Blocking hover ads

Question

Okay, I am done with hover ads. I am so done with it, I am starting to avoid website which implement them even though I (used to) like those websites.

Obviously, it is considerably harder to block hover ads than it is to block pop-up or pop-under ads. As far as I know, AdBlock does not stop them, so then what?

My question is: how to avoid or block hover ads? Do you know of any tricks to do so?

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_{I know it is debatable in how far it is fair to block ads in general and so lower the income the proprietor of a website will have from it, but I don't really want to have that discussion.}

Answer 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).

Answer 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.

Answer 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

Answer 4

You can remove or block hover ads with Aardvark and userContent.css

1. Get Aardvark addon for Firefox or use it as as bookmarklet.
2. Activate it.
3. Identify the DIV, ID or CSS class of the hover ads passing the mouse over it.
4. Apply a filter to block it in userContent.css file.

I also wrote up a blog post on this if you're interested.

Answer 5

You can try and use Remove It Permanently plugin for FireFox.

Once you have it installed, right-click on the element that produces a hover-on based ad and run your mouse to the "Remove It Permanently" command in the FireFox context menu. The element in question will have a red blinking dashed line around it. Click on the command and the element in question is gone. So is the hover-on ad.

I actually had a similar question in here: Disabling drop down menus on websites

Answer 6

In reference to the bounty, NO the current answers are not out of date. They are just as valid now as they ever were. You've simply encountered a page which doesn't fit the mold. To block this in Adblck Plus just add the filter: pjrvs.com###ouibounce-modal to your filters list. Still, there it is if you care to use it.

Answer 7

Ghostery

These days i'm not even running adblock plus anymore. Ghostery, setup to block everything it knows about is all i need. I can't remember the last time i've seen a hover ad.

It's actually more famous for privacy protection, but since tracking and advertising go together it ends up being a really good ad blocker as well. Browsing is so fast with all the unnecessary scripts weeded out, a real treat. This extension is a gem !

Answer 8

You can use a HOSTS file to block ads, banners, 3rd party Cookies, 3rd party page counters, web bugs, and even most hijackers. This is accomplished by blocking the connection(s) that supplies these little gems. Windows automatically looks for the existence of a HOSTS file and if found, checks the HOSTS file first for entries to the web page you just requested. The 0.0.0.0 (prefix) is considered the location of your computer, so when an entry listed in the MVPS HOSTS file is requested on a page you are viewing, your computer thinks 0.0.0.0 is the location of the file. When this file is not located it skips onto the next file and thus the ad server is blocked from loading the banner, Cookie, or some unscrupulous ActiveX, or javascript file.

you can grab hosts from here: these guys prepare list of domains with most annoying ads, you add to your hosts file redirecting them to 0.0.0.0 . It also speeds up your overall surfing and avoid tracking. File is updated around 3 times per month.

Answer 9

The bounty added (Oct. 2014) asks about a specific page, and ads like it:

Here is example page http://pjrvs.com/a/advice the add appears if you mouse past the top of the page, then sets a cookie to prevent reappearing

This is simply a DIV element hidden on the page that's revealed via JavaScript when the mouse moves out of the the browsing window.

Instead of worrying about disabling the JavaScript that reveals it, you just need to determine the element that will be revealed, and block it in your favorite ad-blocking program.

To figure it out for this example, I first looked at the cookie that prevents it showing again and saw it's key name was "viewedOuibounceModal".

So that tells me that it's probably a script referred to as "ouibounce", used for producing modal windows.

I then viewed the source for the page and located (near the bottom) the scripting that's controlling the modal popup. The script refers to "ouibonuce", "ouimodal", etc. quite a bit, so by what we learned from the cookie this is obviously it. :)

Just above the script, is a DIV element named "ouibounce-modal" with a class of "ouimodal". It contains other DIVS with the links and text seen in the modal popup.

I fired up AdBlock Plus, and added a custom element filter of "##DIV#ouibounce-modal" to block all DIVs named "ouibounce-modal".

Now the modal popup doesn't come back (whether I have the cookie or not).

Answer 10

I've always used XJZ Survey Remover. Imho it's useful and minimal. You can add a bookmarklet to your favorites bar. But it doesn't serve only as automatic survey remover: if you launch it and no survey are found, you'll be prompted to click the element you want to remove (like the overlay in the page you linked).