The extension is on and the ads remain: a one-minute check

The extensions page in any browser answers about files: the extension was downloaded, unpacked and handed to the browser at profile start. About the fate of a single request it says nothing.

The icon in the toolbar is drawn by the extension itself, from the fact that it loaded, not from a count of stopped requests. So a green card and a live ad on one page are not a contradiction.

So enabled is a claim about files on your disk, and blocking is a claim about the network. No screen checks the second one for you.

1. 1

   Files are in place

   The extension folder is unpacked and read by the browser.

2. 2

   The toggle is on

   The extension is handed to the browser when the profile starts.

3. 3

   Requests are not counted

   No screen promises that a single request was ever stopped.

Open a page with ads, switch to the network tab in the developer window and reload. The list keeps every request the page managed to send.

A stopped request has no response and carries a cancelled mark. An ordinary status code means it went out and came back.

1. 1

   The network tab

   The developer window and the request list of the page.

2. 2

   A reload

   The list fills again, starting from the very first request.

3. 3

   An ad network address

   The name of a counter or an ad network in the address column.

4. 4

   The fate of the request

   Cancelled means blocked, a status code means it went through.

On somebody else's page you cannot know in advance what should have been blocked: filter lists change every week. So the second check uses an address you picked yourself.

Run a plain server at home, serve a page with one request to an address like /blockme and add that address as a rule. The server either saw the request or it did not, and there is no third answer.

After that, look at the log of your own server rather than at the browser. No list update in the middle of the check can change what it says.

A profile opens not on the browser ticked in the settings, but on the one that sits on the disk. An engine ticked but not installed launches on the built-in fallback instead.

You can see that before launch: the extensions section warns you whenever the profile will open on the built-in engine. The same warning stands where the engine could not be asked at all.

The same extension with the same rule, and the page asked for the chosen address itself. The first row is the bare engine: the extension is loaded, the icon is there, the rule does not run. The second is our app on that same engine: we read the extension’s rules and apply them with our own interceptor.

On the built-in engine the server saw that request: the extension loaded, the rule in place, no blocking. On ARMANOS Browser the server never saw the same request.

Blocking lists are not made of addresses alone. They carry their own expressions and redirects, and rules like that do not run everywhere.

So the blocker is on and the whole list works are two different claims. On the built-in engine the app runs the rules of installed extensions itself, and the ones it cannot run it counts apart, never as working.

That leaves two numbers: how many rules of your list run, and how many stayed unread. Today they are counted inside the app and never reach the window: for now they are shown nowhere.

On the built-in engine the blocking rules are read out of the extension itself and enforced by intercepting requests. The program understands two kinds of action, stop a request and allow it, and allow rules are checked before block rules.

A rule with a regular expression, one tied to tabs, or one conditioned on response headers is not enforced and counts as not understood. A rule not understood is not dropped in silence: it goes into the second number, and «the blocker works» never means «half the list is gone».

A rule's condition is enforced whole or not at all, and there is no middle ground. A rule applied without its condition would stop more than was asked, and you would get a white screen instead of a page.

Two bars before a host name mean that host and its subdomains, and a caret at the end means any separator: anything that is not a letter, a digit or one of the four marks underscore, hyphen, dot and percent, as well as the end of the address.

Without the caret a host rule would also catch a foreign domain with the same beginning, and a path rule would miss the same path with parameters. The program reads both marks the way the list itself reads them.

The request reached the server, so this is not your inattention: an extension that is on stopped nothing. Move the profile to an engine where blocking works and repeat the same minute.

The request was cancelled and the banner is still there, so the markup of the page draws it, and a network rule does not reach it. Then it is the filter list to change, not the browser.

Repeat that minute after every change of engine or filter list. It answers about the profile you have today, not the one from last month.