Internet marketing has risen to terrifying proportions in recent years, but it has come at a price. Advertisements that block the pages you are viewing or pop up out of nowhere are very annoying. Adblock Plus can solve all of those problems by eliminating advertisements from any page.
Installation & Requirements
Simply choose the browser you want, go to Adblock’s page and install the extension. The supported browsers are Google Chrome and Android, Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer.
Interface
After you have completed the setup process you will be taken to a new page where you can enable more options for Adblock. You can enable malware blocking, social media buttons removal and disabling tracking. All of those options are completely optional and depend on the way you want to surf the web. They are all offered with Adblock Plus as they are considered to be intrusive to your surfing. If you want a browsing experience completely free of anything that would obstruct your view then you might want to consider enabling at least some of those options as they also add privacy measures.
The extension does everything automatically. You can see the number of blocked ads by clicking on the ABP icon in your browser. Through that icon you can also disable the extension for the specific website you are currently browsing. This is especially useful if you want to support some websites that are completely funded by the advertisements and you simply want to contribute that way.
More advanced options can be found in the extensions menu. For Chrome, click on the drop down menu list, then on tools and then on extensions where you can find all of your currently installed extensions, including ABP. Clicking on options beneath the ABP extension will take you to the advanced settings page. Here, you can add your own filters and your whitelisted domains as well as choose the appearance of the extension. Lastly, you can choose to view non-intrusive ads. The extension enables this option by default and also offers you the list of websites that use such advertising. Those ads are usually text based and do not obscure any objects of the page so they are very user friendly. If you do not want to view any ads you can simply uncheck the option.
Pros
-Minimal user input
-Having tested it for months I can say that I have never experienced a pop up since installing the extension
-A very good amount of options allows users to customize the extension so that it fits their browsing patterns and their privacy concerns
-It does not slow the browsing speed at all
Cons
-None that are worth mentioning
Conclusion
The decision on whether or not you want to install Adblock Plus is a very simple one. If you want to surf the Internet without having annoying ads pop out and ruin your experience and without companies tracking your movements, then you should most definitely give it a go.
