InformAction Forums

On a forum site where recently the policy has changed to allow third party advertisers, I am trying to block some but not all of those because they cause Firefox to repeatedly reload the page I am reading.
The problem is that the Noscript menu does not stay put for me to be able to block the sites I want to block. Because the page reloads, the menu also reloads every few seconds, and I can't click the item I need to click before it is temporarily removed by the reload of the menu.

Although you describe the scenario well, I've no idea what do you want us to help you with?

EDIT This issue again? viewtopic.php?f=7&t=20449

It's the same issue but I've got the blockautorefresh setting already set to TRUE.
The main problem seems to be that the Noscript menu does not stay put so that I can make the changes necessary to tame the page, so to speak.
Before I can click any item, it changes and reloads again. Or I click something but a new item has already rolled into that position.
And it's not always the case that the whole page reloads. Mostly it's just the Noscript menu?
The whole thing goes away when I give the blanket permission for the site, so it does seem to be some script there that's loading or trying to load and when blocked just tries again? Is that possible?

Then it's almost certainly the exact scenario you're describing in your post: that there's a script where "if at first it [doesn't] succeed, [it tries, tries] again", even though it's "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"

Can you please elaborate on what you mean by blanket permission?

Can you provide a link so that we can play with it ourselves, or is login required to see this?

Start by blocking the top-level domain, so nothing runs. Then you can experiment with whitelisting just one domain at a time.

You can manually add sites to the whitelist in Options-Whitelist if needed.

It may also be possible to write a surrogate that will block the page reload; I think that someone has requested it before, so there should be a sample around somewhere. The built-in blocking is only for refreshes based on HTML 'meta' tags.

With blanket permission I meant allow EVERYTHING from the site. They have third party (from other https) included, some with completely different IDs. So it is difficult to even make out what the sites are that are doing this havoc with my system. If I could make out the addresses that are causing this I would have a handle on it.
The address is www.fountainpennetwork.com. The issue is their ads. I am a member of the network so I do not see all the ads; if you go without logging in you do not have access to all the pages, and the ads are much more aggressive (I've been told - I have been a member since before they started allowing ads).
For now I have a workable situation where I give temporary permission to all from this site, and then make those permissions permanent; then I go in options and selectively remove some of the permissions. I am also using adblock plus. I actually have tried allowing some ads because the site needs the revenue, but if I do that it gets unreadable very quickly.

Perhaps you would find it easier to use a specific adblocking tool, then? Eg Adblock Plus?

Mind you, if you're already seeing less ads because you're a member, then using a tool to block even those seems a bit...well, it doesn't do the site any favors, and they *are* the hand that is feeding you.

I wasn't seeing refreshing, that I noticed, much less undo refreshing?

I want to allow the ads that don't make reading the page difficult and only block the obnoxious ones that somehow slip through.
At the moment they seem to have blocked some of the more nefarious ones so I'm not seeing the continuous reloading of the page. But periodically, something slips through and then it starts again.
And when that happens, I would like to be able to find the particular site that causes it and block only scripts from those sites, in order not to have to resort to Adblock.
I have whitelisted the main site on Adblock to allow some of the ads, but they're now using third party ad sites and that defeats the whitelisting, for me.

If you post more details about which ads you would like to see and which you don't (this is 100% a matter of opinion), I can visit the site and try to come up with fine-grained adblock whitelist filters.

I know that one of your criteria is that the ad not cause the page to reload and reload and reload and reload and reload and...

But what about your visual criteria? What about if the ad has sound? What about content of the ad? What about type of display, do you mind pop-ups, ads in the middle of content, ads on the edges of content, big ads, small ads,...?

(Basically I'm asking for you to post criteria in a similar form to the listing @ https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads#criteria, but for what you personally think is acceptable on that one site; then I'll go there and see if it's possible to distinguish ads that fit your criteria from the rest. If that is not possible, I'll then look to see if there's a means to stop the reloading only in NoScript, while making sure that at least some ads display.)

Also, do you have Flash player installed and active?

Oh, and which ads do not go away with login?

mhguda wrote:in order not to have to resort to Adblock.

Why is that? It's designed for the job, much more so than NoScript is.