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Universal Adblock and Website Modification Tool

Not only removes all web site elements you would like to get rid of, but also gives you the power to set unlimited styles on a website of your choice via XML! Will be expanded to your personal website skinning platform... What do you think of that?

This is more than just an ordinary ad blocker. You can even use it to apply a completely different skin to a website of your choice...

Description

If your web site is not already included, you just need to add the respective elements to the config XML, which is by default located on my web server:

http://data.usability-online.com/adblock/universaladblock.xml

You can replace it with your own file, hosted on your own web space and just change the server URL and filename in the userscript, or - and I would appreciate this - post new sites and elements (also "excluded" elements) right here.

Specified elements will be removed completely from the DOM, once a website is loaded (and thus save memory;). Certainly this means that also the space which the removed ads usually occupy within the website is freed.

This is a styler, too!

If after removal the website layout is messed up, you can easily define style in the XML (as done for leo.org and google search results in my default XML config file). Naturally you can add as much global or inline style definitions as you want - on any website and independently from element removal

You can find a documentation in the standard config file (linked above). If you have any questions, just ask!

You can also send me an eMail if you have a bunch of additions (see script source)!

Changelog

05/18/2008: Updated XML definitions, using keyword "banner" in the "all" section proofed to be a bad idea;) Added some ad blocking definitions
05/18/2008: Script now compatible with new Firefox 3 RC! Thanks 4 your bug report, lazka!
05/15/2008: !important: implemented caching function for all included domains and global styles (except general and inline definitions). Now changes on cached sites will be applied almost instantly while loading the most recent xml definitions (once they had been cached:) For elements you wish to be removed with (almost) no delay and which can be addressed distinctly by style definitions, you can just set the global style definition of kind "display:none"!
05/13/2008: Added max-width property to wikipedia for better readability on big screens!
05/13/2008: Fixed some minor code issues
05/09/2008: Applied important changes in XML structure!
05/08/2008: Initial (but well tested) version

ToDo...

Implement more powerful web page modification support, including to inject XHTML (CDATA) into any element, moving DOM Elements (e.g. switching form horizontal to vertical navigation) etc.
Implement php/mySQL backend to generate dynamic XML for registered users.
Implement admin frontend for registered users to log in, alter web pages on-the-fly and save the results
Implement optional "click-recorder" for usability purposes

If you like this script, please honor it with your participation or recommendation! Try my other scripts too!

Currently supported domains include...

And much more using "universal" element definitions!

May 16, 2008 billythegates Script's author	Thanks! I think the XML method is not the worst, since I also implemented a caching functionality. As I mentioned above, I am going to implement a server-side php/mysql solution which should generate the data on demand and absolutely dynamic. Will need some time to do this, but stay in touch...

May 16, 2008 thorbenhauer Scriptwright	Cool! Personal I don't like the idea of fetching the xml definition file over the web. But this could be avoided with the upcoming GM 0.8.* (@resource). If the performance stays smooth, I'll give it a shot.

May 16, 2008 billythegates Script's author	If you do not have the chance to host your own XML definitions or have no clue of how to find elements on a site to be removed, please at least post the site's URL you wish to be added. I really encourage you to participate, otherwise the power of the script will never be exploited. Thank you.

May 8, 2008 billythegates Script's author	You can try to achieve this with my script, but I would absolutely recommend to use Gmail and Google Apps Sidebar Remover for that purpose, because this does more than just removing the sidebar!

May 8, 2008 papoo Scriptwright	and using the full window width in gmail?

May 8, 2008 papoo Scriptwright	Hello, nice script. how can i remove the adds of gmail (in the new version) with your script?