Pop-ups and ads are a fact of life, especially if you spend a significant amount of time on the Internet. However, there are good ads (banners on the sides of web pages that don’t play audio or get in your face) and bad ads, which pop right up, pop up again after you close them, and/or play audio or video. Then there are the ads that autoplay and try to hide so that the audio runs while making it difficult for you to track down the source and press the pause/stop button. (How about that..one just started playing and I can’t find it..arggghhh!)
You don’t have to live this way though. There’s one particular ad blocking browser plugin we love, and it works quietly in the background without you having to manipulate it. For now, we’ll cover our favorite ad blocker for Firefox, and we’ll do the same for other browsers down the line.
How to block pop up ads with a Firefox browser add on extension
First, open Firefox. Then, click the orange button labeled Firefox in the upper left hand corner of the browser window, then click Add-ons. From there, click on the search box in the upper right hand corner of the screen, type in “simple ad” (without the quotes) and hit Enter. Then, scroll down to the bottom and click the small, blue link in the middle-bottom section of the page that will allow you to see all the results of your search.
From there, scroll down until you see the “Simple Adblock” extension, hover your mouse over it, and click the Add to Firefox button on the right hand side of the screen. Doing so may generate a pop-up warning from Firefox stating that the browser prevented you from installing Simple Adblock. Click “Allow” on the bottom left corner of the pop up. This will generate another pop up in the middle of the screen with a countdown timer. Once the timer expires, click the Install button on the bottom left corner of the new window.
After clicking Install, a new pop up will appear in the upper left hand corner of the screen, prompting you to restart Firefox in order to complete the Simple Adblock installation. Click Restart Now.
Once Firefox restarts, which should only take a few seconds, Simple Adblock will now be running constantly, symbolized by a red, universal stop sign in the top right hand corner of your Firefox browser window at all times. Occasionally, you may run into situations where you want to watch a video by Simple Adblock is preventing you from doing so. All you need to do is click on the red Simple Adblock icon in the upper right corner, and click Turn off Simple Adblock. When turned off, the Simple Adblock icon will turn grey. Repeat this procedure to turn it on again, and the icon will once again turn red.
Note that Simple Adblock won’t catch and stymie every pop up ad, but it does snag and drop most of them. Enjoy.
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