APRIL 2020 MACWORLD 25don’t appear in that list, making it less
useful in knowing anything but the
category of item a URL appears in.
The button lets you whitelist sites and
set https-only page requests, too. When
you visit a whitelisted site, a red heart
appears as a badge on the 1Blocker button.
In this initial release, an advanced
feature from previous version was left out,
which is the ability to use its Safari
extension to select items on a page and
build a rule around the selection. While the
option appears in the 1Blocker extension
button drop-down as Hide Element,
clicking it brings up a notice that “Hide
Element is not yet available.” The company
expects to add it in a future release. The
1Blocker standalone app references using
the extension button
inaccurately, since the
future doesn’t yet exist in
version 3.
I don’t think it’s a gaping
hole, but it is unfortunate, as
the graphical selection tool
allowed the use of sites that
frequently throw up
interstitial, pop-overs, and
other interface elements
that interfere with reading
or site use. I subscribe to a
number of editorial sites,
and find that these
messages regularly appear
even when I’m logged in to
my account, which led me
to create custom rules in an
earlier version of 1Blocker to
disable them.
You can create this
exclusions manually, which
typically requires a good
knowledge of HTML, mediaAdvanced rules can be set, though it requires a fairly
substantial understanding of HTML and related properties.