Blocking Ads

Before I found Firefox I tried and tried to block ads in Internet Explorer. I tried to put entries in the hosts file which will block the ad from a certain page but it would leave a big square box where the ad use to be. Then sites would get smart and name the url a little different with each ad, so as to bypass the hosts file. For example instead of www.doubleclick.net it would start putting them at ads.doubleclick.net and so on. It got very aggravating, so much so that I got a router that had keyword blocking ability where you would put in a keyword then any site that had that keyword in it would be blocked. But that left blue squares all over webpages with text saying you are not authorized to be here.

Then I found Firefox(well it was actually called Phoenix in those days)and Adblock. At first I thought, "You can right click and choose block images from... why would you need an extension to do so again. But then I tried Adblock, wow this is just what I was looking to do all the time with IE and could never achive what I was attempting. Below is a picture Adblock's preferences and how to get to them.
Let me state again, you will not get those square boxes where the ads were before you installed Adblock, the page collapses around the ads.

How to open Adblock

Notice what is in the new filter box

As you can see I have all my entries in keywords and you put slashes around them. My Firefox will not download anything from any site that has any of those keywords in it. One thing that I hate is shockwave flash, it seems to me 95% of it is advertising. So how to not see it? Just put /.swf/ in the new filter box and never be bothered again. When you first get Firefox you will see boxes saying you need a plugin in that box but if you put /.swf/ in the filters you won't even see them boxes. Yes you can click the little Adblock icon on the status bar by the clock and find all the items you can block on that page. Or you can right click an image and choose Adblock Image. But you can block thousands of ads with one keyword and for me that's the best thing. If you right click an ad and choose properties and find out it's from a big advertiser like doubleclick or tribalfusion or fastclick or it's a tracker ad or counter ad, you can eliminate it with one word and also eliminate the other hundred or thousand that are out there just like it.

The top of my homepage before Adblock

The top of my home page after installing Adblock

Adblock does a terrific job of not downloading or displaying ads that are called for it to download by the incoming page. But what if the incoming page actually has an ad on it you don't like. Some websites get fancy and put a certain size table and java script box on that page and then has your browser down load the pictures for the table. Now you can right click the ad and find out where the pictures are from to block them but you then have an colored box with maybe a little box in the middle of it to type it. My Yahoo home page is notorious for that. There's a little trick you can use to block those tables out of the picture. It's on the next page called userContent.css

userContent.css page

Here's is a good Firefox Help Site