[Screenshots are not necessarily up to date: this is tedious work and I rather not re-take all screenshots when there are only trivial changes]
In uBlock version 0.8.5.0, dynamic filtering has been completely revamped. Summary of what changed:
- An "advanced user mode" setting, disabled by default
- Expanded dynamic filtering to block/allow on a per hostname basis
- A new "My rules" tab in the dashboard, where you can see/edit all your dynamic filtering rules
- A new, more convenient, more efficient network request logger
For a fresh new install of uBlock, this is how the popup UI looks:
This is the "novice user" interface, which is the default when installing for the first time. Notice the difference with the previous version:
- The dynamic filtering widgets are not accessible
- This is to prevent novice users from tampering with dynamic filters without really understandng what it is all about
- The network request logger (the eye icon) is now always available
- There is no more setting to enable/disable the network request logger, it will be turned on/off automatically when opening/closing the logger page
To access dynamic filtering, you need to indicate to uBlock that you are an advanced user (mind the "Required reading" link):
By the way, notice that the Statistics tab (the network request log) is now gone from the dashboard.
For advanced users, uBlock's popup UI will show a little + widget aside the prompt "requests blocked":
This little widget allows to expand/collapse the new re-designed dynamic filtering pane. As seen below, just as with previous versions you can still dynamically filter:
- inline scripts
- 1st-party scripts
- 3rd-party scripts
- 3rd-party frames
However, as per issue #282, you can't no longer dynamically filter 1st-party frames -- that was pointless.
Also, I threw in the ability to dynamically filters images (regardless of origin), as I saw this sort of feature requested a couple of places. It's useful for users who wish to save bandwidth, and/or memory resources.
The dynamic filtering consists mainly of three columns. From left to right, they are:
- The name of what is to be dynamically filtered: can be a type of request, or a specific hostname
- The rule to apply everywhere on any site -- i.e. a global rule
- The rule to apply locally on the current site -- useful to override a global rule
Rules color scheme:
- Pale gray: no rule
- Dark red: block rule
- The requests will be blocked, regardless of whether static exception filters exist
- Dark green: allow rule
- The requests will be allowed, regardless of whether static block filters exist
- Dark gray: no-op rule
- To cancel any dynamic filtering, the requests will still be subject to static filtering
Dynamic filtering if very useful to create block/allow rules on the fly, without the overhead of which comes with static filtering.
As seen above, EasyPrivacy does not completely protect your privacy: your are still connecting to ubiquitous remote servers. Dynamic filtering gives you full control of where your browser connect.
An example (below): globally block network requests to ubiquitous googletagservices.com:
So the dynamic filtering rule above says: block network requests to googletagservices.com from anywhere.
Side note: googletagservices.com is not blocked by EasyPrivacy, but it is blocked by Ghostery, this is one of the reason it fared better in privacy exposure benchmarks.