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My fave for Windows is The Proxomitron

If you do this by using a utility like utility like The Proxomiton, IE displays the same error message! See here for an example of this.

Furthermore, if you use the same utility on Opera 5 to alter the UA from 'Opera' to 'OpXra' MSN will actually display pretty much as expected. Admitadley, it doesn't display exactly the same as IE normally displays but it is very similar and completely usable.

Microsoft are clearly targetting specific browsers which I think is very wrong! What about people who can't use IE because of having old hardware (and hence use a less resource intensive browser), the 'wrong' OS or disabled users who rely on browsers like BLynx???

Surely these users should be allowed to eXPerience the 'joys' of MSN. If Microsoft truely believe that you can only really appreciate how good MSN is with IE, then have a disclaimer appear at the top of the page when a so called 'non-complient' browser accesses your website but don't stop people accessing altogether!!!

Time to install a little tool known as the Proxomitron. Haven't seen an X10 ad in ages :)

...the ability to disable the JavaScript window.open() method...
You might not want all pop up windows disabled, only windows with ads.

Check out Proxomitron

It will has rewrite the http stream, so you can rewrite headers, html, cookies, etc. For both incoming and outgoing. Also make Mozilla reply as "User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)". Its more powerfull than junkbusters, and has more features and filters(all editable)

As a long time computer user, starting from a C64/Floppy/300 baud modems to DualP3s/Terrabyte storage/DSL I have migrated and changed the way I interact with GUI's and store my files many times over the years.

Mark Hursts ideas are almost like mine. I will break it down a little as to HD layout then OS.
I have normally have 2 HDs in my system, HDA for my OS's and HDB for my Games and Work. HDA I break down into 4 Paritions.
HDA1 for Win98,
HDA2 for Win2K,
HDA3 for either a Linux dristro or WinXP beta
HDA4 for the swap if im using linux.
HDB1 is 1 parition, normally 3 folders, Games, Work and Emulators. (Im a UAE and Mame freak.)

I dont normally use boot loaders other than Win2k's, If i boot linux i use loadlin, it seems easier for me to maintain. (C:\linux)

Im a big fan of Norton Ghost, using ghost on the paritions, I can restore quickly. As I like to play around with drivers and migrate my HD's to more space. I also burn the .gho files on CDs. If the files are larger than 700 megs, I rar the ghost images and make it self extractable. So I can boot a fresh HD from floppy. I also copy the CD images to the HD, unrar, and ghost from the whole image.

I'm a little more in depth on my HDA1 drive, I use directory names, Apps, GFX, Net, Sound, Utils, Work. I also have the normal windows directories, My Documents, Windows and Temp. Under My Documents I put My Pictures, My Music and Favorites. I then use M$ Tweak UI to point all windows versions on my HD to c:\My documents, C:\My Documents\favorites, etc.. This keeps all my files at hand if im either Win98, Win2K or linux. It makes it easier to keep every file in the same place under ever os. (Example, IE for Win2K and Win98 point to the same favorites, so my bookmarks are the same.)

After I get the basic windows installed (doesnt matter what version). I upgrade the entire installation with the newest patches and drivers. Then register file types for my apps, not windows defaults. Apps include textpad, winzip,winrar,cdrwin,nero,acdsee,winamp,proxomitro n. Windows modifications as x-teq and m$ powertoys.

Now that windows is installed, and apps, I keep a shortcut to a folder NET in c:\net\net on my desktop. This folder c:\net\net keeps shortcuts for all my programs. Even if I reinstall windows, my c:\net\net folder stays. I put a shortcut of my NET folder in my tooltray. I can either alt-tab or click on the tooltray icon (in case my apps are maximized) to have access to my favorite apps. I really dont use the start menu, as it takes longer to get to my commonly used applications.

Microsoft has weened us off Dual pane file managers.(I miss fileman!) This was (IMHO) the hardest thing to get used to in win95 and new versions of windows. Trying to copy files from a file viewed pane, then select the destination folder is slower and has more steps involved. M$ introduced powertoys that included "Copy To and Move To" extensions to windows, that at least helped. I do keep a copy of 2xExplorer for when I need to handle large ammount of files.

The part that actually increased my productivity was the toolbar. Being able to have access to my running applications, instead of alt-tabbing was a nice changed. It also provides a quick visual que on what programs im running. The tooltray also speeds up access to my c:\net\net quick launch folder full of shortcuts.

Drag and Drop, right mouse menus have become standard. I have found that I now drag mp3's onto winamp, and right mouse clicking and enqueing them. My older habit was using playlists for everything. IE didnt have the best right mouse menus, but with IE6, they have the most common menus again. (Using proxomitron and enabling all right mouse clicks also helps)

Now as my Linux GUI, I really use Windows as workstation, and unix as a server and display X back to my windows box. (X-win32 is far the best for this.) But when Im using a unix workstation, I normally install IceWM. IceWM is small, fast and has a toolbar and tooltray. It is highly customizable and can add those extra buttons that come in handy. The windowshade mode which rolls up the window to a bar is very handy. Comes in handy when I need to view multiple load balanced servers at the same time. Also for quick eye-candy, I like the network and cpu meters on the toolbar, dont really need it, but nice to see.

Started to use WinXP beta, and I'm pretty impressed with its Font Smoothing features. Check out some screenshots I made for friends here and here.. The font smoothing works all throught the GUI, notice how the menus are changed.

I spend too much time playing around with new utilities and GUI's for windows. If your interested in modifing your windows GUI, check out Shell City, WindowBlinds, and Litestep.

Have fun!
-Brook

Actually Proxmitron http://spywaresucks.org/prox/ is better.

On the http://www.mp3.com/adfree/ page it filtered out all 3 ads.

The article does mention Ad Aware to get rid of this if you accidently let it get installed in the first place. In addition I use the Proxomitron to just get rid of those annoying pop-ups/unders/whatever completely. It's fully configurable and let's you create your own filters in a manner similar to Perl's regular expressions.

Unfortunately, some of the sites I like to hit use javascript. Javascript is occasionally useful

This has probably been mentioned before, but... One workaround in Internet Explorer is to go to the security tab and disable (or force prompting for) cookies and javascript for "Internet", and then to "opt-in" the sites that you trust by placing them on your "Trusted Sites" list (and allow cookies/javascript for trusted sites). Ideally, you should have finer-grained control than to put all sites into just two categories, but if you're stuck using IE and you don't want to go with a web filter like Proxomitron, it's better than nothing.

Junkbusters and the like are pretty good, but this program called Proxomitron is a step above. It does all the normal rewrite features plus a few added features. http://spywaresucks.org/prox/ Rewrites html for both incoming and outgoing, rewrites headers, cookie control, ad control, full logging, and much more.. I currently use this with mozilla, and all ads say [AD] and no popups. Faster browsing, and a easy "Bypass" button for websites that bitch. One of the hacks I used it for was to rewrite java settings, so online games applets would read my settings. Also, you can make Mozilla report back to servers thats its IE5.5 in the headers. Or its default "Space Bison/0.02 [fu] (Win67; X; SK)"

For Win32, all you need is regex knowledge and The Proxomitron.

Pop-up ads annoy the hell out of a lot of online users, but they're impossible to ignore

...until you learn to run a filtering proxy such as Junkbusters or Proxomitron

It seems like this is a copyright infringement.

It seems as though you're right - the makers of the web site retain their exclusive rights, and they don't usually give them up. This includes the right to make derivative works. There's an implied license in deploying a web site - that it will be copied into memory and displayed in a browser.

Of course, what if this is just Microsoft's method of "display?" And then, what about proxies like Proxomitron, that can alter a page to remove unwanted Javascript? It all gets so weird...

BTW, Havnt seen a /. ad in months.
(I think I'll make a filter to allow ads for slashdot, I had to hit the bypass button to see where the Ads where. hehehe)

I don't know if the EarthLink browser can be set to run through a local proxy, but if it can, then Proximitron can prevent the extra HTTP header from being sent at all. I just started using it, and it works wonderfully. Plus the paranoid among us can open the HTTP log window and watch what's being sent out and received, for that warm-and-fuzzy reassuring feeling.

Since they seem to be citing specific sizes, this could work to our advantage. It's easy to use the The Proxomitron to filter anything by custom HTML matching rules, and easy to use KillAd to bock specific sizes of popups of Windows. And you can block popups from the browser level in Mozilla too.

But what does this tell us about advertisers? They're realizing that people are learning to ignore and block the standard banners. I'm sure that they see this as moving into something that's bigger and better. The 160 x 600 pixel ads should be interesting because they're really tall. People are used to seeing wide banner ads, and we haven't learned to instinctively ignore big tall images.

And what does this tell us about netizens in general? Most people are slow to react to ads and slow to try to block them...it's been what, almost a decade now since banners in their current form came into use? CNET's been using those humongous ads for a while now and I haven't added a filter to my Proxomitron yet to block them...and I'm a slashdotter! I just press the stop button in mozilla before the ads loads.

So what do we do know? If you like ads, the fine. Watch them and see them steal your the data you put into website forms and send it to doubleclick. And if you don't, the update your filtering proxys and promote junkbuster. I don't know about you, but I'm not going to let my tiny 31.2k modem connection (nothing else available here) be saturated by my personal info going upstream and their ads going downstream. That's just what I think anyways.

A side note: My finger got caught in a cheese slicer yesterday and as a result I might have made a few typos. I hope I corrected them all.

O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Law:

Just get a certain nearly-free[1] program called The Proxomitron and you can use it to do many, many useful things, including faking your browser.

[1] Nearly Free: The program is "ShonenWare." It's not spyware, has no ads, and never expires. The registration is basically buying a CD from the maker's favourite band.

O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Law:

It acts as a proxy on localhost can can modify headers (my useragent is MinitaureGiantSpaceHamsterBrowser, or I could tell it to say that my mozilla is IE5) and you can program your own filters to match/modify any html/javascript.

It's extremely useful with Mozilla (or any other browser) because I can eliminate specific ad-frames, web-branding, popups, halt animated GIFS and other nastiness on the page before it loads.

O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Law: