Adblock
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Adblock is a content-filtering extension for the Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Application Suite web browsers. Adblock allows users to prevent page elements, such as advertisements, from being downloaded and displayed. Like Mozilla's built-in image blocker, Adblock blocks HTTP requests according to their source address and can block IFrames, scripts, and Flash.
Due to stagnation in the upstream development since 2004, a forked version called Adblock Plus has come into prominence. It features improvements to the user interface, filter subscriptions, and element hiding.
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[edit] Adblock Plus
The focus of Adblock Plus is usability. It incorporates powerful features while remaining easy to use. Adblock Plus features a main window with clearly defined menu items at the top. The list of blockable items is integrated as a sidebar which can be detached from the main window.
Element hiding can be used in addition to regular ad blocking. Using automatically-generated user stylesheets, it hides elements such as text ads on a page as they load instead of blocking them.
Other new features include filter statistics (hits counter) and the ability to enable or disable individual filters without removing them. Adblock Plus has received criticism for dropping the site-blocking feature found in Adblock.
[edit] History
Michael McDonald created Adblock Plus 0.5 that improved on Adblock by incorporating the following features:
- Whitelisting
- Support for blocking background images.
- Subscription to filters with a fixed address and automatically update them.
- The ability to hide HTML elements allowing a much greater range of images to be blocked.
- Can hide ads on a per site basis instead of globally.
- Memory leak fixes
McDonald discontinued development and transferred the name to Wladimir Palant, who released Adblock Plus 0.6 with a rewritten codebase in January 2006.
[edit] Filters
Basic filter rules can include wildcards represented by asterisks (*). Sites and objects can be whitelisted with filters that start with two at signs (@@). Regular expressions delimited by slashes (/) can be used. Adblock Plus also supports a more-sophisticated syntax that gives fine-grain control over filters.
The following is a list of example filters for Adblock.
Blocks ads in any directory called "banners", or any case insensitive equivalent:
*/banners/*
Whitelist a website:
@@http://en.wikipedia.org/
Blocks ads on Yahoo!:
/yimg\.com(.*/adv/|/a[^u])(?!vision)/
[edit] Filter subscriptions
Users can add external filtersets such as Filterset.G. Adblock Plus includes the ability to use one or more external filter subscriptions that are automatically updated. Filterset.G is incompatible with this system, but other filtersets can added by typing their addresses. A list of known Adblock Plus subscriptions is maintained on their website.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
[edit] Adblock
[edit] Adblock Plus
- Adblock Plus official website
- Adblock Plus on Mozilla Add-ons
- Adblock Plus 0.5.x MozillaZine forum thread
[edit] Information
- A not so short history of Adblock
- Adblock - MozillaZine Knowledge Base
- Writing Adblock Plus filters
- Adblock/Adblock Plus manual
