Adblock Plus for Firefox

Adblock Plus is an add-on for the Firefox browser that lets you browse the web without seeing intrusive ads.

Simple to Set Up and Use

Adblock Plus is one of the simplest ad blocking programs you can find on the Internet today. It installs automatically within Firefox, a process that takes less than a minute. Configuring it to work is very easy too. Adblock Plus comes preconfigured with the most up-to-date filtering lists that recognize which website elements are ads, allowing the program to block them automatically. Most users will be perfectly satisfied with the filter lists selected by default, but there are ways for advanced users to customize the filtering and even create their own lists. The program comes with extensive online documentation explaining how each of its functions work, as well as how to configure the various settings.

A Pleasant Ad-Free Browsing Experience

Many websites now display ads to make money for their owners. While some ads, such as simple text ad boxes, are relatively simple and unobtrusive, others can get far more annoying. Some pages display pop over ads that cover the content you're accessing until you find the tiny close button to dismiss them.

Some websites display several ads on the same page. The ads, as well as their tracking elements take time to load, which can slow down your browsing experience. They also result in a lot of data being downloaded, sometimes more than the content elements of the page put together. This is a problem for anyone using an Internet connection with a limited amount of monthly bandwidth, like most mobile Internet plans. Pages that are heavy with ads can also be annoying for anyone using a PC with a limited amount of RAM, as they needlessly use up system resources. This can make Firefox very slow, unresponsive for several seconds and even crash a tab completely.

Adblock Plus relies on filter lists that are constantly updated, which gives it the ability to block the vast majority of ads you'll encounter online. When you use Firefox with this plugin enabled, you'll likely notice that websites load faster. If you pay attention to the amount of you use each day, you'll also see a reduction of up to 50 percent, as your browser isn't downloading a bunch of ads on each website you visit.

Overall, Adblock Plus is a plugin that is very well designed and does its job nearly perfectly. The only few problems reported by users is that while blocking ads, the plugin may also block useful page elements, such as image galleries or videos. In the rare event that Adblock Plus breaks the functionality of a certain website, you can easily add it to its exclusion list simply by clicking on the Adblock button and selecting the appropriate option.