Sciencetext Tips & Tricks

Tech talk, social media, blogging, computing tips and tricks

Top Ten Firefox Addons to Annoy Advertisers

May 8th, 2007 · by David Bradley >> 15 Comments

Faster FoxComputerworld.com has kicked up a storm this week by offering its readers a list of Firefox extensions they should not use. Some of the mentions are possibly valid and using them may have a performance hit on your computer, open security issues, or simply require inconvenient set up or uninstallation when you decide the side-effects outweigh the benefits.

However, some of the entries simply seem to be in the list because they reduce the advertiser impact of sites, such as Computerworld, which is fairly packed with ads and spawns popups in an unprotected browser. By the way, I linked to the print mode version of the article, so you can avoid all the ads even if you have not adopted these addons. If you want to see the dozens of comments from aggrieved readers you will have to go back to the original article.

So, what are these addons? We are publishing the full list here together with our own thoughts on how they might annoy sites like Computerworld, advertisers, and all those blogs that exist purely to help other bloggers maximize their revenues, without really providing any value-added…you know who you are!

Fasterfox – this accelerates browsing by doing link pre-fetches, but obviously has a performance and bandwidth hit for the site in question, it also prefetches ad links, which could distort the site’s finances as ads that are never seen are being clicked through nevertheless.

NoScript – does what it says on the tin and so prevents scripts running in a browser window and thus disables lots of script-based ads.

Adblock and Adblock Plus – more of the same – blocks almost all advertising, the raison d’etre for some sites, and so has to be the most hated of addons for such sites.

PDF Download – they reckon this is overkill for most users, but perhaps they just don’t want visitors wasting bandwidth on docs that contain no ads.

VideoDownloader – once again an addon like this allows browsers to grab the content they want without having to wade through page after page of ads

Greasemonkey – this addon allows you to manipulate sites from the client side and so display them as you wish, could it be that this would allow a browser to side-step all kinds of trash an ad-rich site might throw at you? You betcha!

ScribeFire – okay, they may have a point with this blogging addon, I too cannot see the point.

TrackMeNot is apparently for the overly paranoid, but even if you are paranoid it does not mean they are not out to get you…think twice before not using it to protect your privacy even if it does mean those marketing people don’t know where you are clicking to and from.

Tabbrowser Preferences and Tabbrowser Extensions – they may also have a point with these, but only if you plan to install and then uninstall them, but either one is useful so why would you do that?

If you already use all of these Firefox addons, you know why. If you do not, then I would recommend you take a good look at them. Most ad-averse users have the likes of Adblock installed and it can greatly improve the surfing experience by hiding all those ads. Of course, annoying the ad guys by using these extensions, could lead to them having to rebuild their business model. After all, without advertising, they might even have to start charging for their content. But such a model would only be valid if the content were worth having in the first place, would it not? Judge for your self.

15 responses so far ↓

  • Piper // May 8, 2007 at 5:10 pm

    Theyr’re not serious arethey? stop using adblock? never!

  • Antony Williams // May 8, 2007 at 7:16 pm

    For any chemists reading your blog I’ll add that the ChemSpider Firefox (and IE) addin has also garnered interest of late to allow name based searches for over 10 million chemical structures on the ChemSpider index. See the following PDF file for details: http://tinyurl.com/32a76w

  • David Bradley // May 8, 2007 at 11:09 pm

    Thanks for the heads-up on crawling the chemical web, but will it annoy advertisers, that’s what readers of this post will really want to know.

  • Dan Masq // May 10, 2007 at 6:23 am

    If I worked for an ad agency, I would be happy that people are using adblock. People that use it aren’t going to click through anyways. Blocking ads just cuts out the people who aren’t interested, reduces accidental click-throughs, and saves bandwidth.

    I can see it annoying website owners. For that reason, the whitelist was invented. I know a lot of people that whitelist sites if they choose to support them.

    Anywho… great post!

  • David Bradley // May 10, 2007 at 7:40 am

    Interesting point Dan, and I think you’re right, even when I haven’t got AdBlock running (for instance when I have to use IE for whatever reason), I tend not to click ads. But, I think the vast majority of web surfers do not necessarily realize that they are clicking ads when they follow a tantalizing and neatly blended Google ad or text link anyway.

  • zach // May 11, 2007 at 4:26 am

    I thought that Computerworld list was so absolutely LAME. IDG publishes some pretty good stuff the whole, but sometimes they write a real bomb like this one. :D Good times.

  • David Bradley // May 11, 2007 at 7:33 am

    Thanks for your thoughts Zach, I totally agree, which is why I replicated it here and added my own thoughts. Several of these addons everyday users can do without, but some of them are essential regardless of what ComputerWorld has to say about them ;-)

  • Blackout // May 11, 2007 at 11:13 pm

    You never have to leave FireFox if you have IETab http://ietab.mozdev.org/

  • David Bradley // May 12, 2007 at 7:51 am

    Blackout, yes IEtab is an excellent addon and means most of my time is spent within Firefox, but testing sites and using some proprietary web software requires me to open a standalone instance of IE, unfortunately. I have tried these apps in IEtab, but they simply don’t get on. Horses for courses and all that.

  • David Bradley // Sep 13, 2007 at 11:11 am

    It seems that since I posted this Top Ten, some sites have been blocking Firefox users per se, because they believe it’s not worth serving the page if they aren’t going to make any money out of the reader! Come on! How short-sighted is that.

  • noodles // Sep 25, 2007 at 4:44 pm

    Don’t forget:

    Stylish
    Easy Element Hiding (AdBlock Plus addon)
    Platypus
    Remove It Permanently

    If you’re going to use IEtab then you MUST install IE7pro for IE (it has the best in-browser ad-blocking)

  • David Bradley // Sep 25, 2007 at 6:33 pm

    Thanks for the suggestions noodles…

    db

  • David from Dig-n-Share // Oct 8, 2007 at 10:02 am

    I use Flashblock to avoid ads, the flash ones anyway (and there are tons of them about these days :-)

    http://flashblock.mozdev.org

  • David Bradley // Oct 8, 2007 at 1:52 pm

    Flashblock sounds like it’s worth a look, David, thanks for the pointer

  • deman9 // Nov 6, 2009 at 12:31 pm

    I totally agree with the above list of options. especially with Adblock Plus,
    would feel if you use it. but sorry for the advertisers with the Adblock Plus

Leave a Comment






← →