Adblock Plus is available as a browser extension for both Firefox and Google Chrome. Check out this video that explains how easy it is to install Adblock Plus on Google Chrome:

Adblock Plus is 100% free and setup takes only a few seconds. You can get it here.

Quite often while surfing the web for the desired info, you may come across the relevant information which is subtly mentioned on a web page, needing to be highlighted to a colleague, client or a friend. Even if the web page link is shared and the information is mentioned in the correspondence, it will take considerable time for them to find it. The Awesome Screenshot saves the hassle and places a browser icon in the web address bar of the Chrome browser.

As soon as you feel the need to highlight something on the webpage, you can click on this button to capture or clip the selected area, or all visible portion of the page, or the entire page, annotate it with rectangles, circles, arrows, lines and text and save locally. Also, you can crop the selected area and use the eraser to hide sensitive information. The image file can be shared locally, or you can upload it in one-click to awesomescreenshot.com and get a shareable link which can be accessed by your peers with the accentuated portions. The images saved online can be extremely large in size without a worry about crashes.

This smart application is a great addition to the repertoire of web designers, researchers, and even average users who would like to capture, emphasize, keep, and share the information available online. The Awesome Screenshot extension stays true to its name by functioning extremely well with the Google Chrome platform.

The new review site for Chrome extensions has a different approach than comparable websites like the Chrome web-store. This website adds descriptions that are not written by the developers themselves. Also, the toplist of Chrome extensions is not based on their number of downloads but on the rating the extension has received by the editors. This way, developers without a marketing budget can get a high ranking, even if they don’t have the resources to promote their download with marketing activities.

Adblock Plus, a non-profit project, has received high ratings by both the editors of the website as well as the users, who also can leave a comment without having to register. The review contains a general description of the functionality of Adblock Plus and also explains how the add-on can be configured in a way to serve more functions than just blocking advertisements from websites. As stated in the review, by adding additional filter lists ABP can block a lot more, e.g. tracking, Facebook integration and other annoyances.

The high ranking in the top-10 list of the most popular Chrome extensions was achieved by ranking high in the three major criteria the overall rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars is based on: Functionality, Performance and Design. While The Functionality and the Performance was rated with the best possible grade, the editors perceive that there is room for improvement in the design of the Adblock Plus extension.

User tracking has many advantages (Google Analytics is placed on this website as well) as a better knowledge about user preferences can be used to optimize websites and provide content that reflects the interests of the users of a website. The generated data is being analysed anonymously so no visitor will be tracked individually. However, users who are concerned about their privacy can now easily disable all tracking from websites.

All that needs to be done is add a tracking protection lists to you filter subscriptions. The most popular tracking protection filter list is EasyPrivacy, a supplement to the adblocking EasyList. To enable EasyPrivacy, you need to go to the Chrome Adblock Plus Options, click on the Filter Lists tab and manually add the following URL:

https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/easyprivacy+easylist.txt

This will enable the tracking protection feature and lets you surf the web without worrying about any company like Google or Facebook generating data with your browsing habits.

The solution to this problem is Turn Off the Lights, a free Chrome addon that detects a video on a website and turns everything else dark. By fading out the background you can easily watch web-videos as if you were in a cinema. The Chrome extension will place a small lamp-icon next to the Wrench. By clicking on it, Turn Off the Lights will fade out everything but the video, clicking again on the icon will immediately switch the lights back on so you can see the website in normal mode. Many flash video websites as well as HTML5 are supported.

Install Adblock Plus

Downloading and installing the Adblock Plus Chrome extension is fast and easy. All you have to do is go to the Chrome webstore, click on the “Install” button and “Confirm”. A few seconds later you will notice a small red ABP icon in the right-corner of your address-bar. This means Chrome Adblock Plus is enabled and all ads are gone.

How does Chrome Adblock Plus work?

Adblock Plus is a content-blocking browser extension. It blocks HTTP request so it can prevent any unwanted element (such as advertising) from being loaded in the browser. It also uses sytlesheets and element hiding so that websites will look normal even if the advertising is being cut out.

You can create your own rules to remove any annoyance from every website or you can subscribe to one of many free filter lists. Theses lists are maintained by members of the Adblock Plus community and define the elements that are being blocked. This way you always have an up-to-date filter list that protects you from advertising, or – depending on the list(s) you subscribe to – other unwanted elements such as Facebook like-buttons, tracking etc.

Flash cookies are often used to track user behaviour etc. Other than normal cookies, they couldn’t be deleted directly in your browser, users had to visit an Adobe website to clear Flash Local Shared Objects (LSOs). So in reality, nobody ever did it, making flash cookies an easy way for advertisers to permanently track you. But due to the bundling of the Flash plugin into Chrome, a new feature could be integrated by Google that makes it very handy to clear the computer from stored flash cookies. All you have to do is go to Wrench > Tools > Clear browsing data and choose “Delete cookies and other site and plug-in data”, this will delete flash cookies as well.

While this is a right step towards giving the user more control over personal data, extension like Adblock for Chrome are still essential as they are the only way for users to completely disable unwanted advertising or tracking codes spying on users.

But those days are over now: Since the release of version 1.1, the Chrome Adblock Plus extension has improved the video-ads blocking functionality on Youtube. Once installed, users of Chrome Adblock Plus can surf on Youtube without seeing any ad which makes it faster, saves bandwidth, and makes the video-fun much more enjoyable.

Unfortunately, this improvement does not yet effect other video websites like hulu, justin.tv etc. While all banners are blocked just fine with Chrome Adblock Plus, video-ads are still shown. For ad-blocking those websites, Google first has to fix some of the bugs that have been reported by the Adblock Plus community many months ago. Unfortunately, Google does not seem to give a very high priority to improving the code to support ad-blocking extensions.