Ads Blocking In Firefox, IE, Opera, and in whole Windows

Block Ads Now!

Closing the gate to sneaky ads no matter what the browser
Advertisements are annoying to all of us. Thy do create revenue for sites, but most of the time, they are of little importance to the user and all they do is nibble away at your bandwidth. Sometimes, they can show inappropriate content as well. We are going to look at ways to disable or at least hide the ads off the screen with pretty much any of the most used browsers.

Ad Blocking In Firefox: Ads come in all forms and popups are one of the most annoying ways of which ads make their way on to the screen. Firefox, like most other browsers today, stops popups from appearing on the screen.
For blocking of advertisements, there is an extremely useful and well known add-on called Adbock plus. Get it from http://adblockplus.org/en/ .Click on the Installation link to go to that page to download the add-on. You have to click on the Allow button on the right top of the Firefox window to permit the add-on to be downloaded and installed. Restart Firefox.
Once Firefox starts, choose Tools>Add-ons. Click on Options for the Adblock Plus add-on. Click on Filter< Add filter subscription. Use the dropdown for Subscription title and choose the lists you want to add and click OK. Follow the steps to add additional subscriptions. Once added, click on Filters> Update all subscriptions. Click OK.
Ads should now be blocked by Firefox, and even if you do find some ads that do make their way through the filters, right click on the image of the ad and click Adblock image….
Flash elements can also e disabled by using the Flashblock add-on for Firefox. This can be downloaded and installed from http://flashblock.mozdev.org . Flash elements will only work when you click on them.

Ad Blocking In Opera: Opera has built in popup blocker and an ad blocking feature as well. Using the ad blocker is as simple as downloading a text file and putting in the right folder. Opera’s blocking works by referring to a file called urlfilter. ini. There are many users who keep regularly maintained lists of ad hosts and domains.
One of the most famous one and most used ones is Fanboy’s Adblock List (www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/) Click on the Install now link or visit
http://fanbou.co.nz/adblock/opera/urlfilter.ini.
Save the file as it is to a folder and then move it to C:/Documents and
Settings\Your_User_ID\Application Data\Opera_folder\profile. Linux users must copy to the .opera folder. When done, restart the browser and ad blocking will be enabled. Visit the site from time to time to update your ad block list.

Ad Blocking In Internet Explorer: Internet Explorer has been heavily criticized for letting popups and ads run loose but it too has 3rd party add-on that users can download. It is called IE7Pro and can be downloaded from www.ie7pro.com. Click on the Download Free, download the installer and run it. In the last few steps of the installation you will be asked whether you want to enable spellchecking and if you want to set EasyHome as your homepage. Uncheck the boxes if you don’t. Click Next and finish the installation.
Restart Internet Explorer and you will find an IE7Pro icon in the status bar below or a button for IE7Pro preferences in the toolbar above. Click it and then on AD Blocker. Enable Flash blocker to block flash items from web pages. You can also add your won filters in the My Filters tab. IE7Pro brings many more features than just ad blocking to Internet Explorer. Prefetching and mouse gestures are just some of these few features.

Universal Ad Blocking Across Windows: Ads can also be blocked across all browsers and applications running in Windows. This is done through a file called HOSTS that is located in C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc. Like the urlfilter.ini list that was used for Opera, similar lists are available for Windows. The list redirects domains to other domains or IPs. This way, none of the ads can be downloaded to your browser. Manual entries can be made by opening the file in a text editor. If you download a HOSTS file, copy it to the path mentioned above.
It is also a good idea to also have a spyware removal utility installed-they not only block ads, but malware and Trojans as well. Spybot (www.safer-net-working.org) for example is one of such software. Keep it updated and run it from time to time and keep safe distance from possibly dodgy links and your PC should be just fine!

[digit Aug 2008]