BristolUK

I remember some years ago there was a way of cancelling floating icons. At least they could be minimised (off the screen) or something.


There are a number of sites where they just get in the way. I can zoom out to the point where I can see an arrow which when clicked does push it to the side and out of view but the moment I zoom back or even scroll, the damn thing appears again. Can it be nuked or minimised permanently or something?

I've googled and I find all sorts of results relating to Android and Apple but nothing for regular computer.

There must be a solution. I can't find a firefox add-on either.

BuckinghamshireBoy

Ahah, a job for Poir
ot

'ow to train ze dragon

Which AdBlocker(s) and / or Anti-tracker(s) are you using?

Do you have a "spare" browser on your machine - one used only for 'broken' sites?

Can do this by PM if you like.

BristolUK

I use adblock plus and ublock origin. I vaguely recall one of the recent firefox updates having something there about greater tracking built in.

I do have Chrome and Opera (Edge, of course) as well as firefox. I have Chrome because a bank site no longer works with firefox. Is that what you mean by broken?

Your dragon comment. Does this mean it can be done via the here by dragons feature? I've done a few things there but only after finding results from googling.

BuckinghamshireBoy

I mostly use Chrome with AdBlock Plus and Privacy Badger. For AdBlock Plus, Settings/General/Privacy & Security has a "Block social media icons tracking" checkbox. That seems to do it for me, There is also a "Block additional tracking" checkbox, I don't bother with that, that's what Privacy badger does slightly better imo.

Also check Settings/Advanced/Filter Lists for any 'anomalies'.

Yes, that's what I meant with a site being broken. Conversely to yourself, one of my banks' sites acts up with Chrome, which is why I have Firefox, slightly less tweaked than Chrome. Also had another legit site go weird on me just last weekend, had to resort to Edge to get something done, was in a hurry, didn't look too deep.

My anti-virus wakes up whenever I use Edge, as it tries to connect to another Microsoft site all by itself...



The dragon comment was just a throwaway, tweaking the tweakers, etc.

BristolUK

The hardest part was remembering what site to go back and look at.

But thanks very much...I checked the block icon box and it worked on that site.

It wouldn't have occurred to me that adblockplus would have settings - to me, something that exists to blocks ads would do what it says on the tin and not other things too.
But not only to have settings, I wouldn't associate a blocking tracking feature with those icons appearing either.

Apparently the appearance of those icons mean you get tracked even if you don't click. How useful is it to know that I went on a recipe site (in this case) but I didn't click the FB or twitter icon. What use is that information? Does a shopkeeper count how many people walk past his shop without going in?

BuckinghamshireBoy

No, they have facial recognition cameras to cover that.

My "tweaking the tweakers" was meant with a degree of seriousness. Ok, maybe a bit out of character for me, but sometimes these things can trip each other up.

Some 'legitimate' sites may or may not have social media buttons embedded in their page code for you to click on or not. A lot of these 'static' ones will also disappear with that AdBlock checkbox checked.

Let's be careful out there.

BristolUK

calman014

Might be an idea to do a big cleanup of your PC and dump cookies and internet history from the relevant browser. (history can be backed up).

It's normally these tracking cookies that cause the problems.

AdBlock Plus is one of the better blockers and should handle most of the bothersome stuff easily.