Years ago, back in the 80's when I worked for the University of California, I had the Internet for e-mail and we used Gopher programs to search for documents and other such items throughout the U.S. Around the early nineties, a World Wide Web program called Mosaic was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It used something called "HyperText Markup Language" (HTML). After the Internet became public, many companies including Netscape and Microsoft helped develop this markup language into what it is today. The first versions were just word processor-type commands like bold and italics, and of course different type sizes were supported. Soon after the first release came a version which supported tables, and soon after that frames were introduced. Each time, a new version of browsers was introduced to support the new feature.
We are up to version 6.0.2 of Internet Explorer, version 7 of Netscape Communicator, version 6.05 of Opera, and version 1.1 of Mozilla, Netscape's open-source version. They support most of the newest features that HTML commands have made available. One new feature is the ability to launch a new browser window while still downloading and rendering the current page. Most companies are using these commands to pop up advertisements from their sponsors. These announcing ads, called "pop-ups," are the most irritating thing that has happened in the last year.
Soon after the introduction of these pop-up ads, third-party startups and browser companies started making filtering programs that would stop the ads from popping up. I had not installed any of these programs until recently. I set out to find the best one for the price.
I searched Google and AltaVista for any that did not give me too much interface and ads themselves. For example, Ad-Subtract ran in the toolbar area and popped up to show that it was running in the background. To me, this is no different than a pop-up ad. I kept looking. These are just some of those I looked up: AdShield, AdSubtract, ZoneAlarm, PopUp Ad Filter, AdPurger, Exit Killer, PopUp Stopper Companion, AdsGone Popup Killer, and StealthBrowser.com (an anonymous browsing service). The prices of these programs ranged from $13 to $39.99. I set out to look at what I was getting for the price.
ZoneAlarm and StealthBrowser are programs that offer more than just popup killers and banner ad suppression. AdSubtract was one I really hated because of the way it ran and how many resources it took. It was also one of the more expensive programs as well. I looked at the least expensive, one which is called AdPurger which costs $13. It worked within the browser and took up very few resources.
I downloaded and tried many of these programs because you can install them for thirty days on a trial basis. I did not choose ZoneAlarm because I have a true hardware firewall from Sonicwall. Nor did I even try "StealthBrowser" because of all the extra stuff it had, like a cookie manager and an anonymous ftp client.
It has now been 30 days and I chose AdPurger as the one I want to keep. The only problem with this one is that it only works with Internet Explorer, but not Netscape or AOL's browser.
Whether you have already purchased one or not, I always look for a program that takes very few resources and requires little interaction with the user.
[Editor's Note: Proxomitron is highly regarded, local proxy-based, free, but requires some keen attention to configure it beyond its default settings. FreeSurfer Mk-II is also free and does a good job.]
