And .. Now For A Word From Our Sponsors .. Or .. Not So Much :D

Since being involved with Guild Wars, I've found a couple of forums to visit .. NOT to post .. I prefer staying in the lurky fringe areas of online communities now .. I've learned my lessons well from Uru. O_O

One of my favorite sites is Guild Wars Guru .. as gamer sites go it's pretty good .. if a little rough at times O_O .. and plenty informative .. so worth visiting.

HOWEVER .. starting a few months back now .. if you are NOT logged in you get BARRAGED with ads. My pop-up blocker goes nuts .. and doesn't matter whether you click a link or just on the page so you can scroll down .. nearly every time you click you get those blasted pop-unders instead .. and there are windowed ads on the top post .. and banners across the top of the page .. some can be really obnoxious too as well as straying into inappropriate at times !!

I tried taking screenshots of the site as it loaded to put the addresses that flew by on the loading bar in my FireFox cookie blocker .. an exercise in futility .. but I had really HOPED it would help a bit anyway .. so I decided to see if there wasn't something .. some addon .. or program .. anything .. that would stop that crap.

Turns out there IS .. a nifty little addon for FireFox .. :D

I wish I'd found this AGES ago !!

It's called Adblock Plus .. /dance .. and it works GREAT !!

You can install it to your FireFox browser from the site and subscribe to one of the sites with a bunch of adsites listed .. and you are good to go. It works .. it works VERY well .. but .. for the very odd ad it misses .. you can right click on it and add it to the list to be blocked forever more .. or you can click the little ABP stop sign in upper right of your toolbar and it will give you a list of blockable items on any page you are on .. and give you the option to block them.

Also .. I notice NO loss of speed in loading pages either .. if anything .. losing some of those ridiculous ads .. from some of those ad-dense sites .. has speeded the process up !! :D

Now .. before anyone has a chance to say that ads are how sites make money to keep running .. let me just say this .. NOT .. FROM .. ME .. they don't .. EVER. I have a hard and fast rule .. click NOTHING on any site .. because you don't know where you might be going .. or what mess might wind up taking over your computer. THAT comes from a really BAD infestation that required a harddrive wipe to fix a few years back. A hard lesson .. but learned !!

Let me say again .. I .. click .. NOTHING .. on a site that even remotely resembles ads .. EVER. So I have no qualms whatsoever installing this addon. :)

It's enjoyable to actually view a websites content .. rather than obnoxious ads everywhere .. flashing .. dancing .. or screaming at me. If you feel inclined .. and want to give it a shot .. by all means do .. I am VERY pleased with it .. it makes browsing that GW site .. and many other different sites now too .. fun again. :)