Fun with Firefox.

[Leshy]

The internet user should have the right to block everything he doesn't want to watch.

Would you say you had the right to tear down advertisement posters on the streets, because you don't want to watch them? Or are you saying that you insist upon the right to receive content while refusing to help the one providing it to receive some compensation for the work?

Internet ads are no different from TV commercials, newspaper and magazine advertisements, et cetera. Whether you actually watch them, or use them is of little concern, as long as they are there, they keep the cost of what you are watching down. Would you be willing to pay triple the money for your newspaper if they removed the advertising? And if yes, do you think many people would choose to do so?

Many websites only exist to serve as carrier of advertisement.

Then don't visit those pages. Surely, if they only serve to advertise something and you're not interested in ads, you don't need to be there. There are many legit sites out there that do use ads - and with the introduction of Google Ads that will probably increase again, in order to raise some revenue.

And for the record, ads do not manipulate Google Search, they're simply a visual aspect on a site. If you want to cheat at Google, there are many kinds of backhand techniques, but they are not related to advertising.

If a website can't manage to keep its costs down without excessive advertising

There is quite a difference between allowing a site to use advertising to certain limits, and using a browser extension to block all advertising. I fully grant that actual excessive advertising through 50 banners on a page, a dozen popups and a bunch of Flash layers is something you should be able to prevent, but actively blocking every single ad - except those little "Get Firefox" advertisement pictures that pop up all over the place naturally ;) - is not ok in my opinion.

I don't think that much useful free content is lost if most ads are blocked by the users.

I personally know of a good few online games and good sites that went pay-to-use because advertising didn't bring in enough revenue. If a large portion of the web starts blocking ads, and sponsors behind the advertising pull out because of it, expect more sites to have that happen.

Programs that rely on advertising to be free (generally known as adware) I can't support neither. In many cases you don't know the horse you bought with these programs, either they advertise something you really don't want to see, show very aggressive advertising habits or bring  malware on your pc.

Untrue. There are many normal programs that are available for free due to having advertisements built in. On my system, I for example have Magic Workstation, Eudora and Opera, which are all adware until you register them - which I incidentally did with Opera. There are many more such programs available. None of them do anything beyond showing non-intrusive ads in the department that you're talking about.

Today, way less than 10% of all internet users do not use Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which doesn't support ad-blocking as far as I know.

There are many third-party ad blocking programs available for MSIE, and there have been for years.

Nevertheless interesting to read a completely different opinion.

I concur :)

I don't read ads in magazines. I skip commercials on TV. I throw out the junk mail that gets in my mailbox.  No one can tell me I MUST pay attention to advertising.

Even if you disregard ads, the fact that you are still receiving them is what makes advertisement companies support the things that you do pay attention to, or at the very least bring their cost down. Not paying attention to advertising is an entirely different thing than preventing yourself from receiving it altogether :)

Why do you think google ads are so successful? Because it's just a little bit of text with a handful of rather small links, instead of a big chunk of my screen that will open a new window or redirect me to another page if I click anywhere in it.

Thus, you agree with me. I already stated that there is a big difference between normal advertising and intrusive advertising ;)

If it's an arms race what the advertisers want, an arms race is what they'll get. There is wisdom, however, in not trying to fight and piss off what could be considered your target audience.

Advertisers generally don't care about pissing you off. As long as you remember their name when you need a service they provide.

[LochnarITB]

I used Adblock for a while but removed it, not because I was for or against ads but because I seemed to have problems with its interaction with and display of some of my regular sites. However, when I did, I used a feature of it that gives both those for and against ads what they want. Unless they have since removed the feature, it is possible to have Adblock download the ads but not display them. The advertiser's server has sent the ad so it assumes it was seen and the site gets credit. It has not, however, been displayed so you have not had to see it. I liked this because I do understand that there are costs associated with running a site and I had no desire to take that away from good sites, even if that means that the ad-spam sites still get their money.

[Moldran]

Would you say you had the right to tear down advertisement posters on the streets, because you don't want to watch them? Or are you saying that you insist upon the right to receive content while refusing to help the one providing it to receive some compensation for the work?

This is a completely inappropriate and misleading comparison. Tearing down advertisement posters would be equivalent to breaking into advertisement servers and sabotaging them, not to blocking ads on your own machine.
What you do on your machine is not some advertiser's or web hoster's business. Of course you do have the right to block any ads from web pages while still receiving regular content.
Which data you accept onto your machine is solely your decision. If a content provider does not want you to receive his content without receiving advertisements, it is up to him to ensure that his content is not send in these cases.

[Fragbait]

Would you say you had the right to tear down advertisement posters on the streets, because you don't want to watch them? Or are you saying that you insist upon the right to receive content while refusing to help the one providing it to receive some compensation for the work?[#1]

Internet ads are no different from TV commercials, newspaper and magazine advertisements, et cetera. Whether you actually watch them, or use them is of little concern, as long as they are there, they keep the cost of what you are watching down. Would you be willing to pay triple the money for your newspaper if they removed the advertising? And if yes, do you think many people would choose to do so?[#2]

Then don't visit those pages. Surely, if they only serve to advertise something and you're not interested in ads, you don't need to be there. There are many legit sites out there that do use ads - and with the introduction of Google Ads that will probably increase again, in order to raise some revenue.[#3]

And for the record, ads do not manipulate Google Search, they're simply a visual aspect on a site. If you want to cheat at Google, there are many kinds of backhand techniques, but they are not related to advertising.[#4]
There is quite a difference between allowing a site to use advertising to certain limits, and using a browser extension to block all advertising. I fully grant that actual excessive advertising through 50 banners on a page, a dozen popups and a bunch of Flash layers is something you should be able to prevent, but actively blocking every single ad - except those little "Get Firefox" advertisement pictures that pop up all over the place naturally ;) - is not ok in my opinion. [#5]
I personally know of a good few online games and good sites that went pay-to-use because advertising didn't bring in enough revenue. If a large portion of the web starts blocking ads, and sponsors behind the advertising pull out because of it, expect more sites to have that happen.[#6]
Untrue. There are many normal programs that are available for free due to having advertisements built in. On my system, I for example have Magic Workstation, Eudora and Opera, which are all adware until you register them - which I incidentally did with Opera. There are many more such programs available. None of them do anything beyond showing non-intrusive ads in the department that you're talking about.[#7]
There are many third-party ad blocking programs available for MSIE, and there have been for years.[#8]
I concur :)
Even if you disregard ads, the fact that you are still receiving them is what makes advertisement companies support the things that you do pay attention to, or at the very least bring their cost down. Not paying attention to advertising is an entirely different thing than preventing yourself from receiving it altogether :)[#9]
Thus, you agree with me. I already stated that there is a big difference between normal advertising and intrusive advertising ;)
Advertisers generally don't care about pissing you off. As long as you remember their name when you need a service they provide.[#10]
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Hail Leshy,

Sorry, but I still don't agree with you on most points.

[#1]By tearing down advertising posters on the street, I would hinder the advertisers on advertising completely, since noone could then see them when they go by. That is a completely different case. If I have ad-block not display them, this only affects me myself. It's equivalent to me ripping out ads from a magazine that I've bought, which is utterly legit.

[#2]I refer you to Lochnar, who put it quite well:'...
have Adblock download the ads but not display them. The advertiser's server has sent the ad so it assumes it was seen and the site gets credit. It has not, however, been displayed so you have not had to see it...'
I think you might have not gotten it that ad-block doesn't display the ads rather than not allowing them to get loaded.

[#3]Unfortunately, it happens quite often to me that I visit new sites that I haven't been to before. Otherwise I'd have kept to the - say 30 - sites I usually visit, and that's not really a big chunk of the internet. If I do, it happens quite frequently that I open huge sites consisting of mainly ads that I do not wish to see, and then after seeing that this isn't what I wanted, I try the next site Google brings up.

[#4]I'm aware that ads themselves don't manipulate the Google search (who do you think you're talking to...) but site constructors do. And they do it very well, just count how many spam/unrelated or even porn stuff comes up if you type in a normal search word.

[#5]Alright - you agree with me. I just define my borderies more narrow.

[#6]I know of no good sites that would prove that. I know of a counter example, though: this site.

[#7]I know of no good programs that would prove that. I know of a counter example, though: lavasoft's Ad-Aware (personal).

[#8]Forgive me if I don't know that. I've been using Mozilla and its consorts (Firefox, Thunderbird) since several years now, starting with what I think was 1.3.

[#9]Compare #2, or refer to Lochnar again.

[#10]I can't confirm that neither. While there may be companies where that is true, there are many (I think the majority) of companies that invest large amounts of money to be remembered positively. I and nobody I know would consciously buy products of entreprises that have annoyed with aggressive/ obtrusive advertisement.

Having said that, I think my point of view is clear.
Merry Christmas!

Greetings, Fragbait

[Walkiry]

Thus, you agree with me. I already stated that there is a big difference between normal advertising and intrusive advertising ;)
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Aaah, but with a subtle difference :)

I don't see anything wrong with blocking *any* advertising in my browser, since, as I said, I won't be giving up control of my box anytime soon. So, I don't see anything wrong with blocking any advertising at all. I may tolerate google ads (just like quite a few people), but if someone is annoyed by them they have every right to redirect the google ad hosts to 127.0.0.1.

And if google ads start to increase there's a good chance we'll start to block them too. The defining value for me is not that the websites "deserve" me to look at their ads, but rather that the user alone is who decides what can be shown in his browser.

And in 4 hours I'm off to beautiful Spain, where internet ads and all won't matter because I won't be touching a computer in at least 2 weeks ^_^

[DeeBye]

So what themes are you people using? I recently switched to Saferfox Xpanded.



It's alright I guess, but it's not quite as nice as the Smoke theme I was able to use before 1.0 was released.

[LochnarITB]

So what themes are you people using?
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Walnut

[Urza-DSF]

So what themes are you people using?

Picked up Grey Modern myself. Fits with the silver WinXP UI.