Blocking hover ads

Question

My ASP.NET application depends on a .NET assembly, which in turn expects a certain resource file to be found beside it. I.e. this how it loads this resource file:

var folder = Path.GetDirectoryName(typeof(T).Assembly.Location);
var file = typeof(T).FullName + ".xaml";
var source = Path.Combine(folder, file);
var result = Load(source);

As you can see, it expects a certain xaml file near it.

In the ASP.NET csproj file, there is no reference to the .NET assembly, it is simply found in the bin folder.

When I run the ASP.NET application, the .NET assembly is copied from the ASP.NET project bin folder somewhere under Temporary ASP.NET Files, but only the DLL is copied, the XAML files is left behind.

What should I do to make the XAML file copied as well?

Thanks.

Solution 1

In Firefox I have a filter in Adblock plus of *.intellitxt.*

This seems to block them (or it blocks enough so that I have not noticed them).

Solution 2

If you are using Firefox, then the noscript add-on is an option. Most of these ads are loaded by script and Noscript will block that. Though this will leave you with sites that depend on script for their basic purpose not working in other ways.

Another option (again Firefox only, though there are no doubt ways to do the same in other recent browsers) is aardvark which lets you manually remove the floaters. I find this handy for removing excess content when printing pages too. This is a manual process, but less of a blunt instrument than noscript. There are some places that are getting wise to such DOM manipulation though, specifically those hawking Microsoft's Silverlight - those floaters seem to detect that you have removed when and they replace themselves (as I've never come across anything on such an affected site that I can't get from many others I just add these sites to my "will never visit again" list, enforced by hosts file entry, and move on).

What you are looking for really is something that automatically does what can be done with aardvark without disabling all script. Unfortunately this is a significant problem as there are many ways to arrange floaters so such a tool would have to carry configuration for each site and would need to support a number of methods of removal, so would be much more of a chore to develop and maintain than noscript and aardvark. Writing something (an add-on or some sort of proxy based filter) to automatically detect and deal with floaters would require a level of AI not currently available (or, at least not currently remotely close to being practical to implement for this purpose!) as there are many ways to implement them and all could be mistake for more useful UI elements so false positives would be a noticeable problem.

Update:

Some years later, things have moved on... In modern browsers you don't need add-ons like Aarvark: the built in debugging tools allow you to monkey around with the DOM to remove parts you don't want. In Chrome, Firefoz, and modern ID, right-click and pick "inspect element" to be taken to the DOM explorer form where you can delete or edit elements to your hearts content. I sometimes use this to create printable versions of pages that "reading view" modes don't work well on for that (I don't use it much for irritating pop-overs - when they appear I tend to just close that tab and move on). If you are wary of right-clicking being taken as an action, open the debugging tools by pressing F12 and navigate to the right part of the DOM explorer that way.

Of course this is all very manual and requires some knowledge of HTML, particularly for some complex pages where knowing what to delete/edit and what not can be unclear, so for ad-blocking automated add-ins specific to that and/or the likes of noscript (or just leaving sites that irritate you in that way and never coming back!) are the way to go.

Solution 3

I recently discovered that in addition to blocking regular ads, uBlock can also block scripts that cause some hover ads. I was able to remove NoScript and now use uBlock for both.

You just need to turn on blocking for 3rd-party scripts. After that some sites might break, NoScript users will be familiar with this. However you can easily whitelist sites by adding them to the My rules tab:

* youtube.com * noop

Blocking mode: medium mode

Comments

[Admin]

A lot of these ads offer the option to disable themselves. When you hover over a word and the ad appears llok and see if there's a question mark, or a link to settings.

[Admin]

Put that in an answer, dude, so I can give you creds for it. I have never noticed this and it is great!

[Admin]

Call be paranoid, by I'm wary of clicking anywhere in a floating ad, at lease those on non "big name" sites. How do you know without reviewing the code that clicking the question mark or any other hot-spot won't instead open a series of pop-up/under windows or some such... Hence I used the aardvark option to remove the content while interacting with it as little as possible.

[Admin]

This particular site in the bounty can not do what it does without javascript actions. disabling javascript completly worked, with firefox "noscript" should be capable of it, in IE advanced options can disable that, but it is not convienient to turn back on. Without avoiding sites like this altogether we do end up feeding the trolls, they will never learn and never change.

[Admin]

Can you give an examle page, where they have su ch adds you refer to?

[mark]

These resource files are needed by a dependency of the ASP.NET application. The application itself neither depends on them nor references in the project. There is nothing to right click on. The files simply lie in the bin folder of the ASP.NET app. The DLL gets copied, but the resource file don't - that is the problem.

[Edwin de Koning]

@mark: Then how do they get into bin folder in the first place?

[krowe]

Just tried it and this application doesn't actually block the pop under on the given example page. I turned on all of the blocking options available in the setup to make sure. It did make it more difficult to make popup though. Now only a small space at the top will do it. Are there special instruction to make this plugin block that pop under?

[lemonsqueeze]

Thanks, i didn't see the example page line somehow. It doesn't block it indeed, i'll report it so it gets added to the database.