Avram's journal

OK, found a way to keep links from opening new windows in Safari. Here it is:

Step 1: Install GreaseKit. (GreaseKit is the Safari port of Greasemonkey, a Firefox add-on that lets you run arbitrary JavaScript code to modify web pages as they download.)

Step 2: Install _blank Must Die, a userscript that strips the target="_blank" attributes out of link tags.

Step 3: Quit and relaunch Safari.

Step 4: Sigh with relief when Twitter links no longer spawn new windows.

Note for Firefox users: That userscript in Step 2 ought to work for you as well, but you don’t need to bother, since you’ve got some useful features baked right into your browser, no add-ons required.

Microsoft Internet Explorer users, I dunno. If you guys cared about your web experience, you wouldn’t be using MSIE.

Update: Just discovered that the GreaseKit _blank Must Die hack will mess up Google Calendar. The fix is to disable the hack for Google, like so:

1. In Safari, from the GreaseKit menu, choose “Manage Scripts…”
2. In the Manage Scripts dialog, select “_blank Must Die” from the list on the left of the box. (Don’t turn the check-box off, just click the name “_blank Must Die” to select it.)
3. See the “Exclude” box? Click the “Add” button next to it.
4. In that new line that was just created in the Exclude box, type:
   *.google.com/*
5. Close the Manage Scripts box. Maybe you need to quit and restart Safari, too.

I’m using Firefox on both my home and work computers. And I’ve got the Adblock extension installed. This means that I’ve got the power to delete annoying images from my web-browsing experience.

I find animated ads annoying.

There are lots of weblogs I read on a regular basis where I’m not seeing ads. On Making Light, I only see the text portion of the ads — at some point there must have been an ad there (or in another Blogads weblog) with an animated image, and I right-clicked it, chose “Adblock image” from the contextual menu, and edited the filter string to read http://images.blogads.com/*. Bang, no more images (of any kind, animated or still) in any ad (on any blog) served by Blogads.

(I’ve since learned that hitting the ESC key stops all animated GIFs on a page in Firefox. But I’m not about to go back and edit all those saved Adblock filters. And I don’t think ESC does anything to stop Flash ads.)

I suppose that, should this habit of mine catch on, Blogads (and I’m choosing them as an example only because they’re handy) could change the way they publish their ads. It probably wouldn’t be hard to randomize the name of their image server, or maybe use some fancy DHTML tricks to serve annoying content some more sophisticated way. Then I’d probably have to use Greasemonkey to defeat them, and might wind up not seeing their ads at all — Greasemonkey allows much more interesting ways of bypassing ads.

But I don’t want that to happen. I like it when web authors can earn money off their content without locking it up behind for-pay subscription walls. And an ever-escalating war of advertisers-vs-scripters could be even more annoying than the animated ads.

What’s the solution? I don’t know if there is one, or even a problem, really. I doubt that even 10% of web users will ever take up habitual ad-blocking. As long as there are only a few of us, advertisers and publishers probably don’t have much of an incentive to counter our blocks. Still, I wonder if there’s a way that someone who wants to have ads can avoid serving up annoying content. I’d expect this to be an issue for web cartoonists — who wants an annoying, flashing ad served up next to one’s art?

A first stab at a solution: An advertising service could set up a special “no animation” tier. Presumably this would pay less than the regular tier of service. This tier would have a policy of serving only JPEG and PNG images; I don’t think animation can be done with either of those. No JavaScript either. I think that would eliminate all animation, and it could all be verified programmatically.

From Steve Lambe: the best picture of Mr Magoo ever.

Greasemonkey is an extension for Firefox that lets you run arbitrary DHTML in viewed pages. In other words you can add stuff, delete stuff, change function, fix bugs, whatever, on whatever pages you want. People have written a bunch of user scripts already that you can install with a simple right-click.

The Lazy Way to Success: “Hard work is passé.” I think I’m doing it wrong.

Top 10 Most Dangerous Locations for Manhattan Pedestrians, 1995-2001. Number 1 is the intersection of Park Avenue and East 33rd Street. I believe it; there’s an exit for the 6 train right next to where the underpass lets out.

Have I mentioned Garlicster already?