[Roadmap] Make tracking filter an option in ABP

[chewey]

I'll try to revive an idea that came up when we started talking about separating tracking filters from the rest:

Including the tracking filter in ABP's UI.

I believe the tracking filter has reached a certain maturity by now (even if there are still a couple of new
entries per week), and I'm pretty sure a lot of ABP's users would be glad to use it - if they knew about it.

So I'd like to propose adding a checkbox in the subscriptions dialogue, something like "[x] block known web
trackers". This would add a tracking filter subscription.

[rick752]

Actually Wladimir ... Chewey's suggestion is probably not a bad idea at all. It gives a whole new sense of 'use' for ABP. To my knowledge, there is really nothing out there to block most tracking.

Chewey, Reve, and myself have been doing a pretty good job on building the ABP Tracking Filter on my forum (much thanx to Reve on my forum as he has done more work on this lately than myself and others combined).

The Tracking Filter may not be perfect yet ... but it is definitely a great start. Good enough I think to warrant really telling people about. With all the news lately about web bugs, privacy invasion and stats-gathering .... using ABP as a tracking-blocker could become really big - really fast. Don't you think? It could really boost ABP's credibility and flexibility.

Even users who are not interested in blocking ads may use ABP just to block tracking. I use only that subscription in Thunderbird ... no 'pings' in my mail. It makes me feel a lot better about using HTML mail than before I installed it. I have not received any newer type of junk mail since (I still keep getting the "same old" though).

Looking back, I think that the decision to separate 'trackers' from the ad lists was a very good one ... wouldn't you say Chewey?

[chewey]

Looking back, I think that the decision to separate 'trackers' from the ad lists was a very good one ... wouldn't you say Chewey?

Definitely. It made maintaining my own list easier, as I now can be specific about what to block: ads only.
Before that, I usually added trackers to my list when I noticed them, but did not really look for them explicitly.
This made the behaviour of my list a bit inconsistent.

Oh, and while we are at reviving things - what about
http://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1207 ?

[rick752]

Oh, and while we are at reviving things - what about
http://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1207 ?

Yeah, I noticed that in the last release. I just didn't want to bring it up to Wladimir that he missed it because I know that he was (is) very busy.

[IceDogg]

Is it not currently listed with the other selectable subs? Is that what your talking about? Having it added to those? If so then I say it's a good idea to add it there, but not to have it's own area or anything like that as it would then get confusing. IMHO Sorry if I'm misunderstanding what your saying.

Edit: ok, just looked an it's not one you can add there, so I assume this is what your talking about. Adding it to the subs list in the UI itself, instead of going to another page. Correct?

[Wladimir Palant]

chewey, could you file a bug about http://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1207?

Yes, I think we should add Tracking filter as an option. I just have to think how this should look like in the UI.

[chewey]

chewey, could you file a bug about http://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1207?

Done, Bug 17190.