So... there's a set of conditions that you can get into with FF where the end result is that you may not be able to see any banners on a forum site.

For example, as I type this, I can't see the "shifting trucks" banner at the top of YT.

This is what's happening...

• You're running Firefox
• You're using a popular extension called "AdBlock"
• You're using an addon for AdBlock called "Adblock Filterset.G Updater"

If those 3 things are "true" for you, then you're not seeing banners at MANY MANY MANY forums.

The reason is that there is a filter in the G Updater that will blocking any images from a URL that contains the words "adv", "promo", "banner" or "banners". YT gets affected because of "banner".


What to do... Well, you can delete the specific filter from the filterset, but the auto updater will replace it the next time around.

Ideally, you should probably delete the filter, then disable the "auto" side of the auto updater.

Or better yet, I/you/we should convince the author of the filter set to take out the specific filter 'cause it's changing the look & feel of many web forums.


Anyway... that's my heads-up for the day!

 

The first two situations are true for me, but the last isn't. I'll have to tinker with Filterset.G Updater.

 

Yeah, that'll be the way for a lot of folks.

One thing that you can do is to "whitelist" the site where you find issues. That'll create an exception for the filter set.


The filter set is pretty cool.. there's a lot of regex magic going on. Check out cnn.com once you load it.

 

haha damn this website has a banner? wow, i didnt even know.

lol freakin firefox

oh well

 

BTW, Corey, if you want to make a couple of changes so that FireFox doesn't work it's "magic" and nuke the fancy rotating banner for some folks, let me know and I can send you a build that fixes the problem.

 

Thanks Rob, go ahead and send it my way when you get time.

 

Okay bonz... ease up on FF.

It's not an issue with FF, it's something that comes from FF being able to support plugins, and then that the plugin can support user defined filters, including complex regex expressions.

The same thing could happen to your Beloved IE if it could support regex based filters. But it can't - your only option is to "block popups" which it does, but not nearly as well as what's POSSIBLE using Adblock in Firefox.


I dunno that you're gonna be able to "fix" the issue here with a PHP change - it's getting blocked because it's being served from a folder named "banner", not so much as it's named "banner.php".

The easy "fix" for this is for folks to "whitelist" the site - right click on the "Adblock" tag in the FF frame and pick "whitelist this whole site". People may want to whitelist other sites as well.

 

I have even an easier fix Mark, but you do not want to hear it

Yeah, another IE lover

Yeah, I just fired up my copy of FF and I see the banner, but I have the browser stock, not modified in any way.

Wish there was an easeir way to fix this.

 

Right, because it's not an issue with FF.

Rob and I started to get into this in email yesterday, hence my "passionate lashing out".

I agree that there's an issue here, but it's not a fault or bug in FF. The issue comes from someone making use of the power that's provided in a plugin which is particular to FF. Tell me what IE would do if you told it to make sense of this:That's just one of 3 filters which will stop the banners from showing up here. its very unfair for people (Rob or otherwise) to be bashing FF just because it provides for a platform to have the power to make use of that.



If you go to the forum site of the author of the filter set for the plugin, you'll see that people have been complaining about it, but it's a Catch-22. On some sites you don't want to see banners and promos and ads, which can generally be identified by images (and php scripts) being served from folders named as such.

The suggested method for dealing with this is for people to whitelist the site. That option is part of the power of this plugin.

 

You know perfectly well I am not bashing on FF itself, but rather the whole "holier than thou" attitude it's zealots adopt.

"Take back the web", "The web on your terms", "Igniting the web", "Have it your way", and so on...

In my experience, TWICE now, I would use different tag lines;

"Freezes unexpectedly", "Won't completely uninstall", "View pages as the author never intended", "Block out the good as well as the bad", "Render perfectly good pages poorly because they contain tags that were deprecated yesterday".

It's just another brick in the wall Mark... yet another reason for me to NOT use FF and to think those who speak so highly of it just use it because they like to complain about IE, not because FF is actually any better or does things that differently.

 

You have mail with a fix Corey.

 

Thank you Rob.
New banner script is in place.

Firefox users, please confirm that Firefox is now showing the banner at the top if using the varibles that Mark had listed in his post at the top:

 

No problem. A bug is a bug, even if it's caused by an over zealous filter throwing the baby out with the bathwater

 

Yes, I can see the banner now.

 

Psssttt... don't say "banner"... it offends FireFox! Don't even think of the word or it might block you...



Banner!

 

Yeup... it gets around the filter.

Thanks guys!

 

Hopefully that filter doesn't get updated to include any of the terms I used... hahahhahahahah

So Mark, I am assuming you don't see the banner at the top of the WATTORA forum either?

 

Nope, it's there... it's served from "images". One filter is looking at the directory, another is looking for a file called (among other things "banner.???" so /images/wattora_banner passes.