Time for yet another of my favourite Firefox extensions. If you’re tired of the annoying ads that are showing up on almost every website these days, the Adblock extension is for you. I know that websites need to generate revenue from ads to keep their sites alive, but some sites have become so ridiculous with ads popping up or flash animations that cover up site content that it’s time to put some of that to an end. After you install Adblock you have some options by going to Tools -> Adblock -> Preferences. Under the Adblock Options button, you can choose what you want – play around with it a bit to see what everything does. Then, when you’re surfing the web and come across an ad you don’t like, you just right-click on the ad, choose Adblock image, and you’ll never see that ad again. You can also use wildcards (*) to block a series of images. For instance, let’s say that the ad came from http://someadsite.com/ads/ad.jpg – you could block that one jpg, or you could set the filter to block http://someadsite.com/ads/* – this way, you will never see any image from that directory. You’ll get the hang of it once you start playing. Also, remember that this only blocks ad images so any ads that are text only will likely still be seen. Sometimes you can get around this if the company uses iframes by saying Adblock iframe when you right-click – but sometimes text ads will be there to stay. I don’t mind that though because if all ads were just text ads, I don’t think they would be nearly as annoying.
If you don’t want the hassle of having to “start clean” and block all ads yourself, I’ve decided to make my adblock file available to you. Save my Adblock text file to your computer and in the Adblock Options, choose Import filters. Use OK to override your filters or Cancel to append my file to yours. This file will get your started but remember, it’s most-likely specific to sites I visit regularly or from filters that I’ve collected by visiting Adblock sites and/or forums on the internet. Therefore, you may still need to add some filters for sites that you visit.
Enjoy the internet without ads!