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Element picker

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Rory O’Kane edited this page Feb 28, 2020 · 65 revisions

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The element picker's purpose is to assist the user in the creation of network or cosmetic filters.

If there is an element on a web page you wish to remove forever, open the extension's popup menu, and click the small "eye-dropper" icon. You will enter the interactive element picker mode.

Element picker

Once in element-picker mode, you have to point and click on the element you wish to remove. Holding Ctrl (Cmd on Mac) while selecting an element will cause similar elements on the page to be also selected 1.17.5rc0+.

Once you click on the element, you will be presented with a modal dialog box which allows you to select, and optionally edit and create a filter for the element(s) you wish to remove from the web page.

Tip:

You can easily move element picker dialog using mouse, by grabbing and dragging by empty space between buttonsNew in 1.23.1b17

If possible, one or more network filters will be suggested, as well as a list of cosmetic filters. The top most cosmetic filter is the most specific which could be derived from the element you clicked. The bottom-most is the broadest, the least specific. Pick the one which matches best what you wish to accomplish (see demo of this).

When you click on one of the suggested filters, you will be shown what effect it will have on the page. You may want to ensure the selected filter will not also get rid of useful items on the page.

If you hold Ctrl while clicking on one of the suggested cosmetic filters in the list, only the selector of the entry itself will be used, rather than the full path of selectors -- this will cause similar elements on the page to be also selected.

You may manually edit the filter. However the result needs to be a valid filter, otherwise you won't be allowed to create a filter out of it. A valid filter in the context of the element picker is one which matches at least one element on the web page.

You may quit the interactive element picker by clicking the Quit button (or press Esc). You may close the modal dialog and go pick an element again by clicking the Pick button.

The Create button will be enabled only if a proper filter can be created from the content of the text area. Once you click the Create button, the element picker will add the necessary tokens to ensure the filter apply only to the current web site, will add it to your custom list of filters and save it.

Element picker does not work, removed element reappears when you reload the page?

There may be many different reasons for this.

  • If this is a network filter you may need to bypass the browser cache when you reload the page -- hold down the key when you click the reload button.
  • The URL or selector for the blocked element has variable part(s) in it, which changes each time a page is loaded.
    • If this is a network filter you may need to manually edit the filter to make use of wildcards for the parts of the URL which are variable.
    • If this is a cosmetic filter, you may have to manually craft a better CSS selector. Sometimes this requires observing the surrounding DOM data.
  • Cosmetic filtering is disabled for the site, or globally. There are many ways to disable cosmetic filtering:
  • You un-checked My filters in the 3rd-party filters pane in the dashboard.
  • There is a static filter in one of the 3rd-party filter lists in use which counters your filter.
    • Exception cosmetic filters (#@#) cancel cosmetic filters (##).
    • Exception filter with elemhide or specifichide option.

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