How to stop sideways sliding windows?

[jbclem]

Some websites, especially news ones, have these annoying windows that slide
out of the right margin every 30 seconds or so...they usually contain 2 to 5
lines of text and remind you to read some article (that you've usually
already read). They also cover part of the text that you're reading. The
New York Times website uses them from time to time, although I haven't seen
them recently. The worse one right now is the Santa Monica Patch...try
http://santamonica.patch.com/articles/miramar-plans-2nd-tallest-tower-in-san
ta-monica and wait a minute. The sliding window comes out and won't go
away until you click the "close" area.

I use NoScript, AdBlock+, FlashBlock...but none of these work to stop these
sliding windows. Is there any way to block these sliding windows
permanently?

jc

[John Tserkezis]

jbclem wrote:

> I use NoScript, AdBlock+, FlashBlock...but none of these work to stop these
> sliding windows. Is there any way to block these sliding windows
> permanently?

Holy moly that site makes a mess. It calls remote scripts that call
remote scripts that call.... you get the idea.

Found the offending site though:
Use NoScript mark "patch-assets.com" as untrusted, and you'll stop
that sideways slider.
My testing finds if I enable that it, I get the slider, disable it and
it goes away.
I'm guessing you may have accidently enabled that one somewhere along
the line and forgot about it.

But that's barely touching the tip of the iceberg. A combination of
NoScript, AdBlock Plus, and Ghostery reveals a WHOLE lot more ad-related
sites you'd rather not have.

If you disable everything you may lose some features you wanted, so
you'll need to selectively re-enable certain entries, but I'll leave
that up to you.
--
We are the people our parents warned us about

[Ralph Fox]

Turning off Javascript, before loading the page, stops them on
http://santamonica.patch.com/articles/miramar-plans-2nd-tallest-tower-in-santa-monica

I turned off Javascript,loaded the page, and there was no sliding "window".
I turned Javascript back on, reloaded the page, and got the sliding "window".

Those sliding "windows" are not real windows. They are part of the page's
content, and the page moves them and makes them come and go by using
Javascript.

If NoScript does not block them then NoScript is not blocking all of the
Javascript on the page. If NoScript is only blocking Javascript from
santamonica.patch.com then NoScript is not blocking all of the Javascript
on the page.


--
Kind regards
Ralph

[John Tserkezis]

Ralph Fox wrote:

> Turning off Javascript, before loading the page, stops them on
> http://santamonica.patch.com/articles/miramar-plans-2nd-tallest-tower-in-santa-monica

> I turned off Javascript,loaded the page, and there was no sliding "window".
> I turned Javascript back on, reloaded the page, and got the sliding "window".

It should be noted this is blanket fix, that's akin to stopping people
using cellphones while driving - by banning any driving.
It'll certainly fix the issue, but also break everything else.

Some sites need javascript to do anything at all, so a more selective
approach with NoScript (and others) is called for.
--
The weather is here, wish you were beautiful.

[VanguardLH]

None of those are going to block content from the site you are visiting.
The "ads" may not be coming from off-domain but are from that site
itself. If ABP blocked the ad's domain then you also couldn't visit
that site (page content same as ad source). It's probably a site that
you want to visit and to see their desired page content means enabling
THEIR scripts, so you've enabled their scripts that do the sliding
window effect.

They are probably nothing to do with Flash (well, they could contain
Flash content but that's irrelevant to the "slide-in window" effect
itself) and instead are using CSS or other HTML tricks to emulate a
window sliding over or enlarging. In this case, you might want to get
ABP's element helper add-on. After installation, it'll show up as
another option in ABP's menu. Click on it and then click on the element
for which you want to define a rule. In this case, you would point at
the sliding window and define a rule for that type of element. I would
suggest selecting the rule option to block that element type ONLY on
that site. Other sites might have similar element types and names for
them but are not to produce that nuisance slide window, so if you use
that rule everywhere then you could lose wanted content at other sites.
Just create an element rule at the nuisance site.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/elemhidehelper/

ABP blocks content but doesn't alter the behavior of a web page through
its code. NoScript might except it is likely you enable scripts at that
site so you can see the wanted content (with the side effect that you
are also enabling that site's code for the slide window). Flashblock is
superfluous if you are already using NoScript which also will block
Flash content; however, Flashblock would only block the Flash content in
the slide window, not alter the code in the page that produces the slide
window effect.

[Ralph Fox]

On Mon, 25 Feb 2013 18:55:25 +1100, John Tserkezis wrote:

> It should be noted this is blanket fix, that's akin to stopping people
> using cellphones while driving - by banning any driving.
> It'll certainly fix the issue, but also break everything else.
>
> Some sites need javascript to do anything at all, so a more selective
> approach with NoScript (and others) is called for.

I did not find the page at the OP's link to be broken.
What you say is true of some other sites, perhaps many others.


--
Kind regards
Ralph

[VanguardLH]

I did find that NoScript, as John mentioned, will block the sliding
window if you don't allow scripts from patch-assets.com. NoScript helps
in this case because the nuisance is caused by an off-domain script. If
this site was clever and used scripts from their own domain to do this
effect, NoScript would only work if you blocked all scripts on that site
(which is pretty much the same as if you disabled Javascript in the web
browser).

[Ron Hunter]

Well, the obvious is to avoid the sites, and tell them why. Slightly
less convenient is to use the Element hiding add-on to help ABP prevent
you from seeing them on that site in the future. Kinda spotty, in my
experience though as they change things often.

[John Tserkezis]

VanguardLH wrote:

> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/elemhidehelper/

Thanks for bringing this one up, I had forgotten to mention Element
Hiding Helper - it gets used quite heavily here.
--
Surprise your boss. Get to work on time.

[Ron Hunter]

In many sites, turning off Javascript would make the site unresponsive.
Kinda inconvenient.

[John Tserkezis]

Ron Hunter wrote:

> Well, the obvious is to avoid the sites, and tell them why.

Telling them doesn't do a thing. An email (or a hundred) isn't what
it takes.

One (rare) instance where user behaviour has changed a website, was a
movie review site that listed the top 10 moves on their main page, but
not the star rating that goes with each one. The star rating is
displayed only when you click on each one of the top ten for more details.

With the help of Grease Monkey, someone wrote a script that
progressively loads each of the top ten film detailed pages, obtains the
star rating for each, goes back to the main page and "force fits" the
stars adjacent to each film.
Effectively re-writing the main page for each user. Proved to be a
fairly popular user script.

The huge increase in site bandwidth certainly got the webmaster's
attention. The site was soon modified to include the star rating.

*That's* what it takes to get the job done.
--
Ingres is not a necessary precursor to Egress.

[Ralph Fox]

On Mon, 25 Feb 2013 02:17:17 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:

> If
> this site was clever and used scripts from their own domain to do this
> effect, NoScript would only work if you blocked all scripts on that site
> (which is pretty much the same as if you disabled Javascript in the web
> browser).

In the past I have used a custom proxy.pac file to block some parts of
a site but not other parts.


--
Kind regards
Ralph

[Ron Hunter]

I would hope that most websites would be more responsive. But if they
don't want to bother with me, I won't bother with them. I don't have
time for that kind of irritant.

[PhillipJones]

T he only thing I saw was small strip open on right hand botton corner
and when I click on the X to dismiss it never came back.

--
Phillip M. Jones, C.E.T. "If it's Fixed, Don't Break it"
http://www.phillipmjones.net mailto:pjon...@comcast.net

[GThierry]

The Fanboy Annoyances List for AdBlock+, available from
http://www.fanboy.co.nz/ might help.



--
GThierry

[»Q«]

On Mon, 25 Feb 2013 02:17:17 -0600

VanguardLH <V...@nguard.LH> wrote:

> I did find that NoScript, as John mentioned, will block the sliding
> window if you don't allow scripts from patch-assets.com. NoScript
> helps in this case because the nuisance is caused by an off-domain
> script. If this site was clever and used scripts from their own
> domain to do this effect, NoScript would only work if you blocked all
> scripts on that site (which is pretty much the same as if you
> disabled Javascript in the web browser).

I'm surprised NoScript is so limited. If you can identify which script
you want to block, AdblockPlus can block it no matter which domain it's
from.

[»Q«]

On Sun, 24 Feb 2013 21:43:20 -0800

Somewhere down the thread, VanguardLH says the slider is caused by one
or more of the bits of JavaScript from patch-assets.com. Using Adblock
Plus' "open blockable elements" feature, you should be able to block
them one at a time until you find which one it is. (If it's more than
one, you have more work to do, or you could just block them all and
see how it goes.)

In general, when something is moving around on a page and annoying you,
blocking some javascript will help, but as others have pointed out, on
some sites it may cause problems.

Another option is to just hide the sliding element (it's a div) using
css. Using the Stylish extension, this works:

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);
@-moz-document domain("patch.com") {
#previous_in_category_for_publication { display: none !important }
}

Stylish is at <https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/stylish/>; see
also <http://userstyles.org/>.

[VanguardLH]

If you have NoScript block domains from the site you visit then none of
them run (1st or 3rd party). Problem there is that most users will
allow scripts at the site (1st party) because they actually do want to
see that site's content and many sites use Javascript to produce
content. So once the user decides they want to allow scripts at a site
they chose to visit (or they configure NoScript to temporarily allow
scripts at the sites they visit) then any scripts from that site will
run.

NoScript can also "block it no matter which domain it's from". The
question is if you really want to block scripts on the site that YOU
chose to visit. NoScript defaults to blocking all scripts and then YOU
choose which ones, if any, to allow. But think about it under real use:
are you really going to block the scripts on a page that you chose to
visit which means you also won't see all of their content that you do
want to see or deny behavior on that page that you really do want, like
being to click on an entry from a list? If the user visits a page more
than once, it's likely they're going to permit scripts to run from that
site. That's means ALL scripts from that site get executed on that
page. ABP allows for more granularity in rules than NoScript. In
NoScript, it's on or off. In ABP, you can pick parts of the web page to
block but most users don't have the expertise to decipher the page code
to determine on what they need to block. If it's a dynamic page then
the user never gets to see the server-side scripts that generate that
page content (but they can still block on something in its structure).
That's why the Element Helper add-on is useful because it lets
non-experts pick an element shown in a page and create a rule on THAT to
block it on a later revisit or after refresh. If you want to disable
parts of a web page, ABP is better than NoScript.

In this case, with the patch.com site showing the nuisancesome sliding
window behavior that came from the patch-assets.com domain, and while a
script from patch-assets.com looks like a 3rd party script, both those
domains are owned by AOL. It's the same entity that owns both domains
but they chose to put some of their resources on different domains. So
while this bad behavior can now be blocked by not allowing scripts from
patch-assets.com, AOL could decide later to integrate their script
server under the same patch.com domain. With NoScript your choice would
then be to block all scripts at patch.com or all them all there. It's
on or off with NoScript. NoScript is more about security and some bad
behavior than about assuaging over sensitive users that cannot tolerate
any ads. The products have different focus with some overlap in effect.

[VanguardLH]

Very true, especially when you consider both patch.com and
patch-assets.com are owned by AOL. For some reason, and only for some
scripts, they decided to move their script resource to a different
domain. So you have AOL's patch.com calling some scripts from AOL's
patch-assets.com. Later AOL might decide to incorporate their scripts
under the patch.com domain so any rule against patch-assets.com becomes
nullified. You have an element rule that is no longer applicable (which
also means you end up with useless rules occupying some space). It's up
to you to determine if you want to eliminate their nuisancesome behavior
now and for awhile into the future and it might change later or keep
getting bothered until they change it later whereupon you still get
bothered with the bad behavior. Yep, things change.

[VanguardLH]

You (GThierry) could look at that list (by changing the view when
looking at ABP's options and selecting a filter) to see if it includes
patch-assets.com instead of guessing if that subscription "might help".

Anyone recommending ABP but only guessing it might work should take a
peek at the rules list for Fanboy, Easy, Easy+Privacy (probably the big
3 blocklists used) to see if patch-assets.com is included. If not, ABP
will not help eliminate the nuisance behavior of the sliding window
obliterating other content.

If ABP's blocklists don't include patch-assets.com (both patch.com, the
site the OP wanted to visit, and patch-assets.com are owned by AOL) then
someone would have to tell the OP how to define a rule to block content
from patch-assets.com. Easier for the OP would be to use the Element
Helper add-on that works with ABP to create element hiding rules.

Note the OP already said he was using ABP. He didn't mention *which*
blocklists to which he was subscribed. If he had, users of ABP that
subscribed to the same blocklists could check (to verify patch-assets
wasn't there) and then suggest a different blocklist (after checking if
patch-assets was in that recommended blocklist).

[»Q«]

On Mon, 25 Feb 2013 15:19:54 -0600
VanguardLH <V...@nguard.LH> wrote:

> »Q« wrote:
>
> > On Mon, 25 Feb 2013 02:17:17 -0600
> > VanguardLH <V...@nguard.LH> wrote:
> >
> >> If this site was clever and used scripts from their own
> >> domain to do this effect, NoScript would only work if you blocked
> >> all scripts on that site (which is pretty much the same as if you
> >> disabled Javascript in the web browser).
> >
> > I'm surprised NoScript is so limited. If you can identify which
> > script you want to block, AdblockPlus can block it no matter which
> > domain it's from.

> NoScript can also "block it no matter which domain it's from".

I meant block a *single* script no matter which domain it's from, which
is what's called for in this case.

[VanguardLH]

ABP won't do that, either. What it will do is let you block an element
within a web page, like a named DIV (you certainly wouldn't want to
block an unnamed one) on a specific site (unless you feel the name is
unique to just THAT site). You're not blocking scripts with ABP.
You're blocking strings in URLs or elements in a web page. Well, that's
my recollection of ABP when I used it.

[»Q«]

On Mon, 25 Feb 2013 17:28:18 -0600

VanguardLH <V...@nguard.LH> wrote:

> »Q« wrote:
>
> > On Mon, 25 Feb 2013 15:19:54 -0600
> > VanguardLH <V...@nguard.LH> wrote:
> >
> >> »Q« wrote:
> >>
> >>> On Mon, 25 Feb 2013 02:17:17 -0600
> >>> VanguardLH <V...@nguard.LH> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> If this site was clever and used scripts from their own
> >>>> domain to do this effect, NoScript would only work if you blocked
> >>>> all scripts on that site (which is pretty much the same as if you
> >>>> disabled Javascript in the web browser).
> >>>
> >>> I'm surprised NoScript is so limited. If you can identify which
> >>> script you want to block, AdblockPlus can block it no matter which
> >>> domain it's from.
> >
> >> NoScript can also "block it no matter which domain it's from".
> >
> > I meant block a *single* script no matter which domain it's from,
> > which is what's called for in this case.
>
> ABP won't do that, either. What it will do is let you block an
> element within a web page, like a named DIV (you certainly wouldn't
> want to block an unnamed one) on a specific site (unless you feel the
> name is unique to just THAT site). You're not blocking scripts with
> ABP.

You are incorrect. ABP allows blocking of any script that has its own
URI.

[»Q«]

I'd snipped this part of your reply, but on second reading it seems
relevant:

> > You're not blocking scripts with ABP. You're blocking strings in
> > URLs or elements in a web page. Well, that's my recollection of
> > ABP when I used it.

It's true that you have to use the script's URL (or an expression that
matches it), but blocking a script's URL *does* block the script.

Maybe we are using the word "block" to mean different things; for
example, I'd nitpick that ABP won't block elements within a web page,
such as divs, but only hide them.

I'd bet dollars to donuts that we aren't furthering support with this
line of discussion, so I'm crossposting to mozilla.general and setting
followup to there.

[jbclem]

This has been an interesting conversation for me, it's an area I need to
learn about. I tried the easiest solution, I went looking for a way to
un-trust patch-assets.com, didn't find it until later, but instead I found
the No-Script white list and there in the midst of a long list of apparently
white-listed items was patch-assets.com. I removed it from that list and
the problem stopped.

I'm left wondering how some of the many white-listed items landed on the
list, patch-assets.com, others such as advertising.com. I spotted some names
that I would like on the list, but I know I never intentionally put any of
them there.

Ever since I noticed that Ghostery was defaulting some items as un-blocked,
I've wondered if this was a way they were using to produce an income stream.
And now seeing all these white-listed items on the No-Script whitelist, I'm
wondering even more. Am I being too cynical, or have these good companies
found a way to sell their souls.





"John Tserkezis" <j...@techniciansyndrome.org> wrote in message
news:HPqdnWTeQ6MGibbM...@mozilla.org...

[Peter Boulding]

On Mon, 25 Feb 2013 02:00:47 -0600, VanguardLH <V...@nguard.LH> wrote in
<Seidnb5XGumzh7bM...@mozilla.org>:

>In this case, you might want to get
>ABP's element helper add-on. After installation, it'll show up as
>another option in ABP's menu. Click on it and then click on the element
>for which you want to define a rule. In this case, you would point at
>the sliding window and define a rule for that type of element. I would
>suggest selecting the rule option to block that element type ONLY on
>that site. Other sites might have similar element types and names for
>them but are not to produce that nuisance slide window, so if you use
>that rule everywhere then you could lose wanted content at other sites.
>Just create an element rule at the nuisance site.
>
>https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/elemhidehelper/

That's the best solution to this kind of annoyance that I, a non-techy, have
found--and I've just checked: it blocks the sliding window of which the OP
complained.

--
Regards, Peter Boulding
pjbn...@UNSPAMpboulding.co.uk (to e-mail, remove "UNSPAM")
Fractal Images and Music: http://www.pboulding.co.uk/
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=794240&content=music