Blocking Images is Hard To Do

[sdelmonte]

As you may recall, I was told at work that community.livejournal.com (which is to say, in my case, the Milliways Bar RPG) uses a lot of bandwidth. Further discussion with a colleague pretty much reveals that our bandwidth is just not keeping up with the needs of a tech-savvy organization but that we just don't have the money to upgrade service. Given the size of the cutbacks here, that's fair enough (if not something I am glad to hear). And I think it's probably fair to say that userpics really do stack up after a while (especially in long RP threads).

So I decided to do my part and work on getting rid of images on as many sites I check at work as possible. At first I tried to block ALL images, and found that if you do that, some sites are unreadable, and that threads on LJ stop getting diagonal (thus getting harder to read). So I changed my approach. I found out from a helpful techie at LJ that you can block the image server (l-userpic.livejournal.com) without affecting other things. And I began to block images from sites where I can live without images.

Only it doesn't quite work. I have told my browser to block images from a number of sites without success. I'm guessing that there are distinct image servers in some cases, and that in others, it's all or nothing. Thus I come to my collective source of data and ask if anyone has any suggestions for getting those pesky images. Any thoughts?

Comments

[sophistry]

Are you using Firefox? If so, it looks like the ImgLikeOpera extension might be able to do what you need.

ETA: now with actual link, oops.

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

I use AdBlockPlus for Firefox to selectively block images. It has the bonus effect of, with the FilterSetG addition, blocking most online advertising without my having to pay attention to it.

[sdelmonte]

So far, it's not really working well, especially on LJ.

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

Just tested blocking userpics on LJ with AdBlockPlus, and it's maintaining threading perfectly well. I actually may leave it this way, as much as I'll miss the icons, for similar reasons.

[sdelmonte]

Can you give me a sense of how I can make this work? There aren't any instructions, so far as I can tell.

(Ironically, though, I sometimes need to see ads, seeing as how we are starting to do web ads.)

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

Once you have AdBlockPlus installed, right click on the image you want to block, and select "Adblock Image". Then select from the choices the one that corresponds to the server you want to block images from.

You can also whitelist servers in your filter, so that the ads YOU are serving don't get blocked in your browser. This is done under Tools->AdBlock Plus Preferences.

[sdelmonte]

Eureka! Thanks!

[tinylegacies.livejournal.com]

I thiiiiiink there is a setting on LJ where you can block images. You would need to turn it on and off between home and work, which would suck, but it might be a short term solution?

[sdelmonte]

The trick, as noted, is blocking the image server for icons. You can turn off images in posts through user settings, but not icons.

[yakalskovich]

Perhaps the icons you do still see are still in the cache/on the proxy?

[poltr1]

I assume you followed my earlier suggestion at turning off images in posts.

I'm not understanding something. If LJ icon images are so small (max 100x100 pixels, which probably translates into no more than a 10Kb JPEG file), why do you want to block them?

Another suggestion is to change your journal style so that it doesn't use icon images. I think folkmew has hers set to such a style.

[sdelmonte]

I was told, for whatever reason, that community.livejournal.com eats bandwidth. There are only two reasons I can think that this would be highlighted: 1) I reload the pages often; and 2) the icons add up. As noted, we have lousy bandwidth, and my only guess is that the multiple downloads of icons really does add up. (Why else am I being told this for this site and not, say, ESPN?)