[Bassetts]

I recently switched from Adblock Plus to HTTP Switchboard[0]. I find it gives you much better control over what gets blocked, and it properly blocks what you have told it to, not just hide them.

I have it set up in quite a restrictive way so by default a site level scope is created and only image/css is allowed. It means I have to take anywhere from a couple of seconds to a few minutes to enable things a site needs to function, but I much prefer that to having tracking cookies, social media buttons, obnoxious adverts etc.

Also the Adblock site claims you can also block a few annoyances specific to Facebook[0]. Is that actually the case? I thought Adblock just used element hiding.

[0] https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard/ [1] https://facebook.adblockplus.me/en/

[Ardren]

Initial ad blocking extensions for Chrome used element hiding due to addon limitations in Chrome. But for at least the last few years Chrome allows extensions to block requests.

I think Firefox has always been able to do this.

[gorhill]

Last week-end I introduced µBlock (or uBlock) [1] for users who do not like to deal with the more complicated HTTP Switchboard. It does rather well against other popular blockers [2], which shows that ABP does indeed block requests, not just hide HTML elements. Compare the numbers of domains reached with when no blocker is used.

[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#benchmarks

[2] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#benchmarks

[mkesper]

Not (yet) available for Firefox, sorrily.

[Bassetts]

That is true, and something I forgot to mention in my original comment. I do believe the author intends to eventually have it work on Firefox, but I doubt that will be any time soon due to the fact it currently relies heavily on the Chrome API.