greatbear | Almost as fun as burning billboards (Reply)

If I could have long, sweaty, passionate love with a Firefox extension, it would be Adblock, hands down. This little gem is so effective that it has made surfing enjoyable again. In addition to blocking ad images, you can block flash, scripts, iframes, embedded text ads, you name it. Unlike Firefox's built-in 'block images from' feature, which blocks all images coming from a particular server, Adblock can be very specific. Consider the makeup of a Yahoo page. The ads are served in most cases from the same server that hosts benign images that make up a page. Block the server, and the page can become mangled. You can exorcise one particular graphic, to an entire server, to an entire range of servers on a domain. With some fine tuning, you can kill scripts that manage to get a pop-under through the Firefox popup blocker. Tired of seeing the same silly graphic or background on a particular page? Surgically remove it with Adblock. Even in-text advertising hotlinks that pollute more and more pages these days can be eliminated without wrecking the original text.

Head to the Mozilla home page and get yourself some Adblock godness. Then go visit some of the most ad-filled pages you can think of. It almost becomes a game. Spend some time setting up the filters, and soon you are surfing without distraction.