In our efforts to continutally improve upon Ghostery, we recently launched Ghostery for Firefox v2.8. This new version features a new heads-up menu (the drop-down dialog that appears when you click on Ghostery in the address bar). The new menu was a departure from the Firefox system menu, and we went that direction for several reasons. First, our Ghostery for Chrome, Safari, and Opera users have worked with this menu since those products were initially released, and we found that users generally seem to find it more intuitive. Second, we’re planning on launching features in the near future that aren’t well supported without a more custom-designed menu, so we made that move now to give our users time to adjust.
We’ve heard from some of our Firefox Ghosterians that they really like the new look – but others are confused and frustrated. It’s never our goal to make Ghostery more difficult to use, for any reason, so I thought I’d take a moment to explain how to use the new heads-up menu, and how it is meant to interact with our full options page.
When you visit a site, Ghostery shows the trackers found on that site with the purple box and a numbered badge on the Ghostery icon. Clicking on the Ghostery icon launches the heads-up menu, which can tell you more about the trackers you’ve encountered on the page and allow you to make on-the-fly blocking decisions. Trackers with a strike-through are blocked, tracker names without the line are allowed.
New heads-up menu with varied blocking
You can block and allow individual trackers from this menu, or adjust the blocking options of the entire page. Clicking “Edit Blocking Options” at the bottom of the dialog allows you to check each tracker you’d like to block, or whitelist that page to allow trackers. This menu can be very helpful when you’ve encountered a page that doesn’t work when Ghostery is blocking, or if you notice a new tracker you hadn’t previously blocked but you’d like to change.
the Edit Blocking Options link
the options icon
That’s what the heads-up menu was always meant to provide – a way to easily make exceptions to your default blocking preferences. If you want to make big changes, for example, to block everything Ghostery detects, it’s much easier to use the full Ghostery options page. You can get there by clicking the icon at the bottom of the heads-up menu.
On the full options page you’ll find several different ways to configure Ghostery to your liking. For blocking, scroll down to the Blocking Menu portion of the page, and you’ll see all the tracking technologies Ghostery detects, divided into categories. You can block individuals, an entire category, or all of the trackers at once just by selecting them in this menu. (You can also add domains to the Site whitelist tab, if you have several you’d like to take care of at once.)
the Blocking Options portion of the full options page
Additionally, if you want the most comprehensive blocking settings, make sure that the Enable library auto-update option is checked. Then click over to the Advanced tab, and check the Block new elements by default options. Don’t forget to save your settings with the button at the bottom of the screen.
Auto-Update options on the Advanced options tab
That should keep you from needing to frequently use the heads-up menu to block, and allow you to only have to click when you need to make an exception. We’re working on features to make these blocking controls more granular – like allowing certain trackers on certain web sites, for example – so expect some more changes as the features become available.
As always, we really appreciate your feedback. Please continue to let us know any thoughts you have about the new menu, and don’t hesitate to give us ideas for how to improve. We want to make the most comprehensive, easy-to-use privacy tool on the planet – and Ghosterians can make that happen. Hit us up at support at ghostery dot com, or over on our support forum.
Happy Browsing,
Andy K
Ghostery Product Manager
andy at ghostery dot com
After updating to the latest version of Ghostery on my Mac Firefox 15.0.1, it started hanging the browser up to the point where I had to force close it.. It was working fine prior to the latest update. I know it was Ghostery because I had to disable it to get Firefox to work reliably again. I’ve now uninstalled it… Hope you could figure out what’s going on that would cause this to happen..
Hi Greg,
Thanks for using Ghostery. Was this happening everywhere or just on a particular site?
This new system you have is frustrating. The old one all you had to do was point and click and the tracker was blocked. Simple. Now you’ve gone and changed it to something that doesn’t even work. I have clicked the box next to the Brightcove tracker, but your system refuses to block it. And trying to figure out what to do about it is more confusing than figuring out politics in Washington. If this is the best you have ot offer, then it is time for me to see what else FireFox has for add-ons. There HAS TO BE SOMETHING BETTER THAN THIS!
Hi Coots,
Thanks for using Ghostery and for the feedback!
You can revert to the old menu by clicking on the advanced tab of the options menu.. although that feature will be going away at some point.. so we hope that you give the menu a try! We are bringing all of the menus in line across browsers and we are setting it up for some pretty great new features..
We hope you stick with us!
Unfortunately the UI change hasn’t grown on me any more with further use. It still feels very out of place to me next to other things I have installed that mostly stick to standard UI elements.
Unrelated to that, when I tried disabling add-ons one at a time a bit after FF15 to see what was still using so much RAM and continuing to leak memory even with the new changes in place to reduce that, Ghostery made the biggest difference. My base memory use at launch dropped by about a third, and the rate it increases over time is dramatically lower.
I’m currently using NoScript plus RequestPolicy to accomplish roughly the same thing Ghostery did for me. It’s definitely not as convenient, and I kind of miss having the information Ghostery provided, but the memory use and page load times have been much better for me with this combination under FF15 since Ghostery 2.8 came out.
I’m possibly done with Ghostery at this point, but the other people I’ve recommended it to still seem happy. They aren’t aware of the UI and wouldn’t notice it changing though, because they just leave it on “block everything/automatic update” and only care that it’s working in the background.
I just want to get Ghostery to quit popping up a display of what it is blocking everytime I go to a new page…distracting and a PITA…anyway, dont see any way to tell the program to do its work without this annoying feature. Kinda like a :let me do my work and I’ll call you if I need you: option.
Hi Carolyn,
Thanks for using Ghostery!
In the advanced tab of your options menu you can move the alert bubble to any corner, change the duration of view as well as just turn it off!
Hope that helps!
Whoo Hoo! Thanks for promptly and patiently answering my request…some of us are just quicker than others…appreciate this very much.
new panel makes the addon UNUSABLE at all.
I run win XP and firefox 6 and this is what I see:
http://oi46.tinypic.com/2cr9ieo.jpg
the whole addon is pushed to a tiny left frame,
and the rest of the balloon window stays empty.
which makes it COMPLETELY unusable.
you need to fix this ASAP
the only way I can use ghostery is using the old panel
tried to send a bug log, but 3rd party site
asked me to register, not time for that,
so I’m puting it here. please pass on
to whomever needs to get it.
Greetings!
Thanks for using Ghostery!
You need to update your firefox in order for the panel to work as designed.. you are running 6.. current firefox is 19.