I have a love/hate relationship with ads.
I love finding out what’s new. And ads are often the best way to find things the press hasn’t discovered or decided to cover.
On the other hand, ads are often intrusive, getting in the way when you’re trying to get something done. Animated ads on the web add another level of annoying. I tend to get car sick. If I’m watching a video on a monitor, I’m fine. If a video/animation is running to the side of what I’m reading, the motion can cause a bit of nausea. That does not make for a fun browsing experience.
So began my quest for decent ad blocking software for the Macintosh. I looked at every browser for the Mac (and there are more than you’d think). And every ad blocking option for each of them. (Surprisingly, some browsers have ad blocking built-in.)
After looking through all the options, I can safely say that none of them are perfect. None do everything I’d like. None block everything. In the end, I came back to Safari (as the best Mac browser) and added an ad blocking hack. But before I got around to writing it up, Apple released Safari 5. No more hacks!
So we’re able to use a real extension that works correctly with Safari!
First, if you haven’t already done so, download and install Safari 5.
Next, enable extensions in Safari 5, you know, if you haven’t done so already.
Before we block us some ads, lets have a look at some. Here’s a screen shot from <http://macdailynews.com/>. macdailynews is an Apple fanboi site that dishes the latest news about Apple and it’s competitors and makes snarky comments about the competition and anything anti-Apple. Anyway, here’s the shot:
To get the full effect, you have to visit the site. As you scroll down, the right hand column fills with more ads. All of them doing everything I hate in web ads: Blinking, flashing, animating, singing, dancing, doing little skits with annoying British accents.
Now head over to <http://safariadblock.com/> and download AdBlock for Safari. Once it’s downloaded, double-click on it in the download window. You will be asked if you want to install it. Just for fun, install it.
Let’s see how it went. Go back over to <http://macdailynews.com/>. You may have to reload it to get it to refresh. You should be something more like this:
The site is now blessedly quiet. Much more readable and enjoyable.
AdBlock for Safari isn’t perfect. Some ads will get through. But the most annoying ones will be rid from your browsing experience. It uses a couple of lists of ad servers that are maintained on the web. These lists are constantly maintained and AdBlock for Safari will automatically get a new copy whenever the lists are updated. So it truly is a set it and forget it extension.
I hope it helps you better enjoy your time online. If you like it and keep it, head back over to <http://safariadblock.com/> and make a small donation to keep the goodness coming.
