459192 - Omnibus ad-blocking bug for October 2008

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Camino Graveyard :: Annoyance Blocking, defect)

Description

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

Old MacDonald had an ad, e-i-e-i-o…

Comment 1

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

On http://www.macuser.com/updates/camino_20_alpha_hits_the_stree.php

div[id="adbar"]

Comment 2

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

On technorati, iframe src starting with http://tag.admeld.com/ad/iframe/

(Yeah, we don't block /ad/ in iframe srcs)

Comment 3

[philippe (part-time)]

Annoying sliding ad on lemonde.fr in an iframe

sample article
http://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2008/10/26/le-front-eurosceptique-affaibli-en-republique-tcheque_1111220_3214.html

iframe:
http://box.shopoon.fr/lemonde/ShopBox.aspx#http%3A//www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2008/10/26/le-front-eurosceptique-affaibli-en-republique-tcheque_1111220_3214.html%23ens_id%3D1108956

iframe[src*="box.shopoon.fr"] {display:none !important;}
puts it out of its misery.

Comment 4

[philippe (part-time)]

So, I found something real puzzling.
iframe[src*="/ads/"] blocks ads on arstechnica.com. So far so good.
But, when a page on that site is opened in a background tab, or the page is opened from a link in my feed reader (same goes for opening the page from link in email client), the page cannot be scrolled from the keyboard (spacebar, pageUp/Down).

adding to ad_blocking.css
@-moz-document domain(arstechnica.com) {
	iframe[class="Banner"] {display:none !important;}
}
/* this targets the exact same iframes */

then page scrolling from the keyboard works perfectly fine.

sample link
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081031-wifi-thermostat-puts-power-and-cooling-at-your-fingertips.html

(this may affect other sites as well, it bites me mostly on Ars)

Comment 5

[Simon Fraser [no longer active]]

sfgate.com is showing some Flash and image ads from
http://l.yieldmanager.net/apex/mediastore/

Comment 6

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

The world's worst context sponsored ads show up on imdb pages.

They're inside <div id="sponsored_links_afc_div_MIDDLE_CENTER"> and <iframe id="sponsored_links_afc_iframe_MIDDLE_CENTER">

Comment 7

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

Attachment: Nov08 Omnibus ads

We have enough here and in bug 462776 that I've worked up a patch, which will get us back to being a bit more reactive, especially as we're now working between milestone releases on cvs trunk.

This tightens up our *yieldmanager* blocking and blocks everything else here and in bug 462776.  I added the iframe rule that philippe provided in the main section of rules; I don't think we should pick on Ars over "Banner", but I think iframe[class="Banner"] (with no *) can be safe enough—if you're sticking content in an iframe with a class of "Banner", it's much more likely to be an ad than if it were <div class="banner"> or something.

Comment 8

[Stuart Morgan]

Comment on attachment 347236 [details] [diff] [review]
Nov08 Omnibus ads

sr=smorgan; this all looks pretty safe.

Comment 9

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

Checked in on cvs trunk.  Need to nominate for 1.6.6 when I get that flag.

Comment 10

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

Landed on the MOZILLA_1_8_BRANCH in advance of 1.6.6.