@Michael3185:

I agree with you on BFilter being a good [and free] ad blocking solution! It's really bad that the project has been abandoned. I tried it and Privoxy as well as the old proxomitron and I think BFilter is the most flexible among the three because of the javascript filtering it offers.

The Gecko engine makes it possible for AdBlockPlus to deny requests. There is a code in the Gecko engine that makes it decide whether to accept or deny a request to load the data. AdBlockPlus just adds its list to Gecko's own and that blocks the ads.

I'd like to work on the BFilter project one day, after I learn how to do code for C++. It would be nice to get that back to its feet.

I haven't tried playing with its Javascript filtering, as I don't know what needs blocking with that kind of functionality. If you have an example perhaps you could post one?

As to it being abandoned, I don't see it that way really. It works, and I can't think of anything else it would need, so perhaps the author just got bored and moved on to other things? I did use a resource modification tool to try and resize some of the dialogs, but it gives an error message saying the resources are packed and can't be changed. I may have a look at what compiles it and download the source code.

Aha. Just looked up Gecko Engine. So whatever Chrome uses doesn't have the ability to block data requests. Strange; I'd have thought that a basic requirement these days. Oh well. I wonder why some intrepid programmer doesn't modify the Chromium source code to include it..?

Edit: I just got BFilter's source code, and have added one of the ReadMe files which lists what free compiler tools are used to build it. (Gone a bit OT in this thread I think..!) Holy cow. Some of the compiler downloads are a few megs, but one required by the free Visual Studio is 366MB! Erm, I think BFilter's dialogs can stay as they are.

Thanks DeVars! I (with great remorse) uninstalled the poor abandoned Adsweep. I am happy to announce, that this works as well as Adsweep in my experience and am looking forward to improvements. The first one (I don't know how hard this is, because nothing seems to be able to stop it!) are the Gmail ads. But I must keep the useful links. Keep up the good work DeVars, and I hope that this gets featured on the blog! (Hint, hint, nudge, nudge.... :-) )

@Michael3185:
Here is one of the search and replace filters I use with BFilter:

Search Window:

Code:

/\s*(?:<td>\s*)?(<a[^>]+?)(href="[^"]+?")(.*?<\/a>)(?:<\/td>\s*)?\s*/

Replace Window:

Code:

var reIndex = arguments[2].lastIndexOf("http://");
if (reIndex > 6) {
    var newHref = arguments[2].substring(reIndex);
    return arguments[1] + 'href="' + newHref + arguments[3];
}

Some of the links in webpages I visited contain detours to ad sites like doubleclick.net -- and when you click this link and have doubleclick.net blocked, you'd get an empty page. What this filter does is take out the detour link and replace it with the link straight to the page it should be pointing to. (I think it just works with doubleclick because of the link format. It has some caveats but I still like how it helps me skip the trouble of getting blank pages.)

@XCFan:
Thanks for the support, XCFan! The next (Fiddler Crab) release will be coming up soon! It's on the testing phase. Just like the name says, the Fiddler Crab lets you fiddle and add filters so you could customize CrAB to kill the GMail ads! I'll also look into it and post filters that would be helpful.

Hehe - that just went 'zoooom', right over my head deVars! I haven't noticed any links going to blank pages, so am not sure what you mean. And regex stuff does my head in!

Oh, sorry about that. . . let's try it again with pictures

Code:

+----------+          +----------+          +-----------+ 
|          |          |          |          |page that  |
| link     |    -->   |  adSite  |  -->     |is supposed|
|          |          |          |          |to load    |
+----------+          +----------+          +-----------+

Some links are like this on the webpages I visited.

When you have the adSite blocked on your filter, all you'd get would be a blank page. (since BFilter replaces pages from a blocked site with a blank one, or gives your browser a "page not found" error) That would mean you won't be able to get to the real page without making a visit to the adSite first.

The filter above replaces the link with another so that:

Code:

+----------+               +-----------+ 
|          |               |page that  |
| link     |       -->     |is supposed|
|          |               |to load    |
+----------+               +-----------+

Cool. I'll paste it in and let it work when it needs to. Thanks!

Do you have a URL I can test it on to make sure I've entered it in the right place?

Originally Posted by deVars

Oh, sorry about that. . . let's try it again with pictures

Code:

+----------+          +----------+          +-----------+ 
|          |          |          |          |page that  |
| link     |    -->   |  adSite  |  -->     |is supposed|
|          |          |          |          |to load    |
+----------+          +----------+          +-----------+

Some links are like this on the webpages I visited.

When you have the adSite blocked on your filter, all you'd get would be a blank page. (since BFilter replaces pages from a blocked site with a blank one, or gives your browser a "page not found" error) That would mean you won't be able to get to the real page without making a visit to the adSite first.

The filter above replaces the link with another so that:

Code:

+----------+               +-----------+ 
|          |               |page that  |
| link     |       -->     |is supposed|
|          |               |to load    |
+----------+               +-----------+

Hey, i actually have this problem with bfilter can you tell me where and how i edit the code?

@amedeus:

Right-click on BFilter's icon > Configuration > Filters

From there you can create a new filter and put in those codes.

Oh, almost forgot. . .
the "If" block in mine has

Code:

_HTML_OR_XHTML_

on it so it only activates on HTML or XHTML pages.

Originally Posted by Michael3185

Cool. I'll paste it in and let it work when it needs to. Thanks!

Do you have a URL I can test it on to make sure I've entered it in the right place?

I am not sure. I have that code for so long that I'd forgotten which pages it activates. Sorry.