Blocking unwanted elements/frames at dailymail.co.uk with uBlock Origin

0

This started as a pet peave but now it's an academic exercise.

Occasionally I follow a link to a story at the UK's Daily Mail and I want to write a rule/filter for uBlockO to prevent my eyes being soiled by the tawdry, sycophantic sidebar stories that invariably litter the right-hand margin of the page. uBlockO's "block element" function works well enough but only for that one specific element. I want to block the entire category.

Here is a (redacted) example URL:

www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1234567/abcd-efgh-ijkl-mnop.html

When I "block element" it, the filter it creates is this:

www.dailymail.co.uk##a[href="/tvshowbiz/article-1234567/abcd-efgh-ijkl-mnop.html"] > .pufftext > strong

I've tried every permutation I can think of to block everything from www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-* outward, or even www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/*, but none of them have any effect. I don't know if I'm using the wrong uBlock function or if my syntax is in error.

Any clues?

bobsnephew

Posted 2018-01-30T04:08:16.563

Reputation: 31

You just need to block the entire div where the advertisements are. The filter would look like this www.dailymail.co.uk##.beta – DrZoo – 2018-01-30T04:28:05.967

Thank you for the reply, DrZoo, but these aren't adverts, they're links to other stories/articles at the Daily Mail. And I'm afraid I don't know what a "div" is. As a guess, I did try www.dailymail.co.uk##.tvshowbiz but it had no effect. – bobsnephew – 2018-01-30T18:09:10.540

Not understanding basic HTML is probably why you're having trouble blocking what you want. Here is a picture with the div. Here is a picture without the div. I quickly blocked the whole thing to show the difference. I was unclear what you exactly wanted blocked.

– DrZoo – 2018-01-30T18:29:42.347

Answers

0

I'll go you one better. I didn't even know 'div' was HTML.

I appreciate your help but while I was trying to figure out which 'div' to block, I found that I'd have got the result I wanted in the first place if I'd been more thorough when investigating the "block element" function. I needed to paint with a broader brush so I was selecting the greater frame rather than one of the elements contained within the frame. When I hit the right spot, the filter it created was:

www.dailymail.co.uk##.lead-alpha.cleared:nth-of-type(3) > .beta

And that produced the same result you posted images of. The entire frame disappears.

Thanks again!

bobsnephew

Posted 2018-01-30T04:08:16.563

Reputation: 31

Asked: 2018-01-30T04:08:16.563

Viewed: 1 263 times

Active: 2018-02-16T03:14:46.703