techblog 

For a number of years I’ve been running Firefox (FF) with advert blocking extensions to make the whole web experience more pleasant.  Originally this was using AdBlock but for the last couple of years it has been with AdBlock Plus (ABP) and Filterset G.

However I recently got a bit fed up with the speed of FF to restart with 30 tabs open and so decided to investigate a bit.  Firstly I got to the bottom of the difference between AdBlock and ABP.  The former has been dead for a long time whilst the latter is live and apparently better developed.  No problem there I was already using the right one.

Then I discovered that the authors of ABP specifically caution you not  to use Filterset G because it will slow down FF and uses a different subscription mechanism.  Instead they recommend that you use a filterset from a recommended list, so I thought I would give it a try.

First though I had to remove Filterset G, which was not quite straightforward.  First you have to remove the FF add-on, easy enough.  But the last set of data it drew down is still present.  So then I de-installed and re-installed ABP but this kept the same data somewhere, so then I manually had to delete the filters added by Filterset G.

The next step was to add another add-on that ABP recommends, the element hider.  Again a simple FF add-on installation.  Finally I subscribed to some new filters, namely EasyList, EasyElement and ABP Tracking Filter, all accessed from the recommended list.

The end result is all the same ads blocked (it may even be better), a much faster FF and fewer of those obvious white spaces where ads used to be.  Altogether a good result.