beefsack on 2009-07-01 07:38:23
Google Chrome has to be my favourite browser, having a great compact interface (which works particularly well on my NC10), as well as being lightning fast. The one reason why I haven't completely switched over from Firefox is because of a lack of extensions, and in particular an ad blocking extension. There are a couple of options, and today I found the one that works perfectly for me.
When trying to enable ad blocking for browsers you have two options, internally (usually with extensions, such as the fantastic Adblock Plus for Firefox) or externally, usually via a proxy (such as using Privoxy, which works really well).
I've been using Privoxy with Chrome until a few hours ago and it has been working well enough for me. Basically, you set an application (such as Chrome) to use Privoxy as a proxy for your internet connection, and Privoxy will filter the incoming content before the browser touches it. The great thing about using something externally like Privoxy is that you can centralise your filtering if you use more than one application that needs to be filtered, and can be set up to run as a proxy for a LAN. It is also very versatile, and while it works well blocking ads it is capable of filtering for pretty much anything. The Privoxy site has basic instructions on how to get started.
Today, however, I found the solution that works perfectly for me. I was never really happy using Privoxy as it was constantly running, and while the overhead was very minimal (virtually nothing), some overhead is still much more than no overhead. I use my Windows partition solely for gaming so performance is key for me, and I only require ad blocking for if I have to browse the net in Windows and not while I am gaming. Therefore for me an internal solution would be perfect, only consuming resources when I am running the web browser. Firefox with Adblock Plus is perfect for this, and now Chrome with the AdSweep extension works brilliantly too.
AdSweep has been around for a while using Javascript in a wide variety of browsers, and has been made into a Chrome extension recently. Chrome has supported extensions in recent beta and dev builds (Chromium developers have released a tool to switch from stable release to beta or dev builds). After switching to a new build, Chrome can be launched by adding the --enable-extensions argument to enable extensions. For me, I made a shortcut to "C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe --enable-extensions". After launching with extensions enabled, head to the AdSweep page and download AdSweep.crx. After downloading in Chrome, it should automatically run the extension, and ads should now be blocked internally. To check locally installed Chrome extensions, point chrome to chrome://extensions/. So far I haven't found AdSweep to noticeably affect performance when browsing.
Unfortunately, the AdSweep developer has discontinued the AdSweep project as of about a month ago, but that doesn't stop it from working very well. Hopefully once extensions in Chrome hit the stable release, lots of people will benefit from this great extension, and hopefully development will continue one day. I've found AdSweep to be fantastic and the developer has done a wonderful job releasing it as what I can see is the first native Chrome ad blocking extension.
As a side note, Firefox 3.5 came out today. I've been using Firefox 3.5 pre release versions for a while now in Linux and it is much much faster than older Firefox releases (Mozilla claims twice as fast as Firefox 3 and 10 times faster than Firefox 2). This browser war is doing amazing things for consumers, as instead of being fought over incompatible Javascript features, it is being fought over standards compliance, performance, security and stability. Chrome has it's nose out in terms of performance and UI which are the deciding factors for me, but is behind Firefox in terms of features, and the Firefox extension library is immense. Firefox and Chrome are also implementing a lot of the proposed feature set of HTML 5, which is really going to change the web, particularly with the canvas element (which has already spawned in browser 3D engines) and the video element. Both of these elements look to replace the heavy dependence on flash for dynamic page content such as for games and embedded video in web pages.
When trying to enable ad blocking for browsers you have two options, internally (usually with extensions, such as the fantastic Adblock Plus for Firefox) or externally, usually via a proxy (such as using Privoxy, which works really well).
I've been using Privoxy with Chrome until a few hours ago and it has been working well enough for me. Basically, you set an application (such as Chrome) to use Privoxy as a proxy for your internet connection, and Privoxy will filter the incoming content before the browser touches it. The great thing about using something externally like Privoxy is that you can centralise your filtering if you use more than one application that needs to be filtered, and can be set up to run as a proxy for a LAN. It is also very versatile, and while it works well blocking ads it is capable of filtering for pretty much anything. The Privoxy site has basic instructions on how to get started.
Today, however, I found the solution that works perfectly for me. I was never really happy using Privoxy as it was constantly running, and while the overhead was very minimal (virtually nothing), some overhead is still much more than no overhead. I use my Windows partition solely for gaming so performance is key for me, and I only require ad blocking for if I have to browse the net in Windows and not while I am gaming. Therefore for me an internal solution would be perfect, only consuming resources when I am running the web browser. Firefox with Adblock Plus is perfect for this, and now Chrome with the AdSweep extension works brilliantly too.
AdSweep has been around for a while using Javascript in a wide variety of browsers, and has been made into a Chrome extension recently. Chrome has supported extensions in recent beta and dev builds (Chromium developers have released a tool to switch from stable release to beta or dev builds). After switching to a new build, Chrome can be launched by adding the --enable-extensions argument to enable extensions. For me, I made a shortcut to "C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe --enable-extensions". After launching with extensions enabled, head to the AdSweep page and download AdSweep.crx. After downloading in Chrome, it should automatically run the extension, and ads should now be blocked internally. To check locally installed Chrome extensions, point chrome to chrome://extensions/. So far I haven't found AdSweep to noticeably affect performance when browsing.
Unfortunately, the AdSweep developer has discontinued the AdSweep project as of about a month ago, but that doesn't stop it from working very well. Hopefully once extensions in Chrome hit the stable release, lots of people will benefit from this great extension, and hopefully development will continue one day. I've found AdSweep to be fantastic and the developer has done a wonderful job releasing it as what I can see is the first native Chrome ad blocking extension.
As a side note, Firefox 3.5 came out today. I've been using Firefox 3.5 pre release versions for a while now in Linux and it is much much faster than older Firefox releases (Mozilla claims twice as fast as Firefox 3 and 10 times faster than Firefox 2). This browser war is doing amazing things for consumers, as instead of being fought over incompatible Javascript features, it is being fought over standards compliance, performance, security and stability. Chrome has it's nose out in terms of performance and UI which are the deciding factors for me, but is behind Firefox in terms of features, and the Firefox extension library is immense. Firefox and Chrome are also implementing a lot of the proposed feature set of HTML 5, which is really going to change the web, particularly with the canvas element (which has already spawned in browser 3D engines) and the video element. Both of these elements look to replace the heavy dependence on flash for dynamic page content such as for games and embedded video in web pages.