How to Block Pop-Up Ads
We have whole programs and parts of our browsers to stop and block pop up ads but the advertisers are fighting back. They now have highlighted words that you can ad to your article for a price. It is just like the advertising that many companies ell that accounts for a good percentage of the current advertising on the web. A single word is highlighted and when you pause your mouse on it a definition pops up with a link to a web site with hopefully some kind of related product. Many times this is a way to advertise related products or services but often it is just annoying to the reader.
There is also those annoying ads that come before you get to the web site you want. I hate these, if I wanted to go to an ad for a product I would search for the product, not the site I was trying to get to. But many web sites and the companies running them are trying to get more money for running their site and this type of advertising is one that you cannot avoid if you want to get to the site. It used to be only smaller sites such as gaming sites for particular games would use these but now bigger sites such as CNET are finding they think they need them to help pay for their salaries or some such.
A Flash ad is the kind that is like a small movie or commercial using flash player or another program that makes short clips of video for your computer. Many sites use them not only for Ads but for instructional how to’s or to help you understand a topic better. Games have started using them to demonstrate the quality of their newest game release to show the image quality of the game.
Google has some good ad programs that are the correct way to advertise. They have the ads you use on the sides of their search engine and the ones you can put into a web site that you commonly see. But what about all the others, banners and flash ads that you have no or little control over. I use Google’s ad blocker and there are others you can use.
Google has a search bar you can add that is specially designed for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and adds one taskbar line to he top of your page under your other taskbars, those lines at the top of the page with the buttons to help you go forward and back and such in the web pages. It also has a great blocker that can stop many of the pop up ads that come up on your computer. I like using the Google search engine and the ad blocker is just an added bonus but one that has become a necessity these days.
They also have a form auto filler that completes forms with your name, address, email address and other information that sites commonly ask for for things like ordering products when you buy them online. They have some other useful tools like the spell check and language translator you can add to the bar, or not as your preferences can dictate.
There are others you can use, some better but many are free and easy to use. You can go to CNET and search in their Internet Pop Up Blocker section here and see the different free programs to block those annoying pop ups: http://www.download.com/sort/3150-7786_4-0-1-6.html?qt=&author=&titlename=&desc=&li=49&os=&swlink=&gfiletype= .
One of the best from this list is the GoGoData Toolbar. It is available from GoGoData here: http://gogodata.com/ . The toolbar is a part of their search engine and has a bunch of handy features like a white list for adding a popups to certain sites and spyware detection and removal. The best feature about this toolbar is the removing of background music and sound from sites. It is really annoying to be searching a site and all of a sudden get some cheesy or old elevator music start to come out, and it uses resources of your computer too. There is also a handy web form and password fill in tool for filling in your common site passwords and personal information like your name, email address and home address.
Another good and easy to use program that is not a toolbar is from Panicware called Pop-up Stopper free edition available here: http://www.panicware.com/ . It is a good program that runs in the background of your computer and blocks many ads and flash ads. It has a customizable feature to notify you in different ways when it is blocking ads such as your cursor will change color or a bubble will appear. This program is nice but one feature it does not have is a white list or way to allow pop-ups while running. You would have to close the program to allow pop-ups, but it is a free program and does work well.
Ads are annoying, especially when your trying to find or do something and you keep getting side tracked while doing it on the Internet. You can prevent many of these pop-up and flash ads with the installation of a free toolbar or program that runs in the background and stops them. Some of the ads in web sites we have to put up with if we still want to go to that site but we can also complain about the ads to the site. They may listen if enough people threaten to go elsewhere for their web surfing.
