Micha
Thu, 18 May 2006 22:35:21 -0700
| even before the content reaches the browser.
That's of course tempting. However, having filtered ads with w
wwoffle and previously junkbuster, i came to the conclusion that
the really crucial point is the maintanence of a tag (matching identifier)
list. And although i see that you're talking just about your personal
preference for a couple of websites, i think this problem should
be addressed if one thinks of a broader user base.
There are 2 sides of this coin, users and the server.
From the users point of view, or at least in my personal experience,
if you're at daily work, all you can afford to do is to click on a specific
thing and say 'Block this {temporarily,forever}'.
Just like firefox extensions work (i didn't try greasemonkey though).
You won't dive into analyzing any sourcecode, normally, to find out
how the ad is implemented. That should be done by the software.
I mean, that's what a computer is good for, analyzing things, right ?
From the server (admin) point of view, it is desirable to have all
the ads blocked even before delivery. So should the the server read
a users personal list at connection ? (Where the server admin can
be a user, too.) Of course you would be *very* uncomfortable with a
public add-blocker list, without any censoring and control. But there
could be a way the server collects the user lists and updates it's
config based on that information, for example, some MSPs work that
way, they analyze users spam balcklists and update the central one
(regarding pretty much other informations too, io hope).
As a workaround, people use to launch lists online which are
regularily updated, and downloaded by user applications,
like SPAM filter or anti-virus software do. But who will
do that work, updating a list, at least unpaid ?
And there's always the problem with lists getting larger and larger,
and neither server admin nor user want to check which tags are
still valid, and which are obsolete.
This should also be done by the software, too.
Anyway, this sounds like such a full featured and intergated thing
that nobody wants to code it. And it's just out of scope, for wwwoffle.
My appeal goes to you developers of ad blockers: Perhaps there
are some small features which are not too much work which
nonetheless can help to ease the maintanence, because if that's a
pain everybody will drop your software again sooner or later.
mi