A JavaScript browser library fails due to an adblocker blacklisting 'beacon.js'
1–10 of 85 posts
Re: A JavaScript browser library fails due to an adblocker blacklisting 'beacon.js'
#2An interesting related anecdote on this is that at least in Chrome, adblockers can also interfere with extensions' attempts to load scripts, load stylesheets, or open windows. I maintain an extension with a smallish active userbase (~20k people) and a couple different times I've encountered mysterious failures that were the result of clumsy keyword blocklists in ublock/adblock/etc - for example an extension asset (packed into the extension, not on a web server!) containing the word 'popout' caused it to get killed silently, and renaming it made it work.
Naturally you can troubleshoot a lot of this with 'does it work if you disable adblock?' but it's a real pain to have to convince users that they can't use your software along with their broken adblocker.
Re: A JavaScript browser library fails due to an adblocker blacklisting 'beacon.js'
#3An interesting related anecdote on this is that at least in Chrome, adblockers can also interfere with extensions' attempts to load scripts, load stylesheets, or open windows. I maintain an extension with a smallish active userbase (~20k people) and a couple different times I've encountered mysterious failures that were the result of clumsy keyword blocklists in ublock/adblock/etc - for example an extension asset (pa…
Shouldn't adblockers whitelist local request to prevent something like this?
Re: A JavaScript browser library fails due to an adblocker blacklisting 'beacon.js'
#4An interesting related anecdote on this is that at least in Chrome, adblockers can also interfere with extensions' attempts to load scripts, load stylesheets, or open windows. I maintain an extension with a smallish active userbase (~20k people) and a couple different times I've encountered mysterious failures that were the result of clumsy keyword blocklists in ublock/adblock/etc - for example an extension asset (pa…
> it's a real pain to have to convince users that they can't use your software along with their broken adblocker
The reality for most extension developers is that our extension is less essential to users than their adblocker, and if they had to choose between them they would choose the latter.
Re: A JavaScript browser library fails due to an adblocker blacklisting 'beacon.js'
#5An interesting related anecdote on this is that at least in Chrome, adblockers can also interfere with extensions' attempts to load scripts, load stylesheets, or open windows. I maintain an extension with a smallish active userbase (~20k people) and a couple different times I've encountered mysterious failures that were the result of clumsy keyword blocklists in ublock/adblock/etc - for example an extension asset (pa…
Yes. We seem to have moved from a position of "four different browsers with differing behaviour" to "four consistent browsers with consistent behaviour, each with hundreds of potential content-rewriting extensions that may arbitrarily break your site in unexpected ways". I'm not convinced this is an improvement.
Re: A JavaScript browser library fails due to an adblocker blacklisting 'beacon.js'
#6An interesting related anecdote on this is that at least in Chrome, adblockers can also interfere with extensions' attempts to load scripts, load stylesheets, or open windows. I maintain an extension with a smallish active userbase (~20k people) and a couple different times I've encountered mysterious failures that were the result of clumsy keyword blocklists in ublock/adblock/etc - for example an extension asset (pa…
> it's a real pain to have to convince users that they can't use your software along with their broken adblocker The reality for most extension developers is that our extension is less essential to users than their adblocker, and if they had to choose between them they would choose the latter.
To be honsest, I might do the same. Surfing the web without an adblocker nowerdays isn't much fun, to say the least
Re: A JavaScript browser library fails due to an adblocker blacklisting 'beacon.js'
#7Another protip: don't name your images "banner.jpg"; "ads.js" and "analytics.js" etc are also not exactly great names.
Another protip: Always make sure that critical flows in the app won't fail if analytics event fails. You probably want to wrap calls to analytics provider with your own function, and in that function check for existence of global analytics object like "window.ga" which may fail to load due to adblockers and similar tools. In other words, don't 'ga("send", ...)' all over your code.
I had airplane ticket booking fail mysteriously because "pay" button had a analytics listener bound to it, and it would throw an exception when adblocker was on. Without devtools, I would not understand what's going on.
Re: A JavaScript browser library fails due to an adblocker blacklisting 'beacon.js'
#8An interesting related anecdote on this is that at least in Chrome, adblockers can also interfere with extensions' attempts to load scripts, load stylesheets, or open windows. I maintain an extension with a smallish active userbase (~20k people) and a couple different times I've encountered mysterious failures that were the result of clumsy keyword blocklists in ublock/adblock/etc - for example an extension asset (pa…
Can you really blame them? Websites became hostile to users and users reacted. I don't know what your software is, and this certainly isn't directed at you, but if I'm forced to make a choice between using an ad blocker or using some software, I'll always choose the ad blocker (unless I was forced to use said software), especially if there are alternatives.
There are no real alternatives to using an ad blocker.
Re: A JavaScript browser library fails due to an adblocker blacklisting 'beacon.js'
#9An interesting related anecdote on this is that at least in Chrome, adblockers can also interfere with extensions' attempts to load scripts, load stylesheets, or open windows. I maintain an extension with a smallish active userbase (~20k people) and a couple different times I've encountered mysterious failures that were the result of clumsy keyword blocklists in ublock/adblock/etc - for example an extension asset (pa…
Can you really blame them? Websites became hostile to users and users reacted. I don't know what your software is, and this certainly isn't directed at you, but if I'm forced to make a choice between using an ad blocker or using some software, I'll always choose the ad blocker (unless I was forced to use said software), especially if there are alternatives. There are no real alternatives to using an ad blocker.
Don't assume most people are polite and reasonable like you. Many people are arseholes.
You're choosing to use either the ad-blocker, or the software, and you've chosen the ad-blocker.
You can see how tiresome it would be to have a flood of rude people saying "your software sucks", when there's nothing wrong with the software. There's a problem with the ad-blocker that the user has. The bug report should go to that ad-blocker.
You can also see how it must be a bit frustrating to have people saying "ZOMG why can't I use both? Fix your software so that I can use both!", when the fix needed is only achievable by the ad-block creator.
Re: A JavaScript browser library fails due to an adblocker blacklisting 'beacon.js'
#10An interesting related anecdote on this is that at least in Chrome, adblockers can also interfere with extensions' attempts to load scripts, load stylesheets, or open windows. I maintain an extension with a smallish active userbase (~20k people) and a couple different times I've encountered mysterious failures that were the result of clumsy keyword blocklists in ublock/adblock/etc - for example an extension asset (pa…
Yes. We seem to have moved from a position of "four different browsers with differing behaviour" to "four consistent browsers with consistent behaviour, each with hundreds of potential content-rewriting extensions that may arbitrarily break your site in unexpected ways". I'm not convinced this is an improvement.
It seems to be an improvement for the user.