Google Reader, Feedburner, Firefox

So I was having a problem — have been having a problem for quite some time — with certain feeds in Google Reader. It appeared that most (though it wasn’t clear that it was all) feeds that came via Feedburner (which, annoyingly, included many from Google itself) were not working correctly. I’d click on the feed, GR would pause a bit, refresh the screen, and then just stay in a “Loading …” state, never giving me the feed.

Ugh.

The problem only occurred in Firefox (not in Chrome, nor in IE). I tried a few times to find the problem on the Google Reader forums, and in Firefox support, and even Feedburner’s pages, but got nowhere. 

I finally hit on the right search string in (ironically) Google — or at least where someone was having the same problem with Firefox a year ago. This was also ironic because last night I was trying to solve a problem that Margie has been having since her FF upgrade to 3.0.1 (YouTube videos play for about 2 seconds, then stop; that one’s still being worked on), and folks there were complaining about the problem back in the FF 2 days, too. (Another irony here is that Google owns Feedburner.)

At any rate, I tried the various things the post suggested trying (not much), until I spotted one little comment at the very end: “Adblock…that little beast!”

Adblock? Adblock? 

For those just coming in, Adblock is a faboo extension (I use the Adblock Plus version) to block ads on web pages. It’s really that simple. It looks (via various filters defined and subscribed to / updated) for certain strings embedded on web pages and blocks them. You have no idea how much visual cruft and advertisements are on web pages until it’s gone … or until you’re used to it being gone, and then go use another browser and it’s back. “Gah! My eyes!” No more animated banners, no more huge billboards in the sidebar … it’s quietly glorious. Or gloriously quiet.

At any rate, that seemed way too simple. Why would Adblock be blocking Feedburner stuff? But, sure as shooting, when I went in to see what Adblock was blocking (which is easy to do), there were eleventy-dozen Feedburner elements.

Well … golly. 

It was a matter of a few seconds to configure an exception and put it in place, and, hey-presto, Google Reader on Firefox is now reading and displaying all the Feedburner feeds.

After which, I found this thread, which resolves the one above. In the comments, it actually goes into where the problem was (and I’ve disabled the “Dutchblock” subscription, which explicitly had feeds.feedburner.com in it as a filter for unknown reasons). (And, yes, I’ve checked to see if this is Margie’s problem, but it’s not).

So problem solved, all’s right with the world. No less enamored of Adblock / Adblock Plus, but it is one more spot to do diagnoses on in the future (and a small cautionary note about environmental complexity and how it affects attempts to diagnose problems). 

(And I’m going into all this detail largely for anyone in the future who’s facing this same problem and trying to deal with it. Hope this helps someone else.)