Re: Epiphany extensions

["Kristoffer Lundén" <kristoffer lunden gmail com>]

On 4/3/06, Adam Hooper <adamh densi com> wrote:

> AFAIK you can't configure the AdBlock extension (it "Just Works"). :)

It's supposed to "Just Work" in the sense that its default set of
patterns is very accurate. Some users want more, though....

You can write adblock patterns into
~/.gnome2/epiphany/extensions/data/adblock/blacklist (and whitelist) if
you want (edit them with your favourite text editor). Look
at /usr/share/epiphany-extensions/adblock-patterns to see what patterns
should look like (they're Perl-compatible regular expressions; you can
use the "pcretest" tool, part of libpcre3, to test them).

That's a start, but way too much work (and I do know Perl regexps well).

It's very nice to have obnoxious sites autoblocked, and it seems to work very well, but I still like the FF way better, because I can easily be selective about what I block. There are plenty of sites, especially among those I regulary visit, that I do want to support and that also may have ads of actual interest (good content+adsense can do that to a site). I can do that in FF, and the adblock there can use the same filterlist as Epiphany, with automatic updates.

What I would like is the ability to click the A in bottom left, get a list of blocked ads, and be able to whitelist any entry from that list. Also, whitelisted entries should stay in that list so it could be changed back. A simple checkbox list might well be sufficient, so I could just toggle the entries. Those entries also needs to be at least site-local (FF version has both site or page for this, site probably is good enough).

This would make adblock fully acceptable to me. A lot of the web is ad financed, and I don't necessarily think it's all bad. If it's done right, I actually make things better with relevant links, and if it's done discreetly, it sure beats having to subscribe to all the pages you would want to stay alive. Default filter list plus simplistic configuration/tweaking would allow me to get best of both.

I don't think I will need to enter any manual filters though, and if so, I'd be satisfied with those files, because it is such a rare event. So a checkbox system is plenty for me (and would make this adblock overtake the FF one).

-- Kristoffer

-- 
Kristoffer Lundén
✉ kristoffer lunden gmail com
✉ kristoffer lunden gamemaker nu
http://www.gamemaker.nu/
☎ 0704 48 98 77