Ad Blockers and My Art Title Generator

A few days ago I added an Art Title Generator to my web site. I did so as a consequence of having writer's block on coming up with a title for a generative artwork I had created at the beginning of the week. I wrote the Python program for the generator using word dictionaries I had created for a Haiku generator I had written using Java. I added it to my web site and promoted it via some of my social media accounts.

I was surprised when I heard from a couple of people who said that it was not working. Surprised because this is a Python program running on the server and delivering to the user a complete web page with the generated artwork title clearly visible. I couldn't imagine why these folks were not seeing the title – but were seeing the rest of the generated page.

Impossible.

I went to my son's computer and used his browser (Chrome) to view the page. And what I saw was no title. It just wasn't there – which was impossible. I did a view source to take a look at the code that was received by his browser – and the title was there – right where it was supposed to be. So why wasn't it visible?

And why did the art title display in my Chrome browser but not my son's? Then it occurred to me. I asked my son if he was using an ad blocker. He said yes. Looking at my CSS, I had used a CSS class that I had named "contentad" and used it to display quotations about art at the bottom of quite a few of my web pages. The only explanation for the invisibility of the generated art titles was that an ad blocker was looking at the name of the CSS class and saying to itself "oh, this is an advertisement so I'll hide it from the viewer."

To test my theory, I renamed the CSS class and then updated the 102 html files on my site that used it – as well as the Python program. I went back to my son's browser and voila – there was the art title in full view – no longer hidden by the ad blocker plugin.

To read more about my art title generator and generate a title for yourself, you can proceed to the introductory page Automatic Art Title Generator. Or if you are the impatient sort and want to see an art title right now, load the Art Title Generator.

Here's hoping that you enjoy the algorithmically generated artwork titles.

| Return to the Blog Index | This entry was posted on Saturday, July 15th, 2017 at 9:32 am and is filed under Algorithmic Art, Computing, Digital Art, Generative Art, Web Design.