Adblock Plus - Another Firefox bonus!

I have mentioned before just how much I like Firefox. While some techies shun it for its slightly slower speed (compared to other browsers such as Chrome or Safari), developers have long loved it for its remarkably handy plugins. I am not quite sure how I would get along without Web Developer.

Today, I just installed Adblock Plus in an effort to get rid of contextual ads – which I loathe. It worked perfectly!

For those of you who are new to the term “contextual ads”, these are advertising links found in the text of some pages. Often, they have a double underline. They usually open a pop-up when you hover over the link. Kontera and Intellitxt are two versions of contextual advertising.

The problem with many unscrupulous ads is that they distract from the content. This is especially true with contextual advertising. The text in the pop-ups they generate have absolutely nothing to do with the page content. Links inside Web content is already distracting enough. Contextual advertising ironically has nothing to do with the context of the page.

The Adblock Plus add-on nixed this, and all of the rest of the advertising on the page, beautifully. I was left with exactly what I wanted to see.

Here is an example of a page before and after I used Adblock Plus.

If you are not using Firefox and its plethora of add-ons, I recommend giving it and them a shot. It can make your Web browsing so much more pleasant.