Adblock
| Adblock Plus | |
 |
|
| Developer: | Henrik Aasted Sorensen, Michael McDonald, Wladimir Palant |
|---|---|
| Latest release: | 0.7.5.3 / September 21, 2007 |
| OS: | Cross-platform |
| Genre: | Mozilla extension |
| License: | GPL |
| Website: | http://adblockplus.org/ |
| Mozilla |
|---|
| Community / Customization |
|
Features • Extensions
(category) |
| Forks and Related Projects |
|
Flock • GNU IceWeasel |
| Origins and Lineage |
|
Mozilla Application Suite |
Adblock is a content-filtering extension for the
Due to stagnation in the upstream development since 2004, a forked version called Adblock Plus has risen to prominence. It features improvements to the user interface, filter subscriptions, and element hiding. It has become one of the most popular extensions.
Adblock Plus
Adblock Plus focuses on usability with many new and improved features being added. Its main window has clearly defined menu items at the top. Also, 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. Other new features include filter statistics (hits counter) and the ability to enable or disable individual filters without removing them.
How it Works
Like Mozilla's built-in image blocker, Adblock blocks HTTP requests according to their source address and can block IFrames, scripts and Flash. It also uses automatically-generated user stylesheets to hide elements such as text ads on a page as they load instead of blocking them.
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.
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)/
Filter subscriptions
Users can add external filtersets. 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 the Adblock Plus official website.
Awards
Criticism
Website owner Danny Carlton claims that ad blocking steals from website owners and believes that the Mozilla Foundation bears responsibility for endorsing and distributing the plug-in.[2]
Wladimir Palant responded to this in his blog.[3]
Adblock Plus has also received criticism for dropping the site-blocking feature found in Adblock.
Detection
Some webmasters have used JavaScript to detect the effects of the popular Adblock filters.[4] This has been done by generating a honeypot-like URL and verifying its delivery and also by more advanced verification of the DOM after the web page is rendered in the web browser to ensure the expected advertising elements are present.
These methods do not detect the presence of the Adblock extension directly, only the effects of the filters, and are vulnerable to continued updates to the filters.
An attempt was made to detect the plug-in itself but that detection method was rendered unusable by the 7.5.3 update of AdBlock Plus.
See also
- Flashblock
- Ad filtering
- Online advertising
- List of Firefox extensions
- Hosts file
- IE7pro, an equivalent on IE7
References
- ^ PC World - The 100 Best Products of 2007. PC World. Retrieved on 2007-08-19.
- ^ Firefox ad-blocker extension causes angst
- ^ Adblock Plus and (a little) more
- ^ AdblockPlus Detection
External links
- Adblock
- Adblock Plus
- Adblock Plus official website
- Adblock Plus on Mozilla Add-ons
- Adblock Plus 0.5.x MozillaZine forum thread
- Adblock Plus contributors
- Information
- Filter subscriptions
- Commentaries
- Nick Carr AdBlock Plus can quietly kill ads - and perhaps the internet economy The Guardian September 20 2007
- Noam Cohen Whiting Out the Ads, but at What Cost? New York Times September 3 2007
- Noam Cohen Adblock Plus threatens the online revenue model International Herald Tribune September 2 2007
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
