Block Extreme Ads in Google Chrome and Opera via AdSweep

From a certain point of view, advertisement is quite an informative form of communication which can furnish consumers with a lot of market information and knowledge. For instance, some of those ads and advertising banners which appear on the internet can update users on the latest products, new movies, album releases, etc. Having said that, sometimes it could be very annoying when popup ads and banners on the internet keep prompting out to disturb you while you are surfing the net. These extremely glaring ads disturb your viewing, clutter the page and makes it longer for you to load a page. Of course you can decide to block these ads if you feel they are really a nuisance to you.

Designed particularly for Opera web browsers but also supports Google Chrome browser, AdSweep is a tiny ads blocking add-on that aims to stop or hide those advertisements from the web pages you browse. Technically, AdSweep is a user scripts that defines CSS rules based on the web site users are visiting to hide elements of the page that show advertisements. This ads blocking program is free and users can download it via the link here. Besides Opera and Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari and IE users who want to use AdSweep need to install other programs before installing it. Read the installation guide as extracted from the developer’s site.

To install AdSweep extract AdSweep.zip and place the AdSweep.user.js file in a directory of your choice.

• If you use Opera, open your web browser, hit Alt-P, click the “Advanced” tab on top, click the “Content” menu item on the left-hand side, click the “Javascript Options…” button on the right-hand side. In the “Javascript Options” dialog, click the “Choose” button, select the directory where you saved the AdSweep.js file. Click “OK” to save.
• If you use Chrome, extract AdSweep.zip, rename the AdSweep.js file to AdSweep.user.js (important!). Then follow the instructions on the Chromium web site to enable user scripts and to place your AdSweep.user.js file into Chrome’s user script directory. If reading the instructions on the Chromium web site, you wonder how to place the command flag, this means you just have to right-click the shortcut icon of Google Chrome, either on your desktop or in your Start menu, and click “Properties”. Select the second tab named “Shortcut”, and in the “Target” field, append –enable-user-scripts with a space inbetween. For instance:

  Before: C:\Users\Charles\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe

  After: C:\Users\Charles\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe –enable-user-scripts

  Don’t forget the space inbetween, and the command flag –enable-user-scripts has to be outside the double quotes, if any. Click “OK” to save changes. You can use the Chrome channel changer to select between the stable version, the beta release or the development snapshot. You can use either the beta or development versions, both work well.

• If you use Mozilla Firefox, install the Greasemonkey extension, restart your browser. Then extract AdSweep.zip, rename AdSweep.js to AdSweep.user.js and drag and drop it into Mozilla Firefox. The Greasemonkey dialog will ask you if you want to install AdSweep. Click ok. You’re done.
• If you use Safari, you can use AdSweep, you just have to install Greasekit and install AdSweep as a user script.
• If you use Internet Explorer you need GreasemonkIE or IEPro and just install AdSweep as a user script (not tested, though).

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 at 5:14 pm and is filed under Application & Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.