post by **Dr. Evil** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 3:45 pm

Hi felbre,

I don't want to unblock Google Analytics because of the reasons already mentioned in this thread: they track already too much.

felbre wrote:Any ideas about how this could be fixed?

These ideas are already in this thread. You can manually whitelist by adding the filter @@.google-analytics.com/ Or you could disable the filter that is responsible for blocking Google Analytics which is .google-analytics.com/ in the case of my list. You could also subscribe to my list
using http://maltekraus.de/Firefox/adblock.ph ... ytics.com/ as url instead of the default which does the virtually same but on the server side.

Peng · Post by **Peng** » Fri Jan 19, 2007 5:49 am

Dr. Evil wrote:You could also subscribe to my list
using http://maltekraus.de/Firefox/adblock.ph ... ytics.com/ as url instead of the default which does the virtually same but on the server side.

Cool setup you've got there, Dr. Evil.

It sends a Last-Modified header and it supports If-Modified-Since. Nice job.

Wherever you do "header('HTTP/1.1 304 Not Modified');", to work around a bug in header(), you should do this:

Code: Select all

header((strpos(PHP_SAPI, 'cgi') === 0 ? 'Status: 304 Not Modified' : 'HTTP/1.1 304 Not Modified'));

Otherwise, if PHP is running as a CGI (including FastCGI), it'll send "304 OK" instead of "304 Not Modified", which won't cause any harm, but it looks ugly.

(If there's a faster way to check if the first three characters of PHP_SAPI are 'cgi', use that.)

Dr. Evil · Post by **Dr. Evil** » Sat Jan 20, 2007 12:51 am

Peng wrote:Cool setup you've got there, Dr. Evil. It sends a Last-Modified header and it supports If-Modified-Since. Nice job.

Thanks

Now that you reminded me of the script, it's also doing some gzip compression, which will hopefully reduce the list traffic dramatically.

Peng wrote:Wherever you do "header('HTTP/1.1 304 Not Modified');", to work around a bug in header(), you should do this: [...some code...]

done

felbre · Post by **felbre** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 4:47 pm

I think, I should clarify: with Cédric's list as a filter, I can now click on the button to Dilbert.com. But the context menu entry "open in new tab" is still not working any more. I think this used to be the case some month ago? But with Dr. Evil's filter I can't even click the button (just tested again).

After all this is something that I can live with. But I would rather appreciate if I could open Dilbert.com in a new tab, too...

Thanks a lot so far!