Catartis

Adblock in Firefox 1.0.6 and Infringement Issues

As many users of Firefox are sadly aware, one of the most popular extensions, Adblock, is not functioning properly in builds later than 1.0.4.

This issue came to my attention immediately after a reformat of my system. I happily grabbed the latest stable version of Firefox and proceeded to begin re-adding my favorite extensions. Adblock was at the top of the list with WebDeveloper Toolbar, EditCSS, IEView and several tabbed browsing options. Alas, no AdBlock surfaced for me.

Heading over to the Mozilla/Firefox forums, I found much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the lack of functionality in 1.0.6. “Please bring it back!” was ringing in the hallways.

A workaround/hack was suggested in the lists of moans. Along with it were warnings about attempting to use Adblock *as is* in the current browser. Some seemed to be having problems with it, others swore all was well on their ends.

Warnings be damned. I was trying that fix. I have become an Adblock addict and have no intention of repenting my evil ways.

After proceeding with the suggestions, I closed Firefox, reopened and poof! Adblock was up and running. Yippee! Right? Wrong!

With no other changes to my system, I started to experience odd issues almost immediately. Since this issue arose nearly three weeks ago and I did not take notes at the time, I am unable to document the list of little things that went wrong at the time, but uninstalling the extension repaired them immediately. I sadly resigned myself to wait for a properly updated version.

Until this morning…

While waiting for *someone* to finish preparations to depart for the airport, I was killing time checking a few quick things on my eternal to do list. One of those items was to check for Adblock updates. No luck on that front. Seems the developers are busily working on a version for the next generation of Firefox and current users are out of luck for now. Wait for bigger and better? BooHoo & tap, tap, tap.

Off to the airport and back again. After a bit of the meditative ritual of weeding, watering and picking in the garden before the heat of the day sets in, I was back at the computer and into the Firefox forums to read a bit more regarding changes and estimated timelines for Adblock.

By following a few links, I landed in an article from princeton.edu discussing the blocking of ads on websites and potential copyright infringement.

Anyone who knows me also knows that I have an interest in protecting intellectual properties, both on an offline, which began in one of my “past/pre-internet lives.” I take potential infringement seriously and tread lightly on any sort of involvement of my own.

This morning, I found it extremely humorous that I would find a potential solution to my ad blocking woes in the comments on this article. And to ice the cake, it involves using one of the accessibility features in Firefox. (Web accessibility and giving users control over how things display for them is another well known soapbox of mine… just as my students.)

I was immediately digging into my Firefox profile to add this snippet in an existing or newly created userContent.css file.

So far so good! I have only had this preference adjustment on my system for a few minutes, but in a quick visit to some of the sites which I consider the worst offenders in the blinking, throbbing and generally annoying *in your face* advertisements (e.g. Yahoo TV listings), I am happy to report that ads have vanished. Ease of use is even greater than using Adblock!

I did run by a couple of sites I know use Flash in a non-advertising mode (one of which was an old Flash course posting of my own) and all .swf files on those are coming through loud and clear for me.

More wandering and watching to see the effects of this change are absolutely necessary, but as of this morning, I am doing an ad free happy dance! If that changes, I will repost regarding problems here… or in the moved, and hopefully improved, version of this blog. I swear that is on this week’s list. It is! It is!

Is a website with ads removed on your personal system a derivative work? Does it qualify as an infringement on the owner's rights by reducing their per click income (yes) and put the end user in violation of the law? Or is it choice users should be able to make on their own systems since the amended version is never published for public view? I am not sure. It does not seem so to me. For now, I am being naughty and will continue to ignore the possibility of my offence and happily dance off into to a more pleasant personal browsing experience.

TaTa! No more time for idle chatter. Time to dance, once again in ad free glee.

Farron & bored with it all _^..^_

Firefox 1.0 Released Today!

Press release from Mozilla:

Mozilla Firefox 1.0 Released - MozillaZine

It's here! Read their release.

Nuff said by me.

Farron

Styles for Small Screen Rendering

There is an interesting article at ALA regarding small screen rendering.

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/pocket/

I was enjoying the section about Opera and stylesheets for the small screen in particular.

Here's a quote from the start of that section:

"Opera works under the assumption that most web pages are not designed for handhelds. If "fit to screen" is enabled, which it is by default on most devices, author styles are ignored and pages are reformatted for the small screen unless the page has a style sheet specifically aimed at handhelds."

Now I need to go check out some of the included links and see what information I can dig up on other browsers. Have to say though, if I were to break down and buy one of those "electronic leashes" I have been so stubbornly avoiding, I think I would have to grab Opera as my small screen browser of choice. They appear to have really been working hard to fine tune for that market.

Opera & Small Screen Rendering
http://www.opera.com/products/smartphone/smallscreen/

Back to more reading ... after dinner. That is an all important time at the Cathouse, you know.

Farron & One Hungry _^..^_

Lose messIE! Browse Happy!

For some reason, I had not noticed the Browse Happy Campaign at WaSP

I am jumping on that band wagon by adding a button link to my sidebar here

and by running over and finding a spot on the classroom pages which release to our students tonight to add a larger, more *in your face* version. Maybe even the big, blinky one? haha

_^..^_ and I are trying to work to change the web, one student at a time.

Now if I'd just clean up this lil mess over here and get it moved to the spot where I am working on a more current, standards driven layout. One that looks better, too. lol

What a difference a year or so can make in the way you like to code, huh?

That's all for now!

Farron and that _^..^_