The filtering that AdCruncher™ Proxy does is controlled by various filtering lists. The main filter list is the Ads Filter list, which specifies the filter patterns for the banner ads you want filtered. In addition to the Ads Filter list, there are lists for Ads No-filtering, Cookies filtering and Scripts filtering.
You can add, change or remove entries from each of these filter lists via the "Edit Filtering Lists" menu item found under the "Edit" menu (or by clicking on the "Edit Filter Lists" toolbar button). Selecting this menu item (or clicking on the toolbar button) displays a tabbed dialog where you can quickly and easily adjust the various filtering lists:
The Ads Filter list contains the list of URLs for all of the banner ads you want to filter. If you find a banner ad that isn't being filtered, you need to enter a filter pattern for it into the filter list.
With Internet Explorer, simply right-click on the image for the banner ad you wish to filter and select "Properties" from the context menu that appears. This brings up a dialog box that displays the URL for that particular image. Right-click on the "Address (URL)" field and select "Select All" to highlight and select the URL field. Then right click again (on the "Address (URL)" field) and select "Copy" to copy the URL to the clipboard:
Once the URL is copied to the clipboard you can then close the Properties dialog box since we have what we want: the URL copied to the clipboard.
Then simply paste the URL into AdCruncher's Ads Filters list by selecting "Edit Filtering Lists" from AdCruncher™'s "Edit" menu (or by clicking on the "Edit Filtering Lists" toolbar button) and pasting the URL into the edit box at the top of the dialog and then clicking the "Add" button to insert it into the list.
For Netscape users, the process is a little simpler: just right-click on the image in question and select the "Copy Image Location" menu item (near the bottom of the list) from the right-click context menu that appears. Then simply add the URL into the AdCruncher™ filtering list as already explained above.
Once you add your new entry into the filter list, simply click "OK" to close the Filtering Lists dialog box and then click the "Refresh" button in your browser and the annoying banner ad should magically disappear! Cool, eh? :)
Note: You should "Save" your Proxy [Settings] after modifying any filter list if you want you change to be remembered for next time. To save your proxy settings, click on the "Save Proxy" toolbar or 'File' menu item.
The "Import" and "Export" buttons allow you to 'save' and 'restore' your current filter lists to/from a simple text file for backup purposes (or sharing with others).
Be aware, however, that while AdCruncher™ does its best to be as efficient as possible, an extremely long filter list will have a direct impact on performance. A list of several dozen entries shouldn't really be a problem, but one with several hundred entries might be; I don't know -- I've personally never had a need for that many entries. Bottom line: the shorter the filter list the better.
It should also be noted that AdCruncher™ supports limited pattern matching for URL comparison, so you don't have to enter complete URLs all the time. If the URL contains a string of characters that you feel would always identify it as being one for a banner ad, then you only need to enter just that portion of the URL.
For example, if the URL in question is "www.someplace.com/Sponsors/Adverts/specialoffer123.gif", then chances are you might only need to enter "*/Sponsors/Adverts" (or possibly just "*/Adverts") and not the entire URL.
Refer to the comments in the supplied sample filter lists for more information.
The Ads No-Filtering list contains the list of URLs for the banner ads you don't want to filter.
This feature was added to allow users of "free" Internet services (that contractually do not allow you to filter certain ads they place on your screen) to specify the URLs of those ads. Any URL placed into this list will not be filtered.
Most users of these types of "free" services will probably only need a single entry in this list consisting of only the domain name portion of their service's ISP. Since this list is always checked first and overrides any entries found in the previously mentioned Ads Filtering list, this allows you to still filter ads from other sites while allowing ads from your "free" service provider to be let through and displayed.
It is important that you read your contract closely to be sure you are only required to not filter ads from your "free" service provider's servers and not everyplace else too. While I haven't personally used and thus have never read any of these type of services' service contracts, I seriously doubt any of them disallow you from filtering any and all ads, no matter where they come from. However, I am not a lawyer so I must emphasize once again to read your contract closely to see what you can and cannot filter
Of course, if your "free" Internet service requires that you not filter any ads, no matter where they come from, then products such as AdCruncher™ are of limited use to you. However, most such services only disallow you from filtering their ads and cookies, so you should still be able to filter other sites. Once again, however, read your contract closely to be sure and don't blame me for not warning you.
The default for AdCruncher™ is to filter out all cookies from all sites. (See the section on "Cookies" on the main "Overview" web page for more information on cookies and their concern)
Sometimes however you need to allow cookies for certain sites, so you need to add those site names into this list.
Note that these entries are not URLs, they are domain names. You should only enter the domain portion and not a complete URL. AdCruncher™ does not currently support filtering cookies for specific URLs. Either all cookies are allowed from a particular domain or none are allowed. I may decide in a future release to allow cookie filtering based on URLs, but for now, cookie filtering is based on the domain only. If this is a problem or burden for any of you, please let me know. I'm a reasonable man and I could probably change this rather quickly if it turns out to be a problem, but for the time being cookie filtering is by domain only.
The Scripts Filtering entries control the disabling of HTML scripts contained on a web page. This feature was added solely to stop those annoying "popup" windows from appearing (which are at the moment caused by script commands).
Enter the filter patterns for the URLs of the web pages you want to disable scripts on into the "Disable Scripting" list, and enter the URLs of the web pages you want to always allow scripts to run on into the "Enable Scripting" list. Entries in the "Enable Scripting" list always override entries in the "Disable Scripting" list.
The ability to allow scripts to run on certain pages while disabling them for all other pages is to allow for the situation where most of the pages at a particular site have those annoying popup windows but not all of them do. Some web page designers use script commands to alter the image of a button, for example, and not to create a popup window. To allow these pages to have the script commands execute to provide that cool button effect when you move you mouse over the button or image, the script needs to be allowed to run. Thus the ability to enable scripting for just a few select URLs while still disabling scripting for all other pages is provided via separate "Disable Scripting" and "Enable Scripting" lists.