Re: Feature request

On Fri, 15 Apr 2005 00:35, Richard Lister <[email protected]> wrote:
> Sridhar Dhanapalan <[email protected]> wrote
> > I used to use Privoxy, but I found that it was slowing me down rather
> > than speeding me up.
>
> Really? Are you on dialup? I've never noticed any significant lag.
> In theory privoxy can save you bandwidth on image-heavy pages.

> You could try turning off any filters you have. In order to apply
> filters privoxy will load the whole HTML page first. Though you get
> the final page at the same time, it can *appear* to load slower because
> most browsers render incomplete HTML as they get it. This will
> only be noticeable over a slow connection. Subsequent loads will be
> fast thanks to privoxy caching.

I fully understand this, but there is still a delay for me. Maybe I need to 
recheck my settings.

The main slowdown in my case is when I first fire up Galeon and load a 
session. I think the combined pressure of many pages loading at once is too 
much for Privoxy (and the computer) to handle. Besides this, there are still 
slowdowns for single page loads.

> > A simpler and faster solution is to use a hosts file
>
> Perfectly good, but only allows filtering on hostname.

That may be true, but it does cut out a significant percentage of advertising. 
All without the overhead of a special proxy/blocker. There's nothing faster.

> > plus a CSS file:
>
> Doesn't this just transfer the filtering burden from privoxy to the
> browser? I don't know enough about gecko/CSS to know how this would
> impact performance.

You're right, but the burden is minimal. The main problem with using CSS, as 
Adam Hooper pointed out, is that it merely hides the images rather than 
blocking them. They still get downloaded.

I like to implement browser-agnostic solutions, so that I am not tied to one 
browser. This rules out Adblock (which is not to say that it isn't an 
excellent solution). The remaining solutions include a hosts file, a 
filtering proxy (like Privoxy) and a CSS file.

-- 
Sridhar Dhanapalan  [Yama | http://www.pclinuxonline.com/]
  {GnuPG/OpenPGP: http://dhanapalan.webhop.net/yama.asc
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"It is rather ironic that Microsoft and other closed model companies rather 
resemble the Stalinist or Maoist model of a command economy with complete 
centralised control." -- Bill Thompson, BBC News, 2004-03-05

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