Rec: Ghostery Content Blocker
3 Jan 2017 01:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
promethia_tenk
Ghostery is like a next-level adblocker. It's an extension for your browser that can block not just visible ads, but all of the trackers and plug-ins that litter modern websites. Why would you want to do this?
1) Privacy: Pretty much every website on the internet is spying on you, often in sophisticated networks that follow you around the web. Ghostry helps shield you from these tracker networks.
2) Security: Some website plugins carry malware that can do you active harm.
3) Speed: A major portion of the data load of a lot of websites is in trackers and plugins. It's amazing how fast some of these sites load when you cut that crap out.
4) Clutter: Ghostery removes a lot of the extra cruft from websites that can distract from the content. Not just ads, but things like those social media sharing buttons, media players, and buggy, slow-loading comment sections. Now, some of these things are useful, but Ghostery lets you turn them on and off at will. Maybe you want the Facebook share buttons but not the Twitter or Linked in ones--you can do that. Maybe most of the time you just want to read a site's articles but sometimes you want to comment--you can load them only when you want to.
5) And it blocks ads too.
I actually run Ghostery and AdBlock Plus at the same time. Sometimes AdBlock picks up something that Ghostery misses.
Ghostery does take a little more active tending than something like AdBlock Plus. As I mention above, some of these plugins are things you actually want. Ghostery breaks the various trackers and plugins into categories like advertising, analytics, media players, etc., to help you figure out which. During the setup process you're also able to search for particular items if you already know you want them enabled (I rely a lot on Google services, for example, and much of the value they provide depends on them knowing that I'm doing, so I enabled their trackers out of the box).
If you're on a particular web page and something seems broken, you can click on Ghostery's drop-down menu to see what content it's blocking and selectively re-enable what you need. It looks like this:
The thing I end up needing to re-enable most often are video players. For certain page elements like comment sections, Ghostery will also leave a little ghost icon to mark what it blocked and you can click on the icon to re-enable the plugin.
Amusingly/of note, if you still use LiveJournal, you will need to enable the LiveJournal 'site analytics' plugin, as major portions of the system pages like comments, flist filtering, and many settings now seem to be tied to it. I'm not entirely sure what I think about this.
Before you install, it's also worth reading about Ghostery's business model so you can make an informed decision about whether and how you use it. Personally, it tend to put more trust in companies that are up-front about how they make their money like this.
New pretties
Date: 8 Jan 2017 03:21 am (UTC).module-userprofile .userpic img {height: 100px; width: 100px;}
put the titles of the modules in lowercase:
.module-header {text-transform: lowercase;}
fancier curves and outlines:
Delete the original line for rounding the corners, and replace with:
#header, .comment-wrapper, .module, .entry-wrapper {border: 1px solid #000000;}
#header, .comment-wrapper, .module, .entry-wrapper, .module-wrapper {border-radius:5px!important;}
.entry-title, .module-header, module-wrapper {border-top-left-radius: 5px;
border-top-right-radius: 5px;}
.comment-title {border-top-right-radius: 5px;}
.entry, .comment {border-top-right-radius: 5px; border-bottom-right-radius: 5px;}
.module-content {padding: 2px}
Re: New pretties
Date: 8 Jan 2017 02:54 pm (UTC)You are a genius.
(Am v. pleased that I worked out which bit to tick so the Entries/Calendar/Flist/Network/Tags/Memories/Profile were all added to the bar at the top and not on the side!)
ETA: Hit post too soon. Meant to say that I live for small victories. ;)
Also the main title is still capitalised, although that doesn't bother me as much as the 'Entries' below the titles & subtitle. (Which I don't think it's possible to get rid of. Well, I tried, and then it got rid of the link below as well. I shall have to live with it.)
The only other thing (and that's presumably inherent to the style so don't worry about it) is that the icons are inside the posts, rather than on the left margin.
I guess I should also have a proper look at this, and figure out if it's achievable. In my search, also came across Dreamwidth Site Skin Detector which would probably be a good idea also.
Re: New pretties
Date: 8 Jan 2017 03:04 pm (UTC)I didn't know you could do that in this style! I need that! *runs off*
To remove the border just from around the navigation links, add:
.module-navlinks {border: none!important}
Re: New pretties
Date: 8 Jan 2017 03:07 pm (UTC)It's in one of those bits where you choose what to do with all the modules and I *think* it's Module 2? You can change the placing.
To remove the border just from around the navigation links, add:
I'm not sure I mind that. (Hmmm.) But I shall play around with the font size, because it's MASSIVE. ETA: The journal title & subtitle I mean. And it doesn't seem to be an option... Boo.
Re: New pretties
Date: 8 Jan 2017 03:25 pm (UTC)customize --> fonts --> header --> size of title font, size of subtitle font (can do in px or decimals of em, like .5 em)
Re: New pretties
Date: 8 Jan 2017 03:19 pm (UTC)#header h1#title, h2#subtitle {text-transform: lowercase;}
#header h2#pagetitle {display: none}
Re: New pretties
Date: 8 Jan 2017 03:20 pm (UTC)Re: New pretties
Date: 8 Jan 2017 03:21 pm (UTC)<3