Basic Internet Browsing Tips

I, like many people I know, end up releasing my latent anger issues/homicidal tendencies on my computer after about 5 minutes of Facebook and MySpace ads. Now, keep in mind that this solution is not only imperfect, but as MySpace is so polluted with ads, it can cause rather debilitating effects on your life. Here are a couple ways to drastically reduce the number of ads on said websites.

The first things I want to make note of before I begin are as follows:
1) A few of the ads will still show up, despite your best efforts.
2) Every once and a while you'll have to block new ads.
3) This won't remove Facebook news feed ads.
4) Nothing is perfect.

Now, to the good stuff:

First, if you don't have the Mozilla Firefox internet browser, download it here.

Second, download and install Adblock Plus here.

Then when you want to block an ad (photos), right-click on the ad and select "Adblock Image..."

Note: This doesn't work for everything...only images. Interactive ads, unfortunately, are impossible** to block using this technique. See Below

This should take care of the image forever now...every time you come back to the page (or any other page with the same ad), it won't show up.

Note: I also suggest using "Block images from xxxxx.com" and "Adblock Frame" if possible.

When you block images from a specific web address, you'll block more than just that image; often this will take care of most, if not all, of the ads from a specific site.

When you block the frame, you'll take care of the whole area where that ad is displayed, which means you'll block any ads that are put specifically in that spot on the webpage. You may have to block more than one frame in the same spot to take out the are completely, but it is REALLY worth it. If you have trouble getting the frame to stay blocked, try deleting everything after the ".com/" part of the address. (Especially if the address has "ad" or "ads" in it somewhere, like "http://ads.ak.facebook.com/ads/creative/msn/120x600new2.html". When you delete the rest, it should be "http://ads.ak.facebook.com".) This way you should be able to block a lot more ads, since you're getting anything else coming from that address (which is now less picky about what ads it blocks). You do want to make sure you aren't going too general though...you don't want to block things that aren't ads. ie: don't block "http://wisc.facebook.com/home.php?", since there's no "ad" or "ads" in there anywhere.

Warning:
This next option removes some functionality of your browser depending on your internet usage tendencies, so use this option only if if doesn't affect your internet usage.
If you really want to crack down on the ads, you can uninstall Adobe Flash Viewer, which will take care of most interactive ads. This solution and I have a love-hate relationship; while it does eliminate most of the obnoxious ads out there (instead it just bugs you about installing the plugin at the top of the screen), many websites also use Adobe Flash for their main pages. If you run into this problem, you'll have to reinstall the plugin.

Those of you who are hardcore enough to pursue this route, go here to download the uninstall file.

If you would like to reinstall the plugin for Adobe Flash, often the website will display a bar over the page that you can click on. Otherwise, go here.


**Sometimes you are able to block ads besides images if you use the "Adblock Frame" option. If you take out all of the layered frames on a website, it will often be impossible for any ads at all to show up here.