I have always loved the Safari web browser on the Mac. And now when Google Chrome is out on the PC I have a web browser to like on the Windows platform as well.
What bothers me however, are advertisements. Browsing a web site with flash banners, Google adwords, javascript popups, and images that move around when I scroll up and down makes me feel like navigating through a minefield.
On the PC platform I use Ad Muncher to remove advertisements using a proxy. Ad Muncher is great since it even removes ads inside Google Chrome, the browser from a company who makes their living off advertisements.
Now on the Mac platform we have an equally good solution in GlimmerBlocker!
GlimmerBlocker is one of the most advanced ad blocking proxies I have experienced, and also one of the easiest to configure! Some of the features include:
- Installs very cleanly as a shared prefPane. Uninstalling is as simple as right-clicking the prefPane and choosing remove. The GlimmerBlocker web site is also very keen to highlight how clean the installation / uninstallation is. Clean installation/uninstallation is a requirement for many Mac people, and this application is doing it the right way.
- No change of settings required in your web browser! Just install GlimmerBlocker and you will be free of advertisements right from the start.
- You can subscribe to adblocking lists. You can even create and publish your own lists online using WebDAV or MobileMe, with automatic push updates!
- Filters include huge amounts of matching, including regexp, domain and folder matching.
- Add Javascript! GlimmerBlocker can add Javascript to pages, which can be used to i.e. use high quality video from Youtube by default.
- Transforms. Replace inline content. Useful if there are parts of a web site you would like to look different.
- Suspects! GlimmerBlocker will list recently accessed flash movies and javascripts loaded from a domain that is different than the html page. GlimmerBlocker can then automatically create rules from this list.
- Can work as a web proxy server, so you can browse through it from your iPhone / iPod Touch!
- And much more.
