Well, I started using Triton more and more often because of my AIM development stuff, so increasingly I've been bombarded with advertisements. They annoy me beyond all belief. I was sleeping the other day and some movie trailer started playing with full video and full sound, and I went through the roof because I thought someone was in my house.
Anyway, I figure I might as well share the love and tell everyone how to escape the insanity. Hopefully, if you have any brains whatsoever, you're not still using Internet Explorer as your primary browser. If you are, clearly you haven't seen the light. Download
Firefox or
Opera. Trust me, you'll thank me in the morning.
If you're insistant on still using IE, fine, but don't come crying to me when you can't get shit to work or some spyware installs itself happily into your browser.
On to the fun stuff! Begone Triton ads:
(continued)Make sure to read all of this first before doing anything. You don't wanna mess anything up, do you?
First, you'll need to download a fun little program called Privoxy. It was originally written as a proxy for Unix-based systems, but there's a fully supported Win32 (Windows) port for it, downloadable
here. Basically what this does is open up a port (for local access only) for IE to connect to. Any ads and shit that you don't want to see from common sources (including atwola, which AOL uses), will get transparently "crunched" out of anything you request from it. It'd be like asking your friend to go ask a hot chick out on a date for you. Anything nasty she has to say gets said to your friend, and your friend tells you the nice version. Privoxy is your friend, and the hot chick is the internet.
The cool thing is that Privoxy, by default, filters out Triton ad requests. Yay. Download it and install it, and set it to run automatically at startup. It will open up port 8118 and pop a cool little green "P" icon in the system tray.
Now, once you've got Privoxy installed, pop open Internet Explorer and do the following. If you can't follow along, you're too stupid to deserve ad-free bliss, so don't ask me why it doesn't work:
- Tools --> Internet Options --> Connections --> LAN Settings.
- Check "Use proxy server for your LAN."
- Click Advanced.
- Type address 127.0.0.1, port 8118 for everything but Socks and Secure. If anything's grayed out, just uncheck the "Use the same proxy server for all protocols" thinggy and all will be right in the world.
- "Ok" your way out. You can even close IE if you want.
Now, if there's already stuff configured in the proxy settings above, you might wanna save and remember that for later, in case everything breaks and you have to revert to the way things were. Particularly, if you're at work and behind a proxy or firewall, all of this might not work for you. If that's the case, I'm sorry. You'll just have to deal with the ads, I suppose.
Other than that, things are just about peachy right now. Restart Triton and re-sign in. There should be a big blank space where the ads once appeared if you did everything right. If you screwed the pooch, then you won't be able to sign in. The quick fix if you fucked up is go back and uncheck that "Use proxy server for your LAN" in IE's settings.
If you're successful, you should be able to open the Privoxy main window (either already opened, or just click the green P in the system tray), and within moments see something along the lines of:
Aug 17 20:16:57 Privoxy(02432) Request: ar.atwola.com/html/93215866/517615702/aol?SNM=HIBVDF
&width=120&height=90&target=_blank
&TZ=300&SN=CoolScreenName&tile=1&CT=I
crunch!
The "crunch" means an ad reqest was blocked.
Keep in mind that when you use IE, you'll be going through Privoxy. Honestly, this is fine, because Privoxy is a fine piece of software, and will block most net annoyances and ads out there. Check out its manual + homepage at
Privoxy.org to find out all the great stuff it does. If you know anything about regular expressions or programming, you'll bow and worship Privoxy for its awesomely powerful rewriting ability.
Of course, if you don't wanna do this, or don't like how Privoxy acts while you're browsing (it could slow it down ever so slightly), then just use Firefox or Opera, as mentioned above. Since Triton only reads-in proxy settings from IE, your normal browsing will be unaffected within alternate browsers, so long as you don't enable proxy servers in them. Of course, if you love Privoxy, by all means, add entries for Privoxy into your alternate browsers (127.0.0.1 port 8118).
And don't worry, port 8118 is secured from the outside world. By default, only localhost (127.0.0.1-- your computer) can access it.
Hopefully you enjoy this as much as I have. If you have any good questions, drop me a line. If it's stupid, you probably won't get a response, but if it's legit, I'll be more than happy to help.
