Adblock

April 1st, 2006

Quite a few people use Adblock (or it's less leakier cousin). Adblock simply allows you to set up filters which block adverts. I remember having Adblock about two years ago but I actually found that it made me look at adverts more.

Instead of simply ignoring adverts (which is dead easy), when the page loads your always on the look out for adverts to block. In fact, I find it incredibly easy to ignore adverts - generally anything animated, generally anything of a certain size or anything which looks like Adsense.

Combined with the fact Adblock can add page load time & CPU usage plus the memory leaks, I don't think it's worth it. Popups and adverts with sound do annoy me. I wish there was a way to disable sound in Flash animations by default with a little button to turn it on.

Quant sent me this screenshot of the memory usage of his Firefox with Adblock:

Adblock Memory Usage