The Adblock Project

[guest]

Does adblock v0.5 stops download of filtered objects? or just hide/remove while still downloading them like previous versions?

[rue]

All dev-builds from the .4 branch onward have blocked downloads.

[Org]

I wonder if that is purely a good thing.

Many quality sites depend on advertising income. If we don't download the ads, the site may get less income. Larger scale total ad-blocking might lead to the death or quality loss of those sites. Do we really want to contribute to the death of any site that is good enough for regular visits? Are slightly faster page load times really that important? I'm not sure.

[rue]

Haha- I assumed you asked for a different reason. The simple answer is: it's up to you.

If having your attention-span shortened by quick-cut animations vying for attention as you browse the daily news seems a worthy tradeoff for the privilege of reading them, then just uninstall Adblock. You might also want to let your friends know about the new federal Do Not Call Registry -- they steal money from poor telemarketers by allowing people to opt-out.

See, It's a rather charged topic, in this age of connectedness -- IP and the balance of public vs. private space. On the internet, replication begins in the public-domain.. but ends with the end-user in complete control.

A page loads in your browser. Its content now resides on your machine. Whose property do you consider it: yours, or the site of origin's? The answer will determine whether you should continue using Adblock or not.

[Org]

Heheheh... weather I continue to use Adblock or not is not a hard question to me :-). I will continue to use it, no matter what. I feel Adblock is the single most important extension to any browser. Big thanks to all Adblock developpers, this project is great.

I was just thinking out loud if blocking ad downloads is totally good thing or not. I'm not sure what I personnally would do if Adblock had an option for ad downloading. Ad download times are not a big factor in my web browsing. I'm happy as long as I don't see the annoying ads. I guess most other people would automatically prevent the ad downloading without further thought.

[parasight]

I guess you could add a feature to choose wether to completely block loading them or to let them load and then hide them (and by this not harming websites that depend on ad revenue.

For me it's less a matter of loading time, it's more a question of trying to read while have annoying animations blinking at me all the time, and ugly ads messing with the design of websites. I wouldn't really mind 0.3 seconds longer loading time if I know my favorite sites aren't losing valuable support, as (I think) most ad "dealers" pay for pageviews, not only clicks (who the hell clicks on those things anyways?).

[rue]

Open Adblock's preferences.
.
Choose "Hide" instead of "Remove".
.
Close Adblock's preferences.

[parasight]

Hm, ok. I remember reading somewhere that "hide" does the same thing as "remove", with the difference that it preserves the layout of a page, which would mean it blocks the ad from loading but keeps the layout in place (replacing it with a transparent .gif would do the job, for instance).

I guess I misunderstood that concept.

[rue]

Actually, you read that in the faq, which didn't directly state either way. I'll update it momentarily.

Adblock's "Hide" option simply sets the css-property "visibility: hidden" on filtered-items. All their other properties and settings remain, including loaded content.

[Guest]

So let me get this straight,
hide = download filtered items, but do not display filtered items.
remove = do not download filtered items, do not display filtered items.

?

[rue]

Yes, that's correct -- and the faq has been updated to reflect this now.

Apologies for the confusion.

[Kobi Haron]

1. Rue says that a whitelist is planned. You will be able to block all /ads/ except from the site you want to support.

2. These days many people have broadband so suppodedly they wouldn't mind getting some advertising. But some ads are offensive (e.g. animated ads or those that load slow). I feel fully justified blocking these even from quality sites.

3. Currently Mozilla browsers have less than 3% market share, so our impact on sites' advertising revenue is, unfortunately, negligible.

[Ublis]

For me it's not just a matter of time, but particularly of annoyance. Ads are very loud (visually speaking) and sometimes they consume a lot of otherwise perfectly usable space. So I block them. Before I switched to MozFirebird+Adblock (which I now use exclusively because it's so elegant), I had for over a year an ad-filtering proxy with settings so severe, it even broke some websites.
There are perfectly civilized alternatives to "punch the monkey": text ads.

To be honest, I don't think I can be bothered with whitelisting, even though I really do like some sites. I figure they should adapt if they are hindered by banner- and popup-blocking.