General :
K-Meleon Web Browser Forum
General discussion about K-Meleon
Blocking Ads
Posted by:
Andrew
Date: March 28, 2002 06:56PM
A number of users have reported that when they try to block pop-ups ads using various methods, K-Meleon generates a "cannot connect to host" error message. This is a known bug in Mozilla that hopefully will correct that problem. Until that time, I tried one suggestion that was to add the following to prefs.js:
user_pref("mozilla.has_bugs", false);
This is supposed to disable the generation of the error messages. I've tried this and it does appear to work. Can others who have encountered the error message try this method and let me know if it works?
Thanks!
Andrew
Re: Blocking Ads
Posted by:
Oswald Glinkmeyer
Date: March 29, 2002 10:41PM
The error message I'm getting when I try blocking the ads in my hosts file is:
"The connection was refused when attempting to connect to ads.doubleclick.net"
Of course, that changed depending on the ads server. I tried that line suggested in Andrew's post in my prefs.js file, and it did not seem to make any difference. I still get the error messages.
Re: Blocking Ads
Posted by:
Andrew
Date: March 29, 2002 11:31PM
Oswald,
What sites do you get this error message?
Andrew
Re: Blocking Ads
Posted by:
Len
Date: March 30, 2002 08:13AM
I tried both sites and didn't have a problem, I haven't had any problems with the ad block -- it is the best feature in k-meleon.
Re: Blocking Ads
Posted by:
Oswald Glinkmeyer
Date: April 04, 2002 05:40AM
I'm not sure what "feature" Len is talking about. I'm thought we were talking about routing advertising pages to 127.0.0.1 using the hosts file and the little annoying message that comes up. I think Len may be talking about something else entirely.
Re: Blocking Ads
Posted by:
Andrew
Date: April 04, 2002 05:55AM
Oswald,
Yes, I think you two are talking about different things. It sounds like Len is talking about the pop-up blocker available in the Preferences. I was referring to the hosts method you were testing.
Andrew
Re: Blocking Ads
Posted by:
Oswald Glinkmeyer
Date: April 04, 2002 06:17AM
I just checked. Just to be clear, I do indeed have user_pref("mozilla.has_bugs", false);
in my prefs file, and I am still getting the little annoying "The connection was refused when attempting to connect to ads.doubleclick.net"
messages when I try to visit either
http://www.economist.com/ and
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Re: Blocking Ads
Posted by:
Kurt
Date: April 04, 2002 10:10AM
Andrew,
Unfortunately the modification in prefs.js
user_pref("mozilla.has_bugs", false);
does not work with me. Specially annoying are those "The connection was refused..."
at
http://www.pcworld.com when you try to download things. There you get about 5 of them every time you change back and forth.
Kurt
Re: Blocking Ads
Posted by:
timoch
Date: April 04, 2002 03:11PM
I went all through the PC World site, and downloaded stuff with no problems. I use win 98se and Naviscope to block non-popup ads and to "pre fetch" pages.
Re: Blocking Ads
Posted by:
Andrew_G
Date: April 04, 2002 04:42PM
I have no problems with the sites mentioned above either,but if I tried hard enough I could find a few sites such as a Radio Station that uses it's own embedded Media Player and the Player will not popup if you refuse popups,and also some Menu Buttons that won't work, but if I visited those same sites using Opera with popups refused,I get exactly the same result.
I have used other Freeware popup software in the past and they all had similer problems with certain sites.
I think that KM does a good job in this area. No complaints here.
Re: Blocking Ads
Posted by:
Kurt
Date: April 04, 2002 05:59PM
Timoch and Andrew_G,
Maybe it depends on some other configurations (combinations of) in preferences as well, like:
- accept all images (activ)
- enable animated images (activ)
- browser identifikation (NS6.1)
- accept cookies (site cookies)
- disable popup windows on page load/unload (activ)
so what are your settings here?
Kurt
Re: Blocking Ads
Posted by:
Andrew_G
Date: April 04, 2002 06:37PM
I think you are right Kurt, here are my active settings-
accept all Images
enable animated Images
Browser id ."Mozilla 5"
accept all cookies
disable popups on Pageload/unload.
Re: Blocking Ads
Posted by:
Rick Zehr
Date: April 04, 2002 07:25PM
If you Really want to block ads, try WebWasher 3.2 Beta3, free at
http://www.webwasher.com
Re: Blocking Ads
Posted by:
Andrew
Date: April 04, 2002 08:56PM
OK, not to add to the noise here but we're still talking about two different things.
Oswald is not having a problem with blocking ads. In fact, it's working too well for him. What's happening is some people set up a hosts file to the loopback address, 127.0.0.1, for well-known ad sites. When the browser tries to load an ad from the site, if gets directed to the loopback address, which is the network equivalent of a blackhole. The problem is that when K-Meleon gets no response, it throws up an error. Unfortunately, someone at Mozilla decided that the error should be in the form of a dialog box, which you have to constantly click on to clear. There's a Mozilla bug filed to disable this behavior but so far it hasn't been fixed. No amount of changing K-Meleon settings is going to fix Oswald's problems.
Andrew
Re: Blocking Ads
Posted by:
Kurt
Date: April 04, 2002 09:20PM
Andrew_G, Andrew
I've tried several combinations with the mentioned settings, but no luck so far. I still get the error-messages.
Could there be a connection with Norton IS2000 and its ad-blocker or with ZoneAlarm?
Kurt
Re: Blocking Ads
Posted by:
timoch
Date: April 04, 2002 10:15PM
I have the following settings:
accept all images
enable animated images
default browser identification
accept site cookies and do not accept cookies (similar results on both settings)
disable popups on page loading
disable popup windows on domains
I can download the pages mentioned above without problem, but have problems with a site, namely:
http://my.zoneld.com/zoneprod/SilverStream/Pages/ZoneLD.html
but I haven't anyone else who could load it with KM. I can load it with Opera 5.2 with the browser identification set for IE 5.0, but no browser ID setting works for KM on this site. As a mater of fact, I haven't found that a change of browser ID on KM helps much of anything. If a site knows you have a mozilla-type browser, so what can they do, rob your bank account?
Re: Blocking Ads
Posted by:
Kurt
Date: April 05, 2002 09:20AM
Timoch,
With the same settings you have this page loads with me. But got a blank page with browser ID Moz5.0/NS6.1
The can display pages different according your browser's ability.
Kurt