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Wednesday, January 24th, 2007, 12:30 am

New Google Groups Interface Hates AdBlock

Google on a computer screen

Earlier today, a mini milstone for Google Groups left its stingy mark . The beta version of the new interface, which acts as a gateway to UseNet (and beyond), has just gone live as a stable service. The old presenatation, which was simpler, is sadly no longer available. I am not too happy about this ‘facelift’, yet no options that I navigated through could take me back to the minimalist and familiar interface. This transition — a questionable ‘upgrade’ — may be even worse than the last one, which discoraged proper netiquette and earned Google Groups users some bad reputation. It sometimes led them to killfiles and filters, quite collectively and prejudicely.

In any event, my main concern with the new interface is one which cost me between 15 minutes to half an hour. The new Google Groups interface conflicts with AdBlock (Firefox plugin). Something in the naming of the divs has apparently changed. Looking at userContent.css (under /chrome) and removing some of the prominent selectors with “ad” as a substring resolved the issue. They are located at the top, but I am not sure whose removal resolved the problem.

So, in case someone is having the same trouble as me, I decided to post this as a blog item that’ll prove redundant to most readers. Let’s make something more useful of this ramble. Are you reading and /or using Digg? If so, why not strip all the ads off the site?

2 Responses to “New Google Groups Interface Hates AdBlock”

  1. Wladimir Palant Says:

    I have no problems whatsoever with Adblock Plus on this site (and I have been using the new interface for a while). Note: userContent.css has absolutely nothing to do with Adblock.

  2. Roy Schestowitz Says:

    @ Wladimir: Yes, excuse my confusion. I actually use a mixture of AdBlock and CSS not only to remove ads, but also to modify (decrease) font size. Flexibility is a wonerful thing.

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