Google Books: Getting rid of that horrible pop-up box on the left side of the screen

Factual Questions
1

God, I love Google Books! I’m a historical researcher, and having all those dreadfully arcane reports and books of facts that they used to publish by the bushel in the late 19th and early 20th centuries available to me wherever I can access the Internet is a joy beyond words.

Unfortunately, things are not as good as they used to be. For the past year or so whenever I open up a Google Book an intrusive pop-up-type box appears on the lefthand side of the screen, about one-third from the top. The box contains links under two headings: “Good for” and “Features.”

Thank goodness the box usually does not cover the book page text. But it does cover over other vital info, like the title of the book and how often my search terms appear in the book.

I don’t want or need the box or the links inside it. I just want this stupid thing to go away. But I can’t figure out how to kill, minimize or move it! Can it be done? If so, how?

2

Are you sure Google’s putting it there and not, say, a browser plug-in?

Do you have a link that demonstrates the problem? Because I can’t see the box you’re talking about when I browse Google Books.

3

I have never seen any such box either. What browser are you using? Could the box be malware?

4

I took a screenshot of a Google Books page with the offending box. I circled it in a green frame. Link here:

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/C7_eBvVEqLgzUh0lGDJJLwm9BDzWScdBx_x-VZUY-lg?feat=directlink

5

Well, I can see where the box is coming from — it’s what you get when you hover the mouse pointer over this button. Are you seeing that at all, or does the page just load with the box already displaying?

Either way, try pressing Ctrl + F5 while looking at the page; that’ll at least rule out cache issues.

6

Why can I only see that book in Snippet view, and “No eBook available”? :frowning:

7

I’m not seeing the button; the page just loads with the box already displaying.

Pressing Ctrl + F5 did nothing.

Help.

8

I get this behavior when I use Google Books with IE6. (The snide answer would therefore be, Get a new browser. I don’t see it with Firefox, for example.)

The problem is probably something with IE’s idiosyncratic versions of Javascript; some of the special-case code handling that dialect has apparently broken. I don’t have all the versions of IE lying around to test against, and I can’t tell from your screenshot which version you’re using. But for (my version of) IE6, here’s a method that kills the box for me: After the page has loaded, paste this Javascriptlet into the address bar (the one that shows “http://books.google.com/…”):

javascript:document.styleSheets[0].addRule(‘.unified-hovercard’,‘visibility:hidden’,0);void(0)

[ETA: To clarify, copy the line of text above, then go to the IE Google Books window, type control-O (open link) control-V (paste Javascript) enter, and the box should disappear.]

If this works, you can drag it from the address bar into your favorites or link bar and then just click it whenever the box reappears. If it doesn’t, you probably have a different version of IE, and something similar should work; it’s just a matter of figuring out what Javascript dialect Microsoft decided to implement that week.

9

Omphaloskeptic, your method worked like a charm! Thank you!