I was sitting on the plane, on a flight to Seattle for this Microsoft Summit.
I was wearing a Firefox t-shirt (a subtle jab) and the guy next to me on the plane started asking me why I like Firefox. One of the reasons was:
AdBlock. I never see an online ad in my browser anymore. And we all know how painful damn online ads/popups are! Amen!
Then he replied:
Oh. I work for an online ad company
Woops!
He also said that he was on the way to “the microsoft summit”. I started to wonder who was going to be at this thing? That was, until I realised that Microsoft is big enough to have another summit ;) They are having one based on advertising down the road.
This had me wondering:
- Will IE 7 have adblocking built-in? Or do they have too much pressure not too.
- Will they allow simple plugin development? If they don’t then Firefox will always have an advantage
I found out that tomorrow we will have a chance to talk to some of the IE team, so it will be good to find out what is going on there.
Some first impressions of the summit:
- The car service took over an hour to show up: -1
- The room at this lodge is amazing: +5
- The people here: +1
March 16th, 2005 at 3:40 pm
It’s kind of ironic that you dislike ads yet you use Google AdSense to run an advertisement on your page. The main reason people run ads is to help pay for the costs of running their service for others. Believe it or not, ads will actually play a vital role in helping the internet get more services and ultimately help the consumer. You should be thankful for ads and try to help shape the future of ads so that they are how we envision that they should be.
April 6th, 2005 at 6:53 pm
I don’t think it’s fair to chastise the guy for having 1 small google advertisement on his website. I also think there is a big difference between the usual flashing huge annoying banner ads that are all over the web and one small well targeted google advertisement.
It’s also a little naive to think that all advertisements are there for the betterment of the internet and mankind. Let’s face it a lot of the time its just desperate profiteering, and it ruins websites and the internet.
This guy (well this page at least) has a small advert to the right of the page. You have no less of a viewing space because of it and it blends in nicely with the site colour scheme and design.
All i’m saying is, you can understand an advertiser using adblock, based on the quality of advertising most websites employ (including microsofts – hotmail being one of the worst offenders).
“For more rants visit my brilliant website at http://www..” nah just kidding. :)
April 14th, 2005 at 5:10 pm
Google ads = subtle.
Other ads = Often not so.
Simple really.
And, maybe i’ve somehow blocked the ad on this page, but i’m not seeing it.
Is that subtle or what?
April 15th, 2005 at 3:41 am
Is there an echo in here? in here? in here?
May 18th, 2005 at 3:54 pm
I would have to agree with dion. One of the only reasons I use Firefox is because of the adblock functionality. Everyting I use my IE and some Macromedia Flash banner pops up with Vi@gra or some other thing that distracts me from doing what I came to the site to do, I remember why I use Firefox. The ones that dont flash and take over my entire screen I generally do not block because they don’t get in my way. It is like a homeless man jumping in front of me as I walk trying to give me a flyer about some event that I don’t even care about. Subtle advertising is the key to not annoying people yet still getting your message out there.
September 29th, 2005 at 12:34 am
Not only ads are intrusive, they take bandwith. If you dont belive me, go to the wwe website and look videos. then use adblock and watch em again. while not using adblock, my videos was laggy as heck even though buffered to 50% of material.when i started adblock, videos showed perfectly (i use 512/544baud adsl connection)
Not only those adds will popup to 2/3rd of the screen, they does it every time… and while we load those adds, the rest of the website conponents wait… what if i vasmodem user? it takes 10minutes to load starting page that i cant owerride.
i live in europe and i cant wait to usa to ban spamming so 80% of dpsm eould stop wasting and jamming internet bandwith totally. with this rate, ads, spams etc. will clog internet totally. Is that better? no internet at all?
In europe we have this rule with gsm commericials: Users must admit proval to get adds.
This should be true with web also: if you keep disturbing me with your adds (i dont need new boiler, i dont have even my own house, or no, idont need loan, i live with my parents) you would be fined 50$ fine every time. That would stop them in the pits they start to jump.
May 23rd, 2006 at 5:06 pm
The problem isn’t the ads itself. I understand that ads pay for sites/software/whatever so I don’t have to pay for it myself (or pay less). The problem is that the ads take over pages, they are aggressive, they use flash, sound, pop-ups (yes – many go around the popup-stopper) and simply uses a lot of system resources. And not least – I also use my computer travelling, using GSM/GPRS/EDGE as carrier so the ads consume a lot of bandwidth I have to pay for. Adblock in Firefox blocks at URL-level so it doesn’t download the ad.
September 28th, 2006 at 10:49 am
I loved AdBlock for Firefox. But I use IE7 now exclusevly. I found Ad Muncher and I think I like it more. Basically I dont have to “set up” sites because its already filtering an updateable list.
adblock.admuncher.com if you interested!
October 24th, 2006 at 4:02 am
Say yes to Mozilla (cann’t wait for Firefox 2.0)… Say no to IE & Opera (i like opera, it’s really really fast…. but one thing is missing… adblock…)
And we all love adblock in Firefox
October 24th, 2006 at 2:57 pm
512/544 Baud?! That would mean you were connecting at about two PERCENT of the speed of a 14.4 modem. I’m guessing (and hoping) you meant 512/544kbps, although I’ve never heard of such a speed before.
October 29th, 2006 at 4:13 am
Using both IE7 and FF2, and have to admit the only reason now that I prefer FF is because of the AdBlocking. I agree that most people have no issues with subtle advertising, but banner-ads are just plain annoying. And then you have to pay for a product in IE7 to get rid of them? Bring on FF!
November 1st, 2006 at 4:24 am
“Using both IE7 and FF2, and have to admit the only reason now that I prefer FF is because of the AdBlocking.”
+1
November 6th, 2006 at 9:56 pm
I can’t find any sooo good like adblock to use in IE7 :(
Admuncher is fine, but I dont like have a service loaded everytime.
Power IE bar is fine too, but its outdated and hangs IE7 when the browser is closed
When we will have a adblock for IE7???!!!
November 7th, 2006 at 5:02 am
I agree with you all. I love the interface of IE7 but don’t want to have the Admuncher service loaded and have to proxy all my machines. I can’t stand the ads, so unfortunately, I can’t use IE7 until we get a good blocking solution.
November 13th, 2006 at 1:20 pm
Pop-ups? Advertisements? HA! That’s what Firefox is for, my friend!
November 14th, 2006 at 6:18 am
You mean
January 22nd, 2007 at 5:52 pm
Konqueror 3.5.5 from kde just sorts ad blocking out of the box without any add-ons
February 5th, 2007 at 9:36 am
RE:comment by henry erich iii, nice little subterfuge there get paid weasel. From the Admuncher site at
http://www.admuncher.com/partnership.shtml
“The Ad Muncher partnership program works as follows:
You are given a customized Ad Muncher address to refer people to. This will look like:
http://YourAccountName.admuncher.com/
When people visit this address, they are given a customized version of Ad Muncher that remembers that it was downloaded from your site.
When the user later registers Ad Muncher and enters their registration code into the program, Ad Muncher will connect to the admuncher.com servers and report that you should receive a commission on their registration.
You will then receive 20% of the purchase amount for their registration, minus any future charge-backs or other refunds.
Payments are made on the 15th of the second month after they are received. For example if a registration was purchased between the 1st and 31st of January, then the commission would be paid to you on the 15th of March.
Payments are made via check in US dollars once the amount owing reaches $100.”
February 10th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
IE7Pro is a powerfull alternative to AdBlock for IE
February 11th, 2007 at 7:48 am
I love Adblock.
I used to go over those gigantic Download Our Stupid Smiley adds on Myspace, and they said Heeeellllooooo! At that moment, I accidently opened up add-ons for Firefox, and there it was – Adblock.
I will never use Internet Explorer again.
March 3rd, 2007 at 12:13 pm
I used to be a firefox user. But IE7 is faster. The only thing that kept me using firefox was adblock. Then I found admuncher. It works as good, if not better than adblock. Free, too.
http://www.admuncher.com
May 27th, 2007 at 8:16 am
I think the “Adblock plus for ie” is the best implementation of Adblock on ie and ie7.
http://www.adblockplus.net/
June 13th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
the free proxy is the best option..
http://proxomitron.info
or
http://privoxy.org
.. for IE
July 25th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
the masses have little time to think. and how incredible is the willingness of modern man to believe.
September 10th, 2007 at 1:01 am
Please check out SelectView Ads Filter. It’s a free in-page ads filter for IE inspired by Adblock Plus.
http://www.selectview.org/install
It also provides a testing proxy so you can try out before install.
http://www.selectview.org/testdrive
August 18th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
Firefox addons are just easier to make. Maybe a future release of IE will open up development.