Did you get all that? Have you ever thought, “It’d sure be handy if I could save this online receipt as a PDF to my Google Drive, without much work.”?
If you’re using Google Chrome, it’s easier than you thought.
Tag Archives: chrome
Ad-blocking in Chrome and Windows
Ever since Chrome has added support for extensions, I’ve found myself flip-flopping between it and Firefox. Chrome’s speed is outstanding, but I still love the extensibility of Firefox as its extensions can integrate deeper within the browser. One area that’s bothered me is ad-blocking. Firefox can still do true ad-blocking where content is blocked before the URL is loaded, while in Chrome it is only possible to hide the ads after they are loaded by the browser. Which is an issue for me, as ad servers can cause delays in the loading of the main website. Plus less content means faster loading overall.
Today I wanted to drop a note about an application that I recently ran across that might have solved the ad-blocking issues for me without the need to run proxies that usually slow down the browsing process or are difficult to maintain and configure. Those who use Windows may know that you can block ads via the Windows hosts file. It’s a file that your PC uses to try to resolve domain names. If the domain name isn’t found there, the machine will then start looking to your external name server(s) (e.g. your internet provider, etc.). For years now there are people who have been using this file to block ads, and it works great most of the time. The only issues I ever had were that the file was cumbersome to keep updated, plus certain pages on the web become unusable. For example some video sites display ads before showing you the video. If the ad doesn’t not display, the video cannot be viewed.
Yesterday, though, I ran across a tool that seems to solve both of those issues, called HostsMan. It’s a tool that will help you keep your hosts file updated using online sources of ad lists. But it also supports exclusions, so that you can add in certain domains that should never be added to your file.
The only downside to using the hosts file to block ads is that you cannot white-list ads on a certain webpage, for instance. You may like a certain site but realize they are ad-supported. Unfortunately the hosts file is used separately per ‘request’ or item inside of a webpage and therefore cannot understand that you want to allow ads displayed within or alongside a certain page or domain.
But if you’re OK with that, I highly recommend this program to help speed up Chrome even more and keep your online experience (in all of your browsers) virtually ad-free.
Google Chrome
It’s been over a month since it was released, and I thought I’d give my two cents worth, no matter how banal it may be. Overall it’s an awesome initial effort from Google! It is definitely faster than Firefox on my laptop and any slight improvement like that is a welcome plus. The built-in developer tools and task manager, though not yet on the par of Firefly, are a great addition to an initial release. Some of the UI effects are slick, such as the download statusbar, and its built-in support for ‘web applications’ is a neat, new feature (to me at least).
That said what I’m really waiting for is to see what happens in the future, specifically their support of add-ons, or extensions. There were rumors early on that Chrome may support Firefox add-ons natively (similar to AvantBrowser’s Orca), but recently Google said they were going to be creating their own extension system. A system that they hope is more stable and does not impact the browser’s overall performance.
For now I’m sticking with Firefox 3 until said extension system is completed and we see what types of extensions can be and/or are built. You can use a proxy like Privoxy to replace Adblock Plus, and there is Greasemetal to allow you to use (some) Greasemonkey scripts in Chrome. But they really need a vibrant extension community to pull over users like myself, as the performance of Firefox is getting better with each new release and is good enough to keep me from moving away from my highly customized browser.
Related to this, something that slightly worries me is Google’s past history regarding product development. Don’t get me wrong I love all of their tools such as Docs, Maps, etc. but things like Gmail are still in beta after over 3 years have passed. New features that you feel would just be built in are being slowly offered via optional Labs settings. Though Google did an excellent job with their initial releases of Gmail and Chrome, they really need to keep the new features or innovations coming to keep users interested. This is where extensions are so important, as no one at Google (or Mozilla) could come up with all of these trinkets on their own.
blog of hair 