PithHelmet - Ad Blocking with Safari in OS X
A few years ago, I wrote a not-so-glowing review of PithHelmet, an ad blocking, privacy, web-page modification tool for Safari on OS X.
Now that I’m getting back into the swing of things here, being a mac user, I thought it would be a good exercise to give it a go again.
To demonstrate that I’m not simply anti-ad-blocking, I have been wishing for a long time that I could get rid of the giant ad at the top of the my.yahoo.com homepage. It’s big and bloated and sends Safari into a seizure while it loads. Every time I want to check my paltry stock list or see what sort of deranged photo is the current most popular, I’m forced to sit and wait for several seconds, unable to even scroll my browser while it loads. If there ever was a good use for a web-page modification script, this would be it.
There you have it. I would like to block an ad. But, this is a far cry from many of the comments that we’ve recieve here over the years containing the “INTERNET MUST BE FREE” screams, decrying all of us webmasters who are looking to make a buck. Yahoo deserves to have this ad blocked. It’s way over the top. Lower my Bills also deserves to have their ads blocked. Average websites that have simple affiliate links or text ads do not. But I digress.
It’s been a few years since I’ve tried PithHelmet, and I must say, it’s made some very nice progress. Not only is it a thorough privacy tool, pop-up, and ad blocking program for Safari, but it appears to allow Firefox GreaseMonkey extension functionality which the author calls Machete. In short, it allows you to write scripts to make web pages work differently if you so choose — something that I’ve been envious of as a faithful Safari user.
So, my 10 minute quick first impressions…
The good… Nice tool. It’s easy to configure, and I look forward into digging into some Machete scripts.
The bad… It comes pre-loaded with a very aggressive set of filters, that from looking at the list, appear to be a bit far-reaching and will cause some collateral damage.
The ugly… it puts a full-color picture of a pith helmet in my Safari menu in the toolbar that sticks out like a sore thumb. Ok, it looks like I can remove it. No big deal. I just had to put something here.
I’ll be using it more over the next several weeks and will report more.
And oh, I even registered and paid for it. Just like I don’t feel entitled to use websites for free by indiscriminately blocking their ads, I don’t believe in using software for free.
(To the author: I do hope you get enough registrations to get an Intel Mac for testing. I would have paid at least $20 for this without batting an eye. If I decide that to keep it, and if I find that it offers users clear choice over what they block and don’t block, I’ll register again.)
February 4th, 2006 at 11:54 pm
“Don’t believe in using software for free?” Hate to tell you, a lot of us-perfectly legally!-use software for free. My entire operating system and most of the tools I use on it are free. And it’s still advancing.
February 5th, 2006 at 12:22 am
You got me scrobbeldy. Boy, got to watch every word. Of course I meant that I believe in paying for software that is not intended to be free, shareware and licensed software.
Of course, I use Linux on several servers. Do you register shareware that you continue to use?
February 5th, 2006 at 10:28 am
Have you tried Adblock with Mozilla Firefox for Mac?
February 5th, 2006 at 11:11 am
Yes, I have. I’ve tried both Adblock and Adblock Plus, but simply I prefer Safari over Firefox on the Mac (and Firefox over IE on Windows).
My first looks at Adblock Plus are positive as it allows good control to the user as well as the very important whitelist capability. The default set of rules in the Filterset.G, like PithHelmet’s default rules, appear to be overly aggressive.
I’ll be writing more about Adblock Plus and the Filterset.G soon.
There’s also another Adblock solution for Safari, SafariBlock. I haven’t installed that yet.
February 5th, 2006 at 6:48 pm
If I used it, I might. I’ve not really found anything yet that there -isn’t- an acceptable free alternative for. I do subscribe to transgaming.com for cedega, so I suppose you could count that.
February 14th, 2006 at 10:22 am
Sorry, but text ads can be just as offensive, and are definitely losing relevancy.
For instance, during the whole coal mining disaster, eBay and a couple other adver-tards bought up the keyword “Coal mine”, just to get more ad exposure. If text ads are going to maintain their relevancy, the ad companies need to constrain their clients to advertise properly offered products, not just pick out keywords that are popular and annoy people.
I’ve also noticed a trend lately for some websites to set up their ads as a legitimate-looking domain, but then have it actually go to some stupid “Win an iPod for free” crapsite. This seems like watered-down domain-name hijacking to me, because if I’m looking for a new car, see an ad that claims it’s for cars.com, and it takes me to some ponzi scheme, that cheapens - and infringes on - the property of someone else. Of course, online advertisers just shrug their collective shoulders, because THEY’RE getting paid, so what’s the big deal?
Frankly, text ads are getting out of control, with a lot of webmasters going to every single affiliate out there. The idea of text ads was to unobtrusively provide highly relevant commercial interests, not to litter every margin of my monitor.
And lastly, a good reason to block text ads is that Google has started doing obnoxious image ads, which was against their original business philosophy, so I’m going to start blocking all Google ad-syndication servers until they pull them off. Most people in the adblocking community applauded the direction Google was trying to take with their contextual links, but since they seem to have abandoned that business philosphy, I’m going to dump them.
February 14th, 2006 at 10:01 pm
Oh yeah, and on my home computers, I use G’s filterset - and they’re not overly aggressive, they DO THEIR JOB. People who get Filterset.G want to have ads removed. So far, on G’s discussion board, few people have even supported the option of whitelisting contextual links. People don’t get adblock/G thinking “Gee, whiz, I hope I can still see advertisements!”.
Face it - people are sick of advertising, and are fighting back. The advertising industry can either accomodate the general population by making advertising less intrusive and more relevant, or they can unsuccessfully fight back and spend more money than they’ll earn in the long run trying to beat adblockers.
February 15th, 2006 at 2:49 am
Yes, that’s sort of the whole point. I’m not against people using adblocking software.
1. People who use adblocking software should do so by choice, some multi-purpose software blocks ads by default without the user even knowing what’s going on.
2. When it is used, it should be configurable, and hopefully it’s clear when something has been blocked. Whitelists are good.
3. The industry should take responsibility for the advertising problem that has grown, but users of adblock software hopefully understand that there are honest website owners who don’t participate in such intrusive, irrelevent advertising.
February 15th, 2006 at 7:13 pm
1.) I don’t see why you’ve got an issue with some users not “choosing” to block ads - it’s not like they have the “choice” to not load multimedia ads and banners and flash without it! Frankly, I don’t see the problem with software suites that also block advertisements. As I’ve said before, I’ve never heard of a single person that missed the advertisements if they purchased a software suite and it happened to block ads for them.
2.) I don’t want to know when something’s been blocked. Why, exactly, should it be clear to me that I’m blocking ads? I actually prefer the white space on webpages - go figure!
3.) I have found a high correlation between the webmasters that hard-code their text ads into the page and skip the affiliate nonsense, and what I consider to be “honest webmasters”. If they’re willing to screen their own ads, manage their placement, and take the time out to physically hand-code it, it’s a lot more likely that they’re not going to try and bombard me with crappy advertising.