Blocks from downloading ads or just displaying them?

Everything about using Adblock Plus on Safari
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tilt
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Mar 01, 2016 12:12 pm

Blocks from downloading ads or just displaying them?

Post by tilt »

Hi,

Sorry if this is a stupid question - please bear with me.

Does AdBlockPlus (or others like it) actually prevent the ads or other trackers/analytics etc. from even being downloaded on each web page or do they just prevent them from being displayed on my screen?

The reason I ask is, I have read (please correct me if I am wrong) that a web page with even minimal actual content weighs many megabytes due to all these trackers and ads and analytics thingies; and actually costs me bandwidth that i am paying for. If these apps prevent them from actually being downloaded at all, then I save on bandwidth and also may expect webpages to be downloaded in a much speedier fashion; removing the need for me to pay more and more for a faster and faster connection just to see all these annoyances!

Thanks and cheers
lewisje
Posts: 2743
Joined: Mon Jun 14, 2010 12:07 pm

Re: Blocks from downloading ads or just displaying them?

Post by lewisje »

Blocking filters (url pattern followed possibly by $ and a list of options) do cause ABP to block content.

Hiding filters (## followed by a CSS selector and possibly preceded by a list of domains) cause ABP to hide content, and are recommended either in addition to blocking filters or in cases (like inline text ads) where there is no network request to block.

This is the very question I had when I joined these forums five and a half years ago, and it took me digging into the code to realize what was going on (the key words are nsIContentPolicy for Firefox and webRequest for Chrome, though I'm not sure how they do it in Safari).
There's a buzzin' in my brain I really can't explain; I think about it before they make me go to bed.
tilt
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Mar 01, 2016 12:12 pm

Re: Blocks from downloading ads or just displaying them?

Post by tilt »

Lewis, thank you for the prompt response. :)

I am afraid I am not a technical person and therefore your answer went completely over my head. Would you be able to dumb it down in pure layman's terms for me if you don't mind please?

I do not know whether the filters are blocking or hiding. All I did was to check mark all the boxes in the first screen. I am attaching a screenshot here for your reference.

OK, I am unable to attach a screenshot. Let me see if I can describe what I did:

In the first tab of the Options screen (Filter Lists), I enabled all the lists; I did not add any filter subscriptions, and I unchecked the option for non-intrusive advertising. That's all I did. Nothing else.

With that in mind, could you rephrase your answer please?

Thanks and cheers
lewisje
Posts: 2743
Joined: Mon Jun 14, 2010 12:07 pm

Re: Blocks from downloading ads or just displaying them?

Post by lewisje »

In my response, I was describing what you would see if you looked at the ABP subscriptions themselves: They are plain-text files, and each line is either a comment or a filter.

The short answer is that ABP does block ads from downloading.
There's a buzzin' in my brain I really can't explain; I think about it before they make me go to bed.
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