Disabling Flash on Specific Sites?

xrjlx asks: "Does anyone know how to disable flash on just specific sites like cnet and yahoo so that those annoying ads don't come up on the screen. One way to do it is by setting "run active x controls" to "prompt." This gets annoying though because many sites legitimately use them. Are there any programs written that will allow me to just selectively block the use of flash on certain sites?" It makes sense to me that, like cookies and the use of Javascript, ALL browsers should have some kind of by-domain filter that selectively activates whatever set of plugins (including Flash) that provides the user with the kind of web experience that they want, of course, many might see this as too much micromanagement for their tastes. I say it all boils down to a well defined UI. What say you?

Comments

If you're using IE...

[Will_Malverson]

Add the sites in question to the "Restricted" zone.

Re:If you're using IE...

[Anonymous Coward]

this works well for me. I also don't have flash installed because it's stupid. putting the site in restricted gets rid of the window that asks me if I want to install it.

Re:If you're using IE...

[Anonymous Coward]

I use two browsers. One is safe without java/javascript/flash/anyplugin behind junkbuster - one is a clean connection to the internet with every possible plugin.

Re:If you're using IE...

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for that annoying "ActiveX is disabled" nag dialog.

What we need

[sydb]

Is:

1. Filtering browsers in wide circulation. I.E.'s 'zones' are not very obvious, most users don't understand how they work. Mozilla, galeon and the like have good interfaces for filtering. (right-click, block)

2. Good, free, log analysis software (I'm sure this is already there.)

3. A campaign to encourage web designers / admins to use the log analysis software so they know what people are blocking. Then they might stop putting it up which is the important bit.

Will this ever happen? I doubt it.

Instead, companies will just come up with clever ways to bypass filtering. Block by domain? Fine, they'll use dynamic domain names for the sources.

Re:What we need

[mrzaph0d]

if we have #2 and #3, we'll also have people claiming that it's spyware, complaining that they want to know what you're blocking. as such, the people who know how to block stuff will turn the logging off, and the people who don't know how to block stuff will leave the logging on. so analyzing the logs wouldn't do much good, would it?

Re:What we need

[sydb]

So how will the people who know how to block stuff turn the logging off?

Unless they administer the servers, of course, which they don't.

I take it you haven't seen an apache access log file. That's all the 'spyware' you need, my point was that many places do only a minimum of log analysis because it's laborious and tedious, so it should be made easy and inexpensive.

Re:What we need

[Anonymous Coward]

re 3: experience tells us that once they know what we block they try to find ways to circumvent the block

Just kill your browser extensions.

[Snowfox]

I find something worth having Flash for maybe once every other month or so. Certainly not enough to compensate for the rest of the crap that's dumped on me.

Just kill your extensions. If a site needs fancy songs and zooming images to keep your interest, what it's trying to tell you probably isn't very interesting.

If you really can't bear to live without Flash/Java/etc from time to time, set up a second browser, and use the clean one as your default.

Look into JunkBuster

[dharding]

For Yahoo!, I use the Internet Junkbuster Proxy. It runs on both Windows and *nix, and should be able to work with any browser. It is able to block banner ads, flash animations, etc. Note however that it does not support for disabling JavaScript popups or anything like that, but for what I do, it is sufficent.

Re:Look into JunkBuster

[glens]

google to the rescue:

popup filtering junkbuster

ain't the GPL great?

Re:Look into JunkBuster

[Anonymous Coward]

The Opera browser can block JS popups, however only globally for all sites.

Seems like you're running IE, so..

[acrhemeied]

(from v5.0):

Go to Tools, then Internet Options. Select Security, then select Restricted Sites. The Sites button will become active.. choose that and a window will pop with a list and an entry box. You can enter the name of a site which you'd like to restrict (just the domain name (i.e. 'gamespy.com')) and hit 'add'. I believe wildcard characters are supported ('*.gamespy.com')..

Anyway, once you've filled the list with Flash-dripping sites, hit OK and choose the 'Custom Level' button under the "security settings for this zone". (make sure you're still under Restricted Sites!). From there, you can disable most every irritating browser 'innovation' out there, from Active Scripting (way down at the bottom of the list) to, yes, Flash ("Run ActiveX Controls and Plugins" should do the trick).

To see if the settings actually work, go to the site in question. Two things should happen:

1. Flash shouldn't play if you've turned it off
2. A little red icon will appear in the lower-left bit of the status bar where a globe usually is.

Proxomitron

[ehinojosa]

I'm fairly sure you'd be able to do teh job with Proxomitron if you are using windows. The program is a proxy that applies a series of rules to pages you download and modifies them accordingly, ie, if a page has a blink tag on it, it will replace the blink tag into a bold tag. It has the ability to apply certain rules only to certain sites, and allows you to create your own rulesets. Only thing I didn't like about the program was its rather loud interface (look at the screenshots on the linked page, you'll see what I mean) but otherwise it's a pretty good prog.