Opened on 10/10/2018 at 02:25:42 PM
Closed on 09/05/2019 at 05:41:28 PM
#7032 closed defect (duplicate)
Add choice on menu to show where blocked ads were
| Reported by: | jidanni | Assignee: | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Priority: | P5 | Milestone: | |
| Module: | User-Interface | Keywords: | |
| Cc: | greiner | Blocked By: | |
| Blocking: | Platform: | Unknown / Cross platform | |
| Ready: | no | Confidential: | no |
| Tester: | Unknown | Verified working: | no |
| Review URL(s): | |||
Description (last modified by greiner)
Background
It is very frustrating to see on this menu
that there are two ads blocked. But no
additional choice to show where they were.
See also ui#229.
Attachments (1)
Change History (8)
Changed on 10/10/2018 at 02:26:16 PM by jidanni
comment:1 Changed on 10/11/2018 at 03:06:43 PM by greiner
- Cc greiner added
- Component changed from Unknown to User-Interface
comment:2 Changed on 10/11/2018 at 03:09:24 PM by greiner
- Description modified (diff)
Added link to GitLab issue.
comment:3 Changed on 10/11/2018 at 03:18:54 PM by jidanni
OK I just tried the Developer Tools Adblockplus tab,
and clicked on a red item, and nothing happened.
Anyway, what I want is: OK we see that on Facebook one item was blocked.
(ABP octagon has a 1 next to it.)
OK there should be something we can click that will put a big black
arrow pointing to where the item was.
Perhaps it was hidden under another item...
(Or perhaps it was something in <head> so the arrow wouldn't make
sense. Hmmm.)
Anyway it wouldn't be running all the time, but would only run when we
click it.
Or when we click "show blocked items' locations" have them reappear
covered with a big red CSS field so we can see where they were.
comment:4 Changed on 10/11/2018 at 03:36:08 PM by greiner
Interesting idea.
The extension and the browser don't know what the blocked request would've done if it hadn't been blocked. The only reliable way to find out would be to let the request through and let it do its thing. But even then it'd be quite challenging because a request might lead to zero, one or more ads to be created. Plus, it may also be dependent on other requests or on certain factors such as time, location, etc.
What we should be able to do, however, is highlight places on the page where elements got hidden due to our filter rules. But that would only be a subset of all the things Adblock Plus prevents.
comment:5 Changed on 10/12/2018 at 12:57:35 AM by jidanni
It is totally OK, after they click the "show where the blocked items were" to tell the user "OK, but now reload the page and we'll show you."
comment:6 Changed on 10/16/2018 at 08:46:59 AM by greiner
- Priority changed from Unknown to P5
Regardless of the approach it would likely require quite a bit of work to get this implemented and it's not yet clear how accurate/valuable the results will be so I'll mark this ticket as P5 for now. We can revisit this ticket as soon as someone provides a proof-of-concept for it.
Currently, we don't record any data about which requests were blocked by the extension because we found that we'd be running into performance issues. Recording such data would be quite useful though if we can find an approach that doesn't introduce any such issues.
That being said, you can already find an "Adblock Plus" tab in your browser's developer tools which records all requests that the extension encounters and also which filters were applied to those. Note, however, that it won't show you any requests that were made before it was opened. For that you'll need to refresh the web page.
By the way, that's also the reason why, when reporting an issue with Adblock Plus, it needs to open a new tab.