Darjeelink - Alexis Perrier

Get rid of online ads in a couple of clicks

Ads, ads, ads they are everywhere and most annoying when they hinder your experience of a web site. It’s nearly impossible to read and concentrate on an article when you have something flashing and moving in the corner of your vision. Flash banners are a terrible thing when it comes to user experience.

To enjoy once again a satisfactory web reading experience, you need two things.

First of all, if you use Internet Explorer, switch to a better browser, firefox or opera for the more experienced users. Just go to getfirefox.com and follow the download link. Although Internet Explorer got better in its latest IE7 version (more firefox like, if I may say so), it does not allow for plugins let alone ad removal. Furthermore, you need to have a registered version of windows XP or Vista to be able to install the IE7 browser so I would guess that a lot of people are stuck with IE6. Firefox is the way to go.

The Opera browser has everything you need to disable ads. It’s called content blocker and you don’t even need a plugin. I use Opera a lot, it’s a fantastic browser.

Once Firefox is installed, you need to “install a plugin“, which means add a tiny piece of software to firefox. To do that just go to the firefox plugins page. You’ll see hundreds of title for pieces of extension software that will make you life easier.
The correct plugin here is : Adblock Plus. Click on the install link, and you are set. Everytime you see an ad that bothers you, just click right on the ad and you’ll never see it again. After a while, you will no longer see ads even on new sites as Adblock filters ads from a list of sources automatically.

Here is an example of an page extracted from the daily telegraph with and without Adblock+.

AdBlock + does not work with Google Adwords, but text-based ads are far less annoying than graphic ones.