Suggestions to significantly improve ABP 3.0.2
Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2018 11:02 pm
The user interface to the revised ABP is considerably inferior to the old pre-quantum UI. The following things need to be improved to make this a reasonable tool.
1: Provide keyboard shortcuts to initiate the block element feature, cancel selection (<Esc>), and perform all other tasks without having to access the pop-up menu. This is critical, not only for efficiency, but because a) the pop-up menu blocks elements on the page and is a pain to have to dismiss, and b) there are pop-up site elements that disappear when the mouse is moved to access the ABP menu and you can not get them redisplayed while ABP selection is in force.
2: Add the ability to 'w'iden and 'n'arrow the element selection. Right now, you can typically only access the innermost of stacked elements (whole screen overlays are but one good example) and it takes 2, 3, or 4 consecutive attempts to finally block the offending element. With 'w' and 'n' options as we once had, this could quickly be done in a single step.
3: The yellow highlight does not align with the element being selected. It is positioned shifted to the right of the element which is confusing. What was wrong with the old outline method?
4: Bring back the keyboard shortcut to blink or otherwise mark all effected elements; something which can be used prior to committing to the block.
5: Provide an immediate undo option (with keyboard shortcut) to restore the last blocked element.
6: The ability to edit the block list is inconvenient to access and hard to use. It provides no integrated search or sorting mechanisms. A decent editor should work like Firefox's about:config page, allowing sub-selection display based upon what is typed into the search field. And to eliminate editing mistakes, it should be possible to select whole elements in the list and then delete them as a unit rather than relying upon highlight/backspace which is easy to get wrong, messing up the database.
7: The Adblock tab in the Inspector window is pretty useless as it doesn't allow decent interaction with the page being viewed. You can click on an element and get it displayed in a new window, but it would be much better to see it highlighted in context on the screen. If something more interactive cannot be provided using the inspector, then a separate pop-up window, as seen in the old UI, should be provided.
8: There is a pervasive problem where you choose "Block element" and select something, only to get a pop-up dialog that is empty. Cancel and repeat the same steps and this might happen again, but eventually the element will be identified and displayed. This is very annoying.
9: ABP element blocking does not work (the option does not even appear in the menu) on a number of sites. Facebook is one of them. This used to work in the old version.
10: On sites where ABP element blocking generally works, there are element where it does not. I have seen pop-up notices on sites that are not recognized by ABP while other element are. I do not remember these sites, but will report them here when I run across them again.
Hopefully the UI can be improved with some or all of these suggestions.
1: Provide keyboard shortcuts to initiate the block element feature, cancel selection (<Esc>), and perform all other tasks without having to access the pop-up menu. This is critical, not only for efficiency, but because a) the pop-up menu blocks elements on the page and is a pain to have to dismiss, and b) there are pop-up site elements that disappear when the mouse is moved to access the ABP menu and you can not get them redisplayed while ABP selection is in force.
2: Add the ability to 'w'iden and 'n'arrow the element selection. Right now, you can typically only access the innermost of stacked elements (whole screen overlays are but one good example) and it takes 2, 3, or 4 consecutive attempts to finally block the offending element. With 'w' and 'n' options as we once had, this could quickly be done in a single step.
3: The yellow highlight does not align with the element being selected. It is positioned shifted to the right of the element which is confusing. What was wrong with the old outline method?
4: Bring back the keyboard shortcut to blink or otherwise mark all effected elements; something which can be used prior to committing to the block.
5: Provide an immediate undo option (with keyboard shortcut) to restore the last blocked element.
6: The ability to edit the block list is inconvenient to access and hard to use. It provides no integrated search or sorting mechanisms. A decent editor should work like Firefox's about:config page, allowing sub-selection display based upon what is typed into the search field. And to eliminate editing mistakes, it should be possible to select whole elements in the list and then delete them as a unit rather than relying upon highlight/backspace which is easy to get wrong, messing up the database.
7: The Adblock tab in the Inspector window is pretty useless as it doesn't allow decent interaction with the page being viewed. You can click on an element and get it displayed in a new window, but it would be much better to see it highlighted in context on the screen. If something more interactive cannot be provided using the inspector, then a separate pop-up window, as seen in the old UI, should be provided.
8: There is a pervasive problem where you choose "Block element" and select something, only to get a pop-up dialog that is empty. Cancel and repeat the same steps and this might happen again, but eventually the element will be identified and displayed. This is very annoying.
9: ABP element blocking does not work (the option does not even appear in the menu) on a number of sites. Facebook is one of them. This used to work in the old version.
10: On sites where ABP element blocking generally works, there are element where it does not. I have seen pop-up notices on sites that are not recognized by ABP while other element are. I do not remember these sites, but will report them here when I run across them again.
Hopefully the UI can be improved with some or all of these suggestions.