Filed under: Internet Tools, Open Source, Leopard
Safari 3 AdBlock
I know some folks have been looking for an AdBlock plugin for Safari that works with Leopard's Safari v3. The excellent Pith Helmet ($10) is now Leopard compatible, but the relatively new Safari AdBlock is open source and free. It's pretty much install and forget. The most recent version also includes initial support for AdBlock Plus style lists as well.
Safari AdBlock is a free download from sourceforge and is Leopard-only.
Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Jacqui said 10:55AM on 12-10-2007
I am honestly mystified as to why you guys post about ad blocking software, when your site is run by ad revenue. Ad blockers are probably part of the reason you guys aren't paid more to write good content.
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sterling said 11:11AM on 12-10-2007
That's actually the sign of decent journalism. They aren't bowing to there advertisers.
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kbv136 said 11:13AM on 12-10-2007
I never used an ad blocker before about 5 minutes ago... man was I missing out. But I do agree with them ^ there.
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Galley said 11:30AM on 12-10-2007
I generally don't block ads, unless they are really annoying.
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dr said 12:16AM on 12-11-2007
...then this plugin is not for you.
Rhywun said 11:44AM on 12-10-2007
I block every single ad I can. I cannot stand the things. People don't feel guilty for walking out of the room or changing the channel when ads appear on television. Why should I feel guilty for disabling ads on web pages that I'm never going to look at? Plus, if your revenue model depends completely on annoying your users, it's time to find another way to make money.
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Sam said 10:45PM on 12-10-2007
"People don't feel guilty for walking out of the room or changing the channel when ads appear on television. Why should I feel guilty for disabling ads on web pages that I'm never going to look at?"
Because they are completely different things.
1. "Changing the channel" can be compared to going to a different site if you don't like site #1's ads. Blocking the ads is completely different.
2. "Walking out of the room" is fine, because the ad still probably got some branding into your brain on your way out or back into the room. Most of what ads are for are to make their products feel more familiar to you when you go to make a buying choice later.
3. The television stations pay the same amount whether you watch their ads or not. Websites pay by bandwidth, so you really are "stealing" from them if you visit them but block their means of revenue.
"Plus, if your revenue model depends completely on annoying your users, it's time to find another way to make money."
If you find it so annoying, go watch TV or listen to the radio, old timer. If you want to participate, you should have to pay the price. Obviously these sites have something you want if you're here commenting, so maybe you should pay for it.
Blaze said 11:48AM on 12-10-2007
I'd like to maintain my own filter list thanks.
Get Safariblock instead.
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zebrum said 11:48AM on 12-10-2007
Its good to have an alternative but I tried it and it didn't block all ads. Pith Helmet works really well on Leopard and even blocks video ads between flash videos on sites like thestreet.com also you can easily make rules by a simple right click to block a page.
Stop crying, ad blockers don't block page view revenue! They simply hide them after they have loaded. No problem there and its not like you are going to click them anyway.
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Sean Hussey said 12:16PM on 12-10-2007
There's also this:
http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/
Talk about set it and forget it. Works for all browsers, no plugins needed.
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Aaron Gyes said 12:42PM on 12-10-2007
At the expense of crappy network latency. Everything that looks in hosts is generally expecting 5-10 lines, and using a hack like this really slows a number of things down. Every single time a host is looked up by anything, unless cached already, it will need to be compared against everything in the hosts list. It's a big nasty hack. You're also sending yourself a million HTTP requests that just time out.
brian said 1:24PM on 12-10-2007
I *love* custom /etc/hosts files. Here's another:
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm
I've run these for years and never noticed any network speed problems. I've got Apache running with several VHOSTS; the default site is a very light "Nothing to see here" which I *love* seeing in pages that use iframes to serve ads. :-)
brian said 1:35PM on 12-10-2007
PS: even if there is a slowdown, you're talking about fractions of a second, compared to *many* seconds saved by not downloading tons of ads. Overall, it's very much a net gain. (Note that this is actually a reply to Aaron, but TUAW only lets me reply to Sean, which I'm doing to keep these comments close to Aaron's.)
Sean Hussey said 1:48PM on 12-10-2007
@Aaron: http requests that are quickly ignored if you don't have a web server running on port 80. But even if not, I don't find it to be a big deal.
To add to brian's comment, I find that with all of the Flash ads out there, I've got to restart Safari fairly often if I'm not blocking them. Safari is still a memory hog, but the Flash ads can be a CPU hog. A few milliseconds here or there is negligible compared to the restart time of Safari with saved tabs.
Aaron Gyes said 4:09PM on 12-10-2007
OK, I'll give you the fact that any speed problems are probably better than downloading the ads. I still insist it is cleaner to have the browser check URLs against it's own list instead of all connections on everything hitting up 127.0.0.1.
Or an iptables rule that DROPs the connections outright.
Jon said 12:27PM on 12-10-2007
"They simply hide them after they have loaded."
Not all of them. Adblock Plus doesn't load them if they're in the filter list. It wouldn't make much difference anyway because most advertisers pay when someone clicks on an ad, not just when it is displayed.
I installed an ad blocker to combat annoying Flash ads. It's really distracting when you're trying to read a page of text and there's something flashing, moving or playing sounds in the corner. I was also very annoyed by the fact that if a page failed to load or the browser crashed, 9 times out of 10 it was due to ads.
So, advertisers: stop trying to trick or annoy us and we will not block your ads. I think Google's ads are good because they're relevant and non-obtrusive.
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sk8rpro said 12:46PM on 12-10-2007
Why, oh, why is it Leopard-only? I have Tiger with Safari 3, and I want an adblocker.
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dvd said 12:49PM on 12-10-2007
SafariBlock worked fine with Tiger and Safari 3. Works fine with Leopard and Safari 3, too.
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TechRightGuy said 1:18PM on 12-10-2007
How did you get SafariBlock (the best, BTW) to work in Leopard? I've had no luck on any of my 3 Macs, and assumed it was due to the demise of InputManagers...?
Joakim Nyg? said 12:49PM on 12-10-2007
Though it might not work in all cases, the CSS-based adblocker from floppymoose.com is guaranteed not to break anything - it simply tells your browser not to display certain types of images. It's a simple solution that works really well.
http://www.floppymoose.com/
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