IT on ice

Coding, Opera and other IT stuff

Get rid of social crap in your browser

Friday, June 24, 2011 7:18:34 AM

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Do you hate all these "I like it" buttons (and where's "I hate it" and "I don't care" ones?!), "Share this to friends", "Spam this to foes" and other stuff? I do. This crap is not just useless (as I don't use the sharing, tweeting, fb-ing and so on) but also loads tons of external scripts.
There are even some extensions created for blocking all this garbage, but there's no need in them thanks to mighty content blocker in Opera.

So let's begin.
  1. Read this article completely
  2. Copy the address list provided below to clipboard
  3. Find where's your Opera profile is located (Help -> About Opera, entry "Opera directory")
  4. Close your Opera
  5. Open file <Opera profile>\urlfilter.ini
  6. Paste to the end of it previously copied url list
  7. Save file
  8. Start Opera
  9. Enjoy!


There's the list of blocked addresses learnt by experience and SmSniff software. Fortunately external social net scripts are usually located in specific places so the social nets themselves won't be blocked. Let me know if something goes wrong.
You may select only those social nets which you need to block. For example if you use to tweet some stuff deselect Twitter addresses or deselect (RU) social nets if you're not Russian. Remove blocking of AddThis/AddToAny/etc if you use at least one of its share capabilities.

; Social crap. Last update: 27/09/2011
; FB
http://www.facebook.com/plugins/*
http://www.facebook.com/widgets/*
http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect.php*
http://connect.facebook.net/*
http://www.facebook.com/miniprofile.php*
; Twitter
http://platform.twitter.com/*
http://widgets.twimg.com*
http://twitter.com/javascripts/blogger.js
http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/*
; LJ
"http://www.livejournal.com/openid/server.bml?openid.mode=checkid_immediate*"
; AddThis
http://s7.addthis.com/*
http://api-public.addthis.com/*
; AddToAny
http://static.addtoany.com/menu/page.js
http://static.addtoany.com/buttons/share_save*
; Google
http://www.google.com/buzz/api/*
http://www-a-fc-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/*
http://www.google.com/friendconnect/script/friendconnect.js
https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js
; LinkedIn
http://platform.linkedin.com/*
; Odnokl (RU)
http://stg.odnoklassniki.ru/share*
; Mail.ru (RU)
http://connect.mail.ru/share_button*
http://cdn.connect.mail.ru/js*
; VKontakte (RU)
http://vkontakte.ru/widget*
;http://vkontakte.ru/js/api/* - see note below
http://userapi.com/js/api/*


Important note for VKontakte.ru. URL http://vkontakte.ru/js/api/* is used for embedded audio/video players and applications so it couldn't be blocked without function loss. So this address is commented out for now.

I'll try to keep this list up-to-date. Feel free to notify me if something's unexpectedly broken on social nets' sites or if there are some other non-blockable social net buttons.

WARNING! This method WON'T remove the "Like"/"Share" buttons themselves on each site! Many sites load these buttons locally from the same domain so it's nothing to do with them. But the external scripts would be blocked anyway.

HotkeyBB extension: announces & supportHotkeyBB 1.4

Comments

Mike Taylormiketaylr Wednesday, June 29, 2011 8:59:52 PM

Hey there, this is a very nice list of widgets to block. smile I saw your comment on my extension and just wanted to note that I like the ability to toggle the extension on and off easily, without having to edit files.

Fr0sT Thursday, June 30, 2011 6:07:07 AM

Mike, I personally couldn't imagine a situation when one needs to toggle widget blocking... one more extension is anyway heavier for browser (one more thing to load at startup, one more script to execute on every page load). But alternatives are always nice. You may use this list in your ext (sooner or later you'll be persuaded to add Russian Facebook clone VKontakte anyway wink ).

Mike Taylormiketaylr Thursday, June 30, 2011 6:07:47 PM

Thanks for letting me steal parts of your list. smile

The reason why I need to toggle blocking is for testing website compatability. For general browsing, I block everything. But if I'm working on an Open the Web ticket where someone has reported a site not working correctly in Opera, I need the ability to make sure all parts of the page are loading as expected.

Cheers.

Unregistered user Sunday, August 28, 2011 9:07:18 PM

neretva writes: Hello, Thanks for this, very useful, indeed. A JavaScript is disabled most of the times on my browser. I want to block widgets that this company promote: http://www.addtoany.com/share_save http://static.addtoany.com When I put them on your list, they do not work. What am I doing wrong? Thanks.

Unregistered user Sunday, August 28, 2011 9:10:09 PM

neretva writes: Never mind, as soon as I post it, I saw the Warning.

Unregistered user Friday, September 9, 2011 3:21:54 PM

DavidT writes: Dunno why but not even with windows search can i find that file :(

Fr0sT Monday, September 19, 2011 8:59:16 PM

Originally posted by anonymous:

Dunno why but not even with windows search can i find that file sad


You probably don't have it. Go to "Tools -> Advanced -> Blocked content" and add some address. Close Opera and examine your Opera profile folder. The file should be there.
P.S. Sorry for late answer, I've had problems with posting the messages.

Unregistered user Tuesday, September 20, 2011 11:22:24 AM

DavidT writes: Thanks for your answer. It just got created this way. ;)

Unregistered user Saturday, September 24, 2011 5:42:09 PM

Anonym writes: It seems to be https now for https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js

Fr0sT Tuesday, September 27, 2011 11:46:57 AM

Originally posted by anonymous:

It seems to be https now for https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js


You're right, thanks for noting!

Update
+ AddToAny added
! Google+1 fixed
- VK userapi removed

Unregistered user Tuesday, December 20, 2011 8:08:19 PM

Anonymous writes: very useful, thanks a lot for the information!

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