GlimmerBlocker Logo

GlimmerBlocker

HTTP based ad blocker for Mac OS X

No hacks, no instability
Upgrade Safari whenever you like, no need to wait for an upgraded hack

GlimmerBlocker is no longer maintained and should no longer be used as web sites have migrated from using plain http to using https (i.e. encrypted) which prohibits modification by a proxy unless you resort to install custom SSL certiticates on the client.

You should use a browser extension instead.

It was made as a hobby project during 2007-2008 by Peter Speck. It features both a custom http server and http client and a Mac OS X control panel.

GlimmerBlocker did not only block requests but also allowed for adding custom css and javascript to the pages. It also allowed for modification of the page html before the browser receives the html, which made some modifications much easier than DOM based modifications.

A few selected html transformations:

Simple subsitution of contents:

t = t.replace(/documentation/, "pure void");

A convenience method is provided for this, so the above code can be reduced to:

replace(/documentation/, "pure void");

Some sites don't provide a desciptive <title> but uses the company name for all pages. This can be fixed by extracting a resonable name from the html body and updating the <title> using the convenience function gb.setDocumentTitle():

var m = t.match(/<h1><span id="item_name">(.+?)<\/span><\/h1>/i);
if (m)
    gb.setDocumentTitle(m[1]);

Some sites works best without Javascript at all because they do awful things like using Flashâ„¢ where a simple <img> would suffice. A simple convenience function fixes this:

gb.zapScriptElements();