the

Adblock

project

What is it?

Adblock is a content filtering plug-in for the Mozilla and Firebird browsers. It is both more robust and more precise than the built-in image blocker.

Adblock allows the user to specify filters, which remove unwanted content based on the source-address. If this sounds complicated, don't worry: it's not.

Just add a few filters. Every time a webpage loads, Adblock will intercept and disable the elements matching your filters. See?- nothing to it.

Great! ...but how do I add filters?

After you install / restart, an Adblock-item will be present in the tools-menu. This will launch Adblock's prefs:


A selected filter can be edited by double-clicking or pressing 'enter'. To remove it, press 'delete'. New filters can also be added here or directly in the web-page: just right-click an ad and choose the Adblock option. For plugins, an Adblock-tab will appear atop or below the media: just click the "Adblock" text.

[Note: if you encounter a plugin, but don't see the Adblock-tab, don't worry -- the plugin is just cropped. Adblock has this covered. Choose "Overlay Flash" from the tools-menu, or type its shortcut. Now, you can directly click the overlay.]

Adblock supports two types of filters: simple, and Regular Expression.

A simple-filter is just a string of text with one or more wildcards (*). Regular expressions are much more complex, allowing precise control over filtering. In Adblock, as in all javascript, regular expressions must begin and end with the forward-slash: '/'. This page doesn't have enough space to include a RegExp tutorial, so for more info, head here.

Here's a few examples of simple-filtering:

• Blocking all gif-images: .gif
• Blocking all content served from Doubleclick: doubleclick.net
• Blocking the contents of an ad-directory: http://example.com/ads/

In Development

The latest dev-branch already includes:

• Blocking filtered-items before they load
• Listing all block-able items in a page
• One-click filtering of: applets, flash, embedded-media
• Hassle-free deinstall.

And we're targeting these items for future builds:

• Bayesian probability analysis, for minimal-interation blocking
• Filter Grouping by Host (regexp)
• Flash-Click-To-View functionality

Contact

Any comments, suggestions, bugreports, sites that can not be filtered are very welcome. Just drop a line to the forum.