Problem - maybe - with adblock/adblock plus

[matt819]

So, a few weeks ago I asked for help with pages not loading quickly, or at all. Thanks for all the advice. Nothing worked, but that's not because of your advice, I think. I'm convinced there's a problem with my gateway, though our network guy says no. Battle continues.

In any case, one of the changes I made to test things out was to disable/uninstall adblock extensions. That didn't speed things up. Oh well. But here's a related problem. Whether I use adblock or adblock plus, the extension prevents some images on DU from loading, including pic of the day and images in posts. Not all, but most. The problem is that when I disable the extension for DU, all ads load.

Any ideas on how to modify things so that the right images load? Any recs for another adblock extension?

[gvstn]

1. I'm testing ubock.

It seems to work well and does seem a bit faster than ABP.

It is probably worth a try.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock/

[Make7]

2. You may have inadvertently added a custom image filter for DU.

Adblock allows you to block images as well as ads. This is normally done by right-clicking and selecting the Adblock: Block image... option. In that popup there should be a Show existing filters... button. Clicking that should bring up a window showing any custom filters that have been added - see if there is something matching upload.democraticunderground.com. If so, delete it and see if the Pic Of The Moment is visible to you again.
[div style="width:100%; height:1.5em; border-bottom:1px solid #cccccc;"]
Regarding your internet connection - have you tried a different computer in place of yours? Basically just unplugging the ethernet cable from your computer and plugging it in to a different (perhaps a borrowed laptop) computer. If that computer also has internet issues, it is most likely something related to the connection after your computer. If the other one seems to work fine, there probably is something about your computer setup causing the issue.

[matt819]

3. Shaking my head

Thanks for the advice.

No custom filters, so still stumped on why DU images not loading.

Just added ublock - still blocking DU images, and there are no custom filters. And if I add DU to the whitelist, I'll get all ads, unless I pay the piper, which I have done many times in the past, but can't at the moment.

[Make7]

4. Sometimes ad blockers have Facebook and Twitter image servers in their 'do not display' lists.

I could understand if the images you seem to be missing are from sites similar to those - what I don't get is DU's Pic of the Moment not being displayed with no custom filter(s).

I don't use Adblock to block ads - I use it solely for the image blocking feature. I use a combination of the NoScript add-on and user CSS files to hide ads from selected sites. DU gets their ads from Google, so if Google's scripts don't run - no ads.

NoScript is great, but it takes quite a bit of active participation - you have to add sites you frequently visit to your whitelist (which can be annoying if you visit a lot of sites and want to enable all their features). Alternatively, I suppose you could allow all scripts and then selectively block things you don't want by adding them to your blacklist (at least I think that's possible).

Many sites heavily depend on Javascript for functionality, so visiting new sites with the default settings of NoScript means that a lot of things do not display/function properly initially (it is easy to temporarily allow scripts to run on those pages, but you do have to actively make a couple of mouse click to make it happen). Quite a few sites also use third-party Javascript for functionality (e.g. jquery, googleapis, cloudfront, amazonaws, etc.) so you'll end up over time having to learn what things to allow in addition to the main website's scripts.

Like I said before, NoScipt works great but it requires some knowledge and participation from the user. It does work well for disabling third-party advertising with fewer side effects than typical ad blockers. It might be worth trying out to see if you find it useful - especially if you spend the majority of your time online on the same group of frequently visited websites.

[PowerToThePeople]

5. I use the lists from this person

as well as my own additions for sites to block.

Much information as to various ways to use the lists on his/her page. Personally, I have a local DNS cache server that I have filtering unwanted places. But, you probably can not do something like like on your work network. You may be able to use the hosts file, depending on the admin level you have been given for your local machine.

http://pgl.yoyo.org/as/

[gvstn]

6. I've been thinking about this problem and don't have a solution.

Which browser do you use (I use FF). I vaguely remember having this same problem several months ago but because I use the Nightly build of FF I often get slight annoyances that last a day or two and then the next build fixes it. So I don't go overboard troubleshooting most problems.

One thought is that even though disabling Adblock seems to be the solution is that sometimes various extensions/addons conflict with each other. (I find Ghostery to usually be the guilty party).

If nothing else works it may be worth troubleshooting by disabling all your other extensions but leaving Adblock on and see if the images load. If they do then you may need to begin looking for a conflict between extensions.