Banish those annoying web ads

There are ways to fight the intrusion

If somebody tries to tell you that the Internet is free, laugh at them. You pay for your daily fix of instant messages, MySpace, music downloads, and e-mail in more ways than you may know. At my house, it costs an exorbitant $42.95 per month just to stay connected, before I access a single website.

I put up with it because this particular company is the only game in town that comes close to suiting my connectivity needs. As more competition is introduced in the broadband arena, we can only hope that market conditions force providers into offering more-affordable high-speed services.

That’s just the beginning. The banner ads that load so slowly when you visit your favorite “free” website, the pop-ups, pop-overs and margin ads in your favorite search engine, are also ways that you pay for your Internet habit. At $42.95 per month, access is not cheap. With a constant bombardment of advertisements and spam, surfing is certainly not free.

Fortunately, you can do a few things to lessen the annoying interruptions of online advertising. While I can normally ignore even the most invasive of the lot, yesterday a particularly annoying ad pushed me over the edge. While I was trying to check some sports scores, I kept being distracted by a horrendous little movie of someone’s face completely covered with ghastly fake blemishes. I closed the sports section and set out to find a way to banish as many ads as possible. Here are a few of the sites that I found helpful.

http://adblockplus.org

Those of you who have been fighting uninvited advertisers are likely to remember good old Adblock from a few years ago. That one is long gone, but a new program is carrying the Adblock banner into battle against the bad guys. If you are a Firefox user, that program is Adblock Plus.

In essence, you install the Adblock Plus plug-in and let it run. When you encounter an annoying banner ad, simply right click on it. A context menu will pop up with the selection “Adblock Image” at the bottom. Click this and refresh the page. The annoying ad will be gone.

Adblock Plus has gone a step beyond manual operation to allow users to customize their ad-free experience. Several subscription lists featuring sites that are potentially annoying can be accessed from the Adblock Plus website. By joining one of these lists, your installation can be updated with the latest in ad-generating site address information. You may never see another ad.

There are also provisions for stopping totally annoying Flash and Java ads. These excruciating interruptions can trigger a time-burning download session that can truly drive a busy user crazy. I will mention that Adblock Plus is a program suited to the more skilled user. Still, it sets out to do a job and does it well. For this, the folks at www.adblockplus.org pop up with five spiders.

www.ie7pro.com

There is no denying that Internet Explorer 7 made dramatic advances in the browsing experience, restoring the franchise browser to the top of the heap and giving the wannabees something new to whine about. Still, there are a few little places that could use some improvement, and one of those is ad blocking. Enter IE7Pro, a handy add-on that can make browsing much easier.

First of all, make sure you have the English language version of the website selected. From there, you can look at some of the features offered or just download and install like I did. Afterwards I noticed that I was blissfully receiving next to no ads. That included my pimply pal and his unfortunate eruptions. I also managed to ditch the wrinkle cream demo and a host of exotic dancers shilling seemingly shady mortgage companies.

The difference between ad-free browsing and the normal torture is spectacular. You can actually concentrate on the page that you want to view without having your line of sight distracted by a pitch for credit restoration schemes or online college degrees. When you set your preferences, be sure to click the “block flash” checkbox.

In addition to ad blocking, IE7Pro allows further customization of the world’s best-loved browser, including Mouse Gesture, a neat trick that lets you perform certain functions just by drawing a symbol on the screen. While I did not have an IE6 installation handy for a test, the IE7Pro webpage also mentions support for that version. Keeping the ads away effectively is enough to earn www.ie7pro.com a fistful of five spiders.

http://web.mac.com/jrc/SafariPlus/

I haven’t forgotten you poor Mac surfers. Those of you who still enjoy using the Safari browser will be happy to learn that SafariPlus is available from jrc Software to help you in the battle against annoying ads, uninvited animations, and insidious tracking cookies.

Like the other apps I’ve tried, Safari Plus is free. Best of all, it stops the pimple parade, shuts down the dancing usurers, and even seemed to limit a great deal of the incredibly annoying animated GIF files that so many knuckleheads love to include in their personal websites. It is a dream come true for curmudgeonly web surfers like myself.

The latest version of SafariPlus works only on computers running Tiger, Mac OS X version 10.4. It installs easily as an InputManager extension and adds a few easy choices to your Safari preferences. When customizing settings, you can tell Safari to block animation entirely or just to block looping playback. You can also tell it from whom, if anyone, you are willing to accept cookies.

This simple installation can dramatically speed up Safari browsing. With one click you no longer have to download dozens of graphic-rich ads while you surf. Pages load much more quickly, and you get to take an active part in determining the products and services about which you would like more information. For bringing efficient Web surfing to the Safari crowd, http://web.mac.com/jrc/SafariPlus/ loads up five ad-free spiders.

Keep in mind that any of these adjustments can be complicated and are not for the faint of heart. There is always a chance of crashing the system. Do not attempt to modify your system in any manner if you are not completely sure that you can accomplish the task without problems. Make a full-system backup before making changes so that you can undo anything that goes wrong. This is very, very important advice.

It truly amazes me that there is a vocal minority of Web users who actually object to ad blocking. They cry that the ads help the Internet remain free. Pointing back to the first couple of paragraphs, I would like to remind them that it is not free. You have every right to avoid Web ads, just like you can throw away junk mail or run to the fridge during TV commercials. Don’t let them get the best of you. Take charge of your surfing experience; then take a minute to tell me about it by e-mail to granese{at}juno.com .