How to get rid off hero banners on DEV.to

Publish Date: Jun 23 '20

12 11

If you are anything like me, you don't like ads, tracking, wasting space, wasting transfers and shoving ideologies down my throat in places where there is no need for it.

I dont want to be bombared left and right with things that have nothing to do with why I came to the place. On Twitter, I don't follow people, I mute people, I mute words, I block hashtags. But DEV itself is bombarding me with things that I don't care when I want to learn or teach software development to from/to others.

I come to dev.to for development. Name is DEV.to. This brings us to how homepage of DEV.to looks like right now for a new user (~95% of the screen estate has no content the user came from - critical usability strike. I dont treat cover image of some article as content :) ):

Note: Keep in mind that your version might look different, I have very aggressive uBlock filters, /etc/hosts (19 MB of them) blocking most trackers, etc. I really don't want to download things that are exclusively designed to spy on me.

I love Alan Turing. I think that he saved a lot of lives alongside three great Polish mathematicians working on the Enigma. Without him, probably, I wouldn't do what I do and love. I'm grateful, to say the least.

I consider this example to break at least three of the things I dont like. Critically, I dont like waste. I spend most of my life reducing waste anywhere I can find it, both private and professional life, both in real and virtual life.

Some time ago there was other banner that I blocked. When writing this article I found .she-coded-hero-banner__container block in AdBlock. Again, almost fullscreen banner took vertical space of the webpage. Some other banner was occupying top-right sidebar. I find it offensive on many levels.

Those pushes are hostile to everyone who do not want to celebrate, participate, but just want to use the page. I just want to read developer stuff, and write developer stuff. If I wanted to celebrate something, or support a cause, I would find a way. I don't need/want a banner on a dev website attacking me every time some arbitrary date pops up.

I'm literally getting out of my way to protect myself from those ideologies and movemenets to stay healthy and if I don't find solution to DEV.to hostility, I will definietly change platform for a place where I'm not harassed every month.

Having said that, I think I found solution (at least for me, and you, if you want to)

Solution: AdBlock (in my case uBlock origin)

Your first instinct might be to add custom filter by clicking on element zapper.

You will end up with filter like:

dev.to###hero-html-wrapper

But this is not enough. It will work this time, but as I mentioned, last time this div was called .she-coded-hero-banner__container, so next time it will be another thing and it will show up. I came with a better idea, after a little inspection of the DOM. This div is always after nav and before body, to take as much space as possible, so we can just block any direct child div with hero string inside the id attribute. And because last time hero was in the class name, lets add class for a good measure. Better safe than sorry, while we are at it.

dev.to###page-content-inner > div[id*="hero"]
dev.to###page-content-inner > div[class*="hero"]

I feel much safer already.

Result

Much better! Only content on the screen. Hopefully it will stay that way. I hope there will be no hero images, full screen overlays, sidebar banners, and other distractions from what this site is about.

I hope you set yourself free from those ads as well, and will have more relaxed time on DEV.to.

I will fight for my sanity and peace of mind, but at the end of the day, I'm asking myself if it's worth being in a place where evidently I'm not welcomed.

Comments 11 total

Thomas BntJun 23, 2020
Or simply desactivate here
- Paweł KowalskiJun 23, 2020
  Wow! :) Thanks, that is much more user friendly than my ublock hacking :D
  - Paweł KowalskiJun 23, 2020
    If it only worked...
    
    Apparently, I had it off all along. So, yeah, they are not announcements, its something else that i dont want.
    - Thomas BntJun 24, 2020
      Owh.. it's too bad.. I reported that to Admins 🙌🏼
Ben SinclairJun 23, 2020
I manipulate sites to remove unwanted content that isn't ads, like menu items for products in a suite I know I'll never use. I wrote a post about it, as it happens.

But...

I will fight for my sanity and peace of mind, but at the end of the day, I'm asking myself if it's worth being in a place where evidently I'm not welcomed.

Where did that come from? You say that these banners are "attacking" you, and that you're "not welcome[d]", but I don't really understand the train of thought that got you there.
- Paweł KowalskiJun 23, 2020
  I use couple greasemonkey scripts (for github, twitter). Sometimes they are life savers, or productiviti savers (like wide github, for people with wide screens, or dark mode for sites that dont have it).
  
  Well, im a simple man, i see a full screen thing popping up on my face, i assume whoever created it, doesnt want me here. It doesnt matter if its "Hey uninstall adblock", paywall, privacy warnings, cookie gibberish, or anything else. Most of those can be easily blocked by adblock, but some of them spend more money on fighting adblocks than actual content. Thats why I dont visit medium.com/*, washington post, etc. I blocked them in my adblock (or /etc/hosts) because i cannot explain this kind of behavior in any other way than: go away.
Michael TharringtonJun 23, 2020
I totally get that you see DEV as a place for you to escape from what many folks would refer to as "politics" and that you don't want to see anything that isn't just focused on the programming side of programming.

That said, the point of these messages is not to harass anyone. On the contrary, it's worth noting that the overwhelming message we're trying to send with these banners and announcements is that all are welcome here and we encourage everyone to actively participate in making DEV an inclusive, thoughtful, kind place that's open to all developers.

These banners and announcements speak to events that line up well with our Code of Conduct which promotes diversity and inclusivity. So, these aren't just one-off announcements for us, but true reflections of our company values.
- Paweł KowalskiJun 23, 2020
  Well, I feel extremely excluded when I have to perform closing actions to see the main content of the page. I think its a huge usability issue.
  
  Also it is kind of disrespectful trying to push idea of celebrating anything to an adult audience. For example, I can think for myself and celebrate whatever i want to, without any encouragement in form of a banner on software development site. If you want to celebrate, nobody is preventing you? It just doesn't have to be forced upon all users to close some things when they want to do why they came for to this website every time you celebrate something.
  
  Anyway, its not my problem anymore, I got rid off it. It's now problem of all the other users that will have to deal with it.
- 🦄N B🛡Nov 21, 2020
  
  Those pushes are hostile to everyone who do not want to celebrate, participate, but just want to use the page.
  
  I don't think there's anything hostile, there.
  
  But I think it would be wise for the dev.to, as a platform, to be more honest and direct about their political leanings, and what those leanings might imply about with disagreement with them.
  
  Because not everybody agrees with the prevailing Campus Ideology, like White Privilege, the Patriarchy, or that Disparities == Discrimination.
  
  That said, it's miles ahead of Twitter, Facehook, or Reddit, as far as I can tell, in terms of equanimity and a modicum of presuming good faith.
  - Michael TharringtonNov 21, 2020
    I think the banners generally provide insight into our "political leanings" — not sure how you can be much more direct about your beliefs than to point to them out with a banner on the site. 😅
    
    I also think we're very tolerant about people disagreeing with our "political leanings". But if our "political leanings" are tied to calls for diversity and inclusion, then folks who oppose these thoughts may feel obligated to act against our Code of Conduct. If they do so, then we may act to call them out or even put a note on their comment that we think it's unconstructive.
    
    In this context, there was a banner around this time that pointed to dev.to/black-lives-matter. To us, this was an opportunity to show support to the Black community on DEV — it seems to jive really well with our Code of Conduct's call for empathy and inclusion. I don't think we were being dishonest or indirect about our ideologies.
Cameren DolecheckJun 26, 2020
I truly appreciate this post. While, I am not bothered so much by the space taken up and having to scroll past, I do share the sentiment you shared about the banners and what they represent.

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Paweł Kowalski @pavelloz