Thursday, December 6, 2007

Using Adblock Plus in Firefox

One of our favorite add-ons for the Firefox web browser is Adblock Plus.

This utility allows you to get rid of ads and banners on websites. Besides allowing you to subscribe to filter lists for commonly encountered ads, it also allows you to quickly block specific images and banners on a page. This prevents the ads from being downloaded and displayed again.

How to install Adblock Plus on Mozilla Firefox:

In Firefox, navigate to the link below:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865

Click the button marked Install Now and follow the onscreen prompts.

Once the add-on is installed you'll be prompted to restart Firefox. When you do, you'll see a window appear that allows you to subscribe to a list of filters:


(click image for full size version)

Select one of the subscriptions from your local area and click Subscribe.

At this point you'll largely be done. Adblock Plus will work in the background, blocking ads from the filter list that you subscribed to.

Blocking specific images:

If you find a particular image or banner that you want to block, just right click it and select "Adblock Image...". The image will disappear, and your computer won't attempt to download it in the future.

For example, you could use this to disable the image at our website that displays some of the companies that use Solid Converter PDF to Word.

What if you want to display the image again? Go into Tools | Add-Ons | Adblock Plus | Options | Right click the particular link you want (it should be at or near the top) and select Delete. Click OK to close the window and then refresh your browser to see the image again.