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Google Chrome Now Has Resource-Blocking Adblock
MackieChan writes "It seems to have slipped under the radar, but Google Chrome now has resource-blocking abilities, and may have had the ability for some time. Using the 'beforeload' event on the document, an extension can now intercept resources from loading. Adblock for Chrome has already added it, and I expect the other 'ad-blocking' extensions have as well. Before you start praising Google, however, it's the WebKit team that deserves your credit; one Chromium developer responded to praise by stating '... thank Apple — they added it to WebKit, we just inherited it.' Firefox vs. Chrome just got a bit more exciting."
Well, you have to admire that the biggest online advertising corporation on the internet didn't pull out the ad blocking feature on it's own brand of webkit browser. Yes, Google is a corporation like any other, but at least they have a little respect for not pissing it's costumers off. I think a lot of companies in the same position would have made it so their browser ADDED ads.
The same people (person?) that make Adblock for Chrome also make Adblock for Safari (5.0+) Since the feature was ported from Webkit into Chrome, I wonder if Safari has the same ability.
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
A Slashdot story with impeccable grammar? Something doesn't feel right.
Yes! Now I can consider swapping ... before, AdBlock didn't protect my woeful Australian 3G quota.
I still use Firefox because it's familiar to me and I haven't come across any features in Chrome that make me want to learn the idiosyncrasies of a new piece of software. Chrome is pretty slick, though.
Isn't enough that I ruined a pony, making a gift for you?
Incorrect. Chrome can't run NoScript.
And before you say, "Chrome lets you control JavaScript execution, blah blah blah," yes it does at a very coarse level. NoScript is much more fine-grained, and provides substitute scripts for sites that "need" to run crap from google-analytics et al.
It looks like this functionality may bring NoScript that much closer to Chrome.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
It doesn't catch every single resource -- ad blocking plugins for Chrome admit that it won't catch everything and still has to just hide some ads. And it's not nearly powerful enough for NoScript to work.
So there is still no Firefox vs. Chrome/Chromium. Firefox still leads, big time, because of this issue.
I'm rooting for Chrome/Chromium/Webkit to get proper blocking abilities, because it's great otherwise. But until they can do what's necessary to get true blocking, I won't use it.
Apple is closely involved with Webkit (it's the backend Safari uses), and this feature that made better ad-blocking possible was contributed by Apple. So it's not entirely random.
Its meta-commented Apple because of the last part of the summery:
one Chromium developer responded to praise by stating '... thank Apple — they added it to WebKit, we just inherited it.' Firefox vs Chrome just got a bit more exciting.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
I migrated from Opera. I sorta miss the complexity, but Chrome starts simple, and lets you make it complex.
Guns don't kill people, "with glowing hearts" kills people.
There are some options for Youtube downloading on Chrome.
https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/bdokagampppgbnjfdlkfpphniapiiifn
The ______ Agenda
Really it isn't the complexity, but the small differences in what happens when I open new tabs, type things into the address bar, etc. Even in places where I like Chrome's UI better, I just can't get motivated to adjust to a new browser. I admit it's mostly just laziness on my part, like most people I am a creature of habit, and am loathe to change them without a pretty compelling reason.
Isn't enough that I ruined a pony, making a gift for you?
Looking here we can see that, for 2009, Google made 23,651 million in revenue. Considering that 22,889 of those millions were from advertising, you have to wonder how long google will tolerate ad blocking in their products. Sure, it is fine now as not many people use chrome, and even fewer of those people install an ad blocking plug-in, but what about if it becomes more popular? Will they still tolerate it then? One wonders what would happen to google if Microsoft decided to make ad blocking default in Internet Explorer.
You seem to be assuming that the user wants to run each and every script on the pages they encounter... this is not the case.
One of the main reasons to use Noscript is to avoid scripts that are not designed with your best interest in mind.
You can't take the sky from me.
A few reasons for Firefox:
- NoScript: mostly to block potentially malicious active elements like Flash and Java. Better safe than sorry, especially with Adobe products.
- CookieSafe: Fine grained control over cookies.
- RefControl: Blocks referrers for selected sites. I don't need to stuff tracking information down everyone's throat, especially not YouTube (embedded videos).
- Xmarks: Lets you synchronize your bookmarks using your own HTTPS protected WebDAV share.
- FoxyProxy Standard: Use different proxies for different sites
- Redirector: Rewrite http:/// links into https:/// links for selected sites that don't default to https.
- Web Developer: Dissect web pages.
Is all this available in Chrome* browsers already?
You are trolling, right? I'm WHOOSHING right now, right? I have to be, surely.
There's no way anyone could be so fucking stupid as to believe that people use NoScript due to javascript execution time. No-one...surely...
First, NoScript does much more than just block JavaScript.
Second, NoScript makes it possible to restrict JavaScript based on the originating domain; that means I can enable JavaScript for e.g. forums.bioware.com and deny for e.g. ea.com. When I visit forums.bioware.com it will not load scripts from ea.com and I can still have a snappy experience on forums.bioware.com. (Ea.com is, for some reason, a slow piece of shit.)
HAND.
No, but you haven't done your homework at all. Google Chrome comes with an integrated version similar (yes, it's got a long way to go, but it's still pretty good) to Web Developer. And then there's Switchy! instead of FoxyProxy. And I wrote my own version of Redirector for Chrome. Oh, Xmarks? What's that? Google Chrome has that integrated into it, logging you in to your Google account, storing yout bookmarks on Google, etc.
Thank you for trolling Slashdot, have a nice day!
Yes, it's sarcasm. Deal with it!
Yeah, and there are certainly places where FF is better than chrome -- e.g., both have similar "awesome bar" things, but FF's is hugely faster and better at coming up with appropriate matches than chrome's. This is not a small issue for me -- I've come to rely on the AB instead of using bookmarks (chrome's "blank page menu" thing is more user-friendly, but vastly more limiting).
I use both browsers -- FF at home, where my machine has lots of memory, and chrome at work, where memory restrictions make the ability to reclaim memory by closing tabs hugely convenient (though, despite that convenience, chrome seem to actually use a fair bit more memory than FF for equivalent tasks) -- so I think I have a generally balanced view of the two.
I'd say that although chrome is a slick browser with some really nice features (process-per-tab being the obvious one), it's kind of over-hyped in general, and it's hardly unambiguously better than FF (as many comments in this thread seem to be suggesting). Both are great browsers, and both will get better in the future; google's made it clear that they've no problem with FF stealing chrome's best features, and indeed hopes they do.
We live, as we dream -- alone....
Xmarks lets you store bookmarks wherever you want instead of where Google wants. Plus, it's cross-browser.
Oh, and not everyone you disagree with is a troll.
HAND.
Is everyone ever going to make an adblock-alike which, rather than "blocking" ads, just prioritizes them differently so I don't need to wait for fifty ads to load before I can view actual page content? I really don't mind ads. I'm okay with them. I don't want to block them, and I think people who do block them are assholes. But I don't want to wait for them.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
The developer tools for chrome has really caught up with firebug in the past year or so, it may even be the equivalent of firebug right now and it's built in.
i hate to sound like Kyle Reese, but this is how it happens:
July 2010, Apple adds ad-blocking to WebKit.
it makes its way slowly into most popular web browsers cutting off the revenue stream for content publishers on the internet.
those publishers make a move onto one of several closed platforms originally designed for mobile platforms.
after an initial intense fight, a single closed platform dominates. the others fade away.
internet use drops significantly. only free content is available on it, and the mainstream views it increasingly as a refuge for subversives. most households disconnect.
April 3rd, 2017: the internet backbone is shut down.
premium content and visiting traffic moves predominantly to the closed platform.
Do you still have to use some behind the curve hacked version to keep all your data from being sent to Google? Because Google's data mining and installing "updaters" that refuse to uninstall with the app made it a non starter for me. Does it have an easy way to allow some scripts but not others? A FEBE style backup? Imagezoom? Something like iMacros that makes automating the things I do trivial? A downloadhelper that will put videos in folder a and executables in folder b?
While Chrome has the buzz right now, too many things like data mining made me uncomfortable with it. And FF is simple enough with its extension framework that even my 67 year old clueless dad has his FF customized. I know everyone talks about its JavaScript engine, but seeing how many "malware o' the day" uses JavaScript I'd prefer NOT to load a bunch of unapproved JavaScript really fast, thanks anyway. And side by side I really can tell a difference anyway, as both load a page as fast as I can click. So while I wish anything that isn't IE the best of luck, for me and my customers it'll be FF for the foreseeable future.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I installed Privoxy. Doesn't matter which browser I use now.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Xmarks has a Chrome version. I use it to stay synchronized between FireFox and Chrome.
A latent existence
there already exist pages that will not load the genuine content until the page actually responds with verification that the ad content has loaded in the browser
the ad content will say send a code via ajax back to the server: "i'm now alive in the browser, showing dancing mortgage seekers... ok send the article"
if enough people block ads, this will be the norm
i'm annoyed by intrusive ads and interstitials and articles broken out over 15 pages like everyone else, but the publisher needs to make cash to keep publishing the content you want, and they will feel the pressure to escalate the arms race. hopefully they will understand their ads shouldn't be too intrusive, but its been my experience that sites where the ads are too intrusive are sites without any content worth my time anyways
you don't really have to block ads, you just have to find quality sites
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What you're describing is exactly how this new adblocker (as Firefox's adblocker always has) works: it blocks the ads *before* the browser tries to fetch them. So no fetch, no DNS request.
And the HOSTS file is more insecure as a solution because it either:
1) Has no update mechanism
or
2) Has update mechanism that depends on a daemon that requires access to the internet *and* access to important files like HOSTS.
While this adblocker only requires access to browser profile files.
Dilbert RSS feed
I can't switch until Chrome duplicates the Firefox cookie controls. Say what you want about the speed but Chrome still has the worst cookie controls of any of the major browsers.
So, if Google makes a good ad blocking system that is included by default, many people will just use that. That means they can control what it does, and what defaults it has. Thus maybe by default it only blocks annoying ads. It stops interstitials, animated crap, popups/unders and so on. However it permits text ads and simple banner ads, which is what Google does. So people say "Ahh this is nice, the Internet isn't annoying," and don't go looking for anything else, or even adjusting the settings.
You have to remember many people don't hate ads, what they hate is ANNOYING ads. I personally don't mind ads, sometimes they are even interesting. I don't run ad block because I appreciate sites need to make money. However I do run Flashblock because I hate annoying ads and that's what they usually are. I hate ads that interrupt my browsing, or that put a heavy load on my system. So an adblock software that just blocks the annoying shit would be ok in my book.
If they include nothing, people have to look elsewhere. Maybe what they get is an app written by a "No ads at all ever," kind of zealot that just straight blocks everything, including Google. that hurts them, of course.
As such by being pragmatic about it, they can have a measure of control over it. If they just try to pretend it doesn't exist, they may get something they don't want.
Not really. The script debugger is so-so (I still prefer Firebug's, but Chrome's is ok), the resource tracker is nice, but Chrome's DOM inspector is terrible. The interface for modifying DOM properties is klunky, and on Firebug I can assign a shortcut to toggle the click-to-inspect feature, which I really miss on Chrome - it makes me click the button to toggle click-to-inspect, alt-tab to the webpage window, and the select the element to inspect. It's convoluted.
Behind the curve? I'm on Linux, which was always the poor cousin in the early days, and Chromium is ahead of the curve because it is the development version (I'm running 6.0.457.0 and saw a site that said I didn't have a "latest version" of Chrome or Firefox the other day because it said they didn't official support development builds).
If you don't want me to see your site for free, don't put it on the internet.
I want free content without ads. I'm more than willing to let sites die if they can't provide me with this. Life is too short to subject yourself to unnecessary advertising. I create free web content without ads, so I put my effort where my mouth is. Hmm, that doesn't sound right...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It may shock some people, but there was an Internet (and a web) before there were commercially supported websites.
It was smaller, but it worked just fine. In fact, it worked beautifully. Many of us want it back.
And that's adblock's MAIN problem: It's limited to single browsers only, and doesn't cover other programs that are also potentially threatened by bad sites or scripts even such as email programs that use HTML, like Outlook etc.
Using daemons?? Not needed in HOSTS files. Where do you get your misinformation from???
Also, to update adblock???? You also need internet access also!
Oh my, is apk still around? Aren't you getting bored of spreading your hosts file nonsense?
(Disclaimer: Yes, I know who that guy is and that discussion is futile. I am bored. Let me poke the troll. Brightens up the day every time.)
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
Do you still have to use some behind the curve hacked version to keep all your data from being sent to Google? Because Google's data mining and installing "updaters" that refuse to uninstall with the app made it a non starter for me.
Erm, it's called Chromium, and it's kinda more ahead of the curve than behind it, since it's what Chrome is based upon. (Google just adds its data-mining crap to the OSS Chromium code base in order to release Chrome.) So if you use Chromium, you get all of the good stuff and none of the Google rubbish. It's also worth remembering that Chromium's sandboxing of tabs provides some level of security against web malware exploits, even if it can't replace all that noscript offers.
But I've got no dispute with your other comments. And until Chromium makes --enable-vertical-tabs work under linux, it'll never replace Firefox for me in a million years. It's a viable browser alternative for the less computer-literate, though, and I often wish Firefox had the lithe memory footprint of Chromium, rather than one of a giant elephantine beast ...