The Adblock Project

Guest

I'm not exactly sure how to report this as a bug, but I'll try. I have http://my.yahoo.com set as my home page in Firebird ([Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.6b) Gecko/20031218 Firebird/0.7+ (aebrahim)], but it's been happening for quite some time in different builds...don't know if the browser or AdBlock is the problem), and I am currently using the .5 dev release, build 34 (also happened under build 30).

Anyhow, when I load up Firebird, about half the time the big banner on the top of the page isn't blocked. I have "http://us.a1.yimg.com/*" and "http://us.yimg.com/*" set to be blocked, so about 95% of Yahoo's ads get removed for me. If I right-click on the image and select "Adblock image" to see what the address is, nothing comes up. The Adblock notification in the status bar doesn't indicate that anything is blocked, obviously. If I open the image's properties, it states that it comes from one of the two addresses I have set to be blocked.

Now here's the hard part: if I reload the page, the image (or its replacement) is removed. Every time. So it's only on that first page that AdBlock can't seem to block the images, but it's not *every* time I load the first page that the image isn't removed. I'd change my start page to test it on another site, but for some reason Firebird doesn't want to allow that.

Any thoughts? I know it's weird and tough to pin down, but have other people reported not being able to block images on their start page 100% of the time?

aoLhaTer · Joined: 26 Nov 2003 Posts: 16

Use this filter
us.a1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/a/
that removes all of yahoos advertising but not their normal images

Guest · Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2003 Post subject:

Org · Joined: 23 Oct 2003 Posts: 349

I dare to claim the you don't need the extension "Flash Click to View" at all if you define your Adblock filters well. I checked my filters with the "Adblock-able Items" window and only these two were used on the page my.yahoo.com:

.yimg.com/a/
/^http:\/\/ad([sz]?|images|img)\./

As far as I could see, these filters blocked all the ads but none of the normal images.

(I'm using the Adblock options "Remove ads", "Collapse blocked elements" and "Check parent links".)

Guest · Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2003 Post subject:

I use Flash Click to View not for ads, but for sites that HAVE to use Flash to navigate through them. I use to not have Flash even installed and had AdBlock set to kill all *.SWF objects, but it got too hard to get through some sites. AdBlock removes a Flash object coming from a server on my filter list, though.

I'll try your settings and see if it makes a difference somehow.

rue · Developer Joined: 22 Oct 2003 Posts: 752

Guest:

Try removing Flash-Click-To-View.
.
If you're on a dialup or something and can't handle this, try unchecking "Obj-tabs" in Adblock's pref-window options.

Another Guest · Guest

I have the exact same problem. It only started after I installed the Shockwave plugin in order to view some sites (I installed Flash and Director at the same time, so not sure which one it was).

The first time, it doesn't block the my.yahoo banner. When I reload, it works fine.

rue · Developer Joined: 22 Oct 2003 Posts: 752

Another Guest:
You have FCTV installed? And this only occurs when my.yahoo is your startup page?

Guest · Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2003 Post subject:

I'm the original Guest. Yeah, I've posted here a few times, but I'm just too lazy to register.

I wish that either MozillaZine or Mozdev would run a central forum for extensions separated by projects. That would be helpful.

Disabling FCTV actually solved the problem. I closed and reloaded Firebird about a half dozen times, and the banner was removed every time. That's sort of weird. I really like having the FCTV extension installed, so I'm not sure what I should do now.

Another Guest · Guest

I'm the original Another Guest, who is not the same as Guest. Smile

I don't have FCTV installed. It only happens on my.yahoo as far as I know. My yahoo block regexps are:

http://*.*[^(news)]*.yimg.com/*
http://*.yimg.com/*swf*
http://us.a1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/*.gif

I dunno why I added the last one, since the first should've taken care of it, but it might've been in response to this problem, so I added a more specific regexp (I forget).

Anyways, it doesn't ALWAYS happen, but when it does, clicking on "Adblock image" doesn't bring anything up (that's why I figured it was the same problem as the original Guest had). And when it does happen, reloading the page removes the ad. It's very odd (and not a huge deal, since reloading it seems to work fine, but it may be because it uses a different banner on reload, rather than having the reload actually fixing it).

BTW, AdBlock RULES! It's one of the top 3 reasons I use Firebird.

Guest · Posted: Wed Dec 24, 2003 Post subject:

i don't know regexp, but i do believe that you CAN'T mix wildcards & regexp expressions as you have..... sorry but i am not knowledgable to help further, but maybe that will help.

my yahoo filter is ".yimg.com/a/" (no quotes) and that seems to work on all that i want blocked, but perhaps that is too broad for what u want

Guest · Posted: Wed Dec 24, 2003 Post subject:

I'm the original Guest.

I disabled FCTV and restarted Firebird a bunch of times and that seemed to fix it, but oddly enough Flash objects still have the "Click to View" label on them and later I noticed my My Yahoo start page still had the ad banner.

I'm going to download a new build when one comes out today and try it without the FCTV extension, see if that works, then I'll get back here and report my findings.

rue · Developer Joined: 22 Oct 2003 Posts: 752

Original Guest:
Read this whole thread before continuing. Note the heads-up at the end.