Problems opening saved webpages -- ads and popups

[Cory Panshin]

As webpages get more complex, I'm having increasing problems with
opening some of those I've saved on my computer. I think this is
because they include scripts meant to access ads or open popup windows.

Last night, I tried to open a saved page in Firefox 0.91 and the browser
kept freezing. It seemed to stick on "Contacting adserver.adtech.de" --
or something like that. Today I was able to open the page, but when I
did, I also got a blank popup window (which is very strange for Firefox.)

Something similar happens when I open certain saved pages in an
application like Correlate, which uses Internet Explorer. I have my
firewall set to block Net access for Correlate, so nothing freezes, but
I keep getting "failure to run script" messages and multiple blank popups.

I've tried to re-edit saved pages -- but these sort of scripts are
beyond my programming capabilities, and I just seem to mess things up.
Is there any sort of freeware to remove junk cleanly from saved pages?
Or any browser setting that will disable the scripts?

 

[POKO]

As webpages get more complex, I'm having increasing problems with
opening some of those I've saved on my computer. I think this is
because they include scripts meant to access ads or open popup windows.

Last night, I tried to open a saved page in Firefox 0.91 and the browser
kept freezing. It seemed to stick on "Contacting adserver.adtech.de" --
or something like that.

Just changed to Moz Firefox myself and my old IE shortcuts on my desktop
were reluctant to work. Dunno - all working now (?)
POKO
--
P. Keenan - Webmaster
Web Page Design
Manitoulin Island, Canada
http://manitoulinislandwebdesign.it-mate.co.uk/
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Guest]

As webpages get more complex, I'm having increasing problems with
opening some of those I've saved on my computer. I think this is
because they include scripts meant to access ads or open popup windows.

Is there any sort of freeware to remove junk cleanly from saved pages?
Or any browser setting that will disable the scripts?

Several solutions all with varying degrees of effort and success:

1. Frontpage Express. If you load up the page in the old freebie Frontpage
Express, it is able to identify scripts as a small square box with either a
question mark or a "J" in in. Go through the page, delete these boxes and
you are deleting the scripts. Disadvantage: FE can get flummoxed by large or
complex pages. It's possible that NVu will let you do this or something
similar too -- I've never tried.

2. Notetab Light. It's a whiz bang text editor with its own programming
language. Not much of a learning curve. Sometime ago, I created a script
that will go through HTML text and remove all scripts. It wasn't hard to do.
Then you can easily open the page without the annoying callups to external
sites, pop-ups, etc.

3. If archiving the page is your goal, it might be easier to "print" the
page to PDF format using one of the many freeware PDF printer drivers
available. No scripts to worry about upon viewing. However, also no editing
capability, no extended text search capability, etc. Also, your page prints
with all the extraneous crap (ads, dead space, etc) that might exist on your
page.

4. Proxomitron was a Web page filter program. It wouldn't surprise me if
someone somewhere developed a script for it that allowed you to view a page
without scripts. Then you could save that page to your hard drive. There
are probably some Proxo fans elsewhere on this NG.

Some ideas for your consideration. . . Sure would be nice if someone
developed a nice easy program that would "delete" scripts from pages leaving
the pure HTML behind.

M

 

[Cory Panshin]

Several solutions all with varying degrees of effort and success:

1. Frontpage Express. If you load up the page in the old freebie Frontpage
Express, it is able to identify scripts as a small square box with either a
question mark or a "J" in in. Go through the page, delete these boxes and
you are deleting the scripts. Disadvantage: FE can get flummoxed by large or
complex pages. It's possible that NVu will let you do this or something
similar too -- I've never tried.

2. Notetab Light. It's a whiz bang text editor with its own programming
language. Not much of a learning curve. Sometime ago, I created a script
that will go through HTML text and remove all scripts. It wasn't hard to do.
Then you can easily open the page without the annoying callups to external
sites, pop-ups, etc.

3. If archiving the page is your goal, it might be easier to "print" the
page to PDF format using one of the many freeware PDF printer drivers
available. No scripts to worry about upon viewing. However, also no editing
capability, no extended text search capability, etc. Also, your page prints
with all the extraneous crap (ads, dead space, etc) that might exist on your
page.

4. Proxomitron was a Web page filter program. It wouldn't surprise me if
someone somewhere developed a script for it that allowed you to view a page
without scripts. Then you could save that page to your hard drive. There
are probably some Proxo fans elsewhere on this NG.

Some ideas for your consideration. . . Sure would be nice if someone
developed a nice easy program that would "delete" scripts from pages leaving
the pure HTML behind.

I did some searching and found a few programs that claimed to be able to
delete scripts, but they were all payware that did a lot of other things
as well -- and mostly in the $50 range. It would be nice if someone
could some up with a simple freeware program to do this one thing.

I also took your suggestion and tried opening the offending page in an
HTML editor, doing a search on the word "script" and deleting most of
what I found. I did manage to get rid of both the ad that had hung up
and the blank popup window -- but it took far too much time and trouble
to be worth doing for dozens of saved files. Hopefully, someone will
come up with a simple solution.

 

[jo]

I also took your suggestion and tried opening the offending page in an
HTML editor, doing a search on the word "script" and deleting most of
what I found. I did manage to get rid of both the ad that had hung up
and the blank popup window -- but it took far too much time and trouble
to be worth doing for dozens of saved files. Hopefully, someone will
come up with a simple solution.

My current browser set up is to run Opera 7.10 through Webwasher. This
is giving me the cleanest, fastest browser set up ever.

I went to a site that I know would hit me with all sorts of nonsense
using a standard setup and saved the page.

Closed browser, clicked on page.html to launch browser and launched a
clean page.

HTH