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by equitablequal 1837 days ago
Anyone not using Firefox/Ublock; you can use NoScript to block the banners, and a lot of other adtech (including some paywalls such as Bloomberg) as they are all JS-powered.

It's quite surprising to see how many JS plugins are in operation on a typical consumer site, and satisfying to know they were all blocked unless expressly permitted :)

2 comments

And if you don't want to or can't install noscript, you can use my little hack https://noscript.it/ to view a page without javascript.

Note that it is a hack/poc and does not always work, especially the x-frame-detection is iffy so if you try it and just see a blank page try the "enable proxy" checkbox. I use it every now and then on iOS to get around some especially obnoxious JS, but if there were more users I would be more motivated to improve it (hint hint:-)

Keep in mind, however, that you will end up enabling all the "Please enable Javascript to view our website (even though our website works well enough for your casual visit without it)" banners, that are enabled in the HTML by default and hidden by JS :)

For example, one particular maroon-headwear-related Linux distro's bug tracker has a particularly egregious blinking bright red banner, asking you to enable JS for the website to "function correctly", even though reading bugs on said tracker works fine without it.