In all of the (short) history of the Internet, there have been advertisements in various forms. Popups, splash screen, headers, sidebars …you name it..
Personally, I have come to a point that I hate ads. I am searching for an article and there are more ads than text! To those of us that still using Facebook for whatever reason and do not want to have that side bar of advertising… this is your solution. You will need:
Firefox web browser (version 3+ will be OK) Get it here: https://www.mozilla-europe.org/
Firefox add-on GreaseMonkey Get it here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748/
And the Facebook ad-blocking script. Get it here: https://userscripts.org/scripts/show/86401
What it does is use CSS and xpath selectors to “catch/select” the sidebar element (also known as the ad div) and it hides it. After you install it you don’t have to do anything. It just hides the ads.
Besides Facebook, there are GreaseMonkey scripts that hide ads from many other sites. The best source for these scripts is here:
https://userscripts.org/scripts/search?q=greasemonkey
Note that hiding the ads does not mean we don’t download them by opening the page. JavaScript is a client-side programming language and that means the page has to download to the client (us) and then modified with a script (invoked by GreaseMonkey) before we see the ad.
Alex Lim
Alex Lim is a certified IT Technical Support Architect with over 15 years of experience in designing, implementing, and troubleshooting complex IT systems and networks. He has worked for leading IT companies, such as Microsoft, IBM, and Cisco, providing technical support and solutions to clients across various industries and sectors. Alex has a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the National University of Singapore and a master’s degree in information security from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also the author of several best-selling books on IT technical support, such as The IT Technical Support Handbook and Troubleshooting IT Systems and Networks. Alex lives in Bandar, Johore, Malaysia with his wife and two chilrdren. You can reach him at [email protected] or follow him on Website | Twitter | Facebook
