uBlock Origin 1.13: Element Zapper and CSP Filter

Martin Brinkmann
Jun 21, 2017
Updated • Jun 21, 2017
Internet
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UBlock Origin 1.13.0 is a new version of the popular content blocking extension for Firefox and Google Chrome web browsers.

It introduces two new features to the extension: Element Zapper and CSP filtering. The latest version of uBlock Origin is already listed on the official Chrome Web Store and Mozilla AMO website.

Interested users can download it from the extension stores, existing users may use the automatic update functionality of the browser to update to the new version.

The new version of the content blocker ships with two new features that will benefit users of the extension.

Update: An update was released to uBlock Origin 1.13.2 which fixes the issue experienced on Chrome.

Element Zapper

ublock origin element zapper

Element Zapper has been designed to remove elements on web pages that you open temporarily. While you can hide elements on web pages temporarily using Developer Tools, the main benefit that Element Zapper offers is that it simplifies this process.

Click on the uBlock Origin icon in the browser's address bar, and select the new Element Zapper icon (the lightning icon) to make use of it.

This enables the element picker mode. Move the mouse cursor over the element that you want to remove from the page -- an overlay, annoying advertisement, auto-playing video, an image, or any other element -- and click on it. The element is removed right away, and it stays hidden until you reload the page.

remove element

You can exit the mode at any time without removing an element by pressing Esc. There are also two options to remove multiple elements without exiting Element Zapper mode.

You can hold down the Shift-key before you click on elements to remove them, or may hover over elements and hit the Del-key instead. Element Zapper mode remains active when you do this, so that you can remove multiple elements on a web page without having to activate the mode each time.

Element Zapper mode has been designed for situations where rule creation does not make sense. This can be the case for web resources that you won't visit again for instance, or for testing functionality before you add a permanent rule to uBlock Origin's set of rules.

Sometimes we visit a page on a site for which we do not intend to become a regular visitor, and many sites nowadays will throw nuisance visual elements preventing you from accessing the content. However oftentimes we would rather not go through the process of creating one or more filters for just that one visit. This is where the element-zapper mode is useful: you can quickly get rid of the nuisance visual element without having to pollute your filter set for this one single visit.

The second new feature enables you to inject any Content Security Policy (csp) header in pages that match the filter.

Currently all the following modifiers are supported when used with csp=: third-party, domain=, important, badfilter.

Additionally, exception filters for csp= can be crafted two ways:

Must be exact csp= match, i.e. @@||example.com/nice$csp=frame-src 'none' will cancel only whatever filter tries to inject exactly a csp=frame-src 'none' filter, but not a csp=frame-src 'self' filter; OR
@@...$csp will cancel all CSP injection for URLs which match the filter.
All this required refactoring on my side, as the semantic for csp= filters is that all matching filters must be found (and furthermore applied according to important and @@), while normal filters only the first hit is returned.

The latest version of uBlock Origin supports the following keyboard shortcuts:

  • Alt-Z to open the Element Zapper mode.
  • Alt-X to open the Element Picker mode.
  • Alt-L to open the Logger.

Chrome users can customize shortcuts by loading chrome://extensions/ and clicking on the "keyboard shortcuts" link on the page.

Firefox users need to create the following three preferences using about:config

  • extensions.ublock0.shortcuts.launch-element-zapper
  • extensions.ublock0.shortcuts.launch-element-picker
  • extensions.ublock0.shortcuts.launch-logger

Setting a value to - disables the shortcut in Firefox, and resetting them restores the initial values.

You find additional information about the release on the project's GitHub webpage.

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Comments

  1. ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
    Reply

    Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on August 4, 2012 at 7:57 pm
      Reply

      Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.

    2. Leonidas Burton said on September 4, 2023 at 4:51 am
      Reply

      I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
      http://www.google.com/saved

  2. VioletMoon said on August 16, 2023 at 5:26 pm
    Reply

    @Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!

  3. Karl said on August 17, 2023 at 10:36 pm
    Reply

    @Martin

    The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
    https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/

    Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.

  4. Anonymous said on August 25, 2023 at 11:44 am
    Reply

    Omg a badge!!!
    Some tangible reward lmao.

    It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.

  5. Scroogled said on August 25, 2023 at 10:57 pm
    Reply

    With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.

    1. lollmaoeven said on August 27, 2023 at 6:24 am
      Reply

      This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)

  6. El Duderino said on August 25, 2023 at 11:14 pm
    Reply

    Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.

    And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.

  7. John G. said on August 26, 2023 at 1:29 am
    Reply

    First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm

    For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[

  8. Kalmly said on August 26, 2023 at 4:42 pm
    Reply

    Yes. Please. Fix the comments.

  9. Kim Schmidt said on September 3, 2023 at 3:42 pm
    Reply

    With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.

    Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.

    The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.

    If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.

    And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.

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