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Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

extremetech.com

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Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#161

Post by Encosia »

jamesbrownuhh wrote: post #46
lostcolony wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What pushed me into using it was when comics.com (now gocomics.com; the official online source of a number of syndicated newspaper comics) had ads that would -minimize my browser-, display a pop up designed to look like a Windows system warning, that advised me to download some malware masquerading as a virus scanner.

Gocomics.com is a particularly good example - I find it surprising that they appear to accept such low quality (one weird old tip) and shady (download now/you have 1 new messages/etc) ads.

It can be tricky to balance between going broke and accidentally showing ads that some users dislike when you're using a large network like AdSense.

As someone with a browsing profile that isn't targeted by those kind of ads, I've found out second-hand that I've been running ads like that a few times. Trying to prune specific ads is an endless game of whack-a-mole that I've never been able to win, and disabling an entire category of ads just to prevent 1% of them from running is very tough on the bottom line.

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#162

Post by seanp2k2 »

stinos wrote: post #106
xenophonf wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.howtotype.net/symbol/Micro/ Sadly, the US-International keyboard on Windows does not implement a shortcut for the "micro" character ( http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306560 ).

There's always character map which has this and like all others you can ever think of. A bit cumbersome, but at least one doesn't have to remember character codes and can search for characters by name.

"Let me google that" pulls out character map pretty poor UX if you ask me. Almost as bad for search ability as calling your product "go" or "cloud" or "driver" or any other one-word generic, hard to find even with contextual terms around it.

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#163

Post by aroch »

atoponce wrote: post #131
aroch wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's literally a rehash of the FUD in your parent post.

There's no uncertainty or doubt about it. Ghostrank reports back about how it has disabled tracking in your browser. It may be "anonymous", but Ghostrank tracks your web usage, and sells it to advertisers. http://lifehacker.com/ad-blocking-extension-ghostery-actuall... http://www.informationweek.com/software/social/ghostery-make... https://gigaom.com/2014/11/19/ghostery-uses-plugin-data-to-p... Ghostrank tracks you.…

I'm not disputing that Ghostrank tracks you, but your framing and presentation of the facts is FUD designed to fit your wished narrative.

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#164

Post by ddingus »

I have been running Firefox without any blocker for a long time. Didn't mind the ADS, and I thought it an easy way to fund various things.

No worries, until those video and audio ads got out of control.

Some pages would bury my machine! And it's a good machine too. 2012 Mac Book Pro.

The memory profile of Firefox itself is kind of a pig, but not something I would worry too much about. Firefox with those ads? Out of control. Firefox with simple Adblock is back to no worries again.

I'll have to give uBlock a try.

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#166

Post by jamiek88 »

Encosia wrote: post #161
jamesbrownuhh wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gocomics.com is a particularly good example - I find it surprising that they appear to accept such low quality (one weird old tip) and shady (download now/you have 1 new messages/etc) ads.

It can be tricky to balance between going broke and accidentally showing ads that some users dislike when you're using a large network like AdSense. As someone with a browsing profile that isn't targeted by those kind of ads, I've found out second-hand that I've been running ads like that a few times. Trying to prune specific ads is an endless game of whack-a-mole that I've never been able to win, and disabling an en…

That really is a problem and it took me a while to figure out that sites weren't actually/necessarily endorsing those ads.

There should be an easier way of black/white listing certain types of ads when setting up adsense.

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#167

Post by logn »

shpx wrote: post #2

People are using µBlock now for precisely this reason. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/%C2%B5Block-vs.-ABP:-... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/%C2%B5block/cjpalh... https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

In some tests, uBlock results in the browser using less memory than with no plugins: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Firefox-version:-benc...

n.b. Firefox results from experimental patch: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8802509

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#168

Post by delecti »

currysausage wrote: post #86

My current favorite solution for blocking the more annoying ads and increasing security while preserving a low-latency browsing experience: Click-to-play for Flash Player (and all the other plug-ins). There are lots of gray boxes now all over the web, but I prefer them over resource-hungry attention-grabbing Flash ads.

It's amazing how well this improves the experience of using the internet with such a small change.

Rarely there are sites that hide their flash elements if they aren't loaded properly, which can make it difficult to click them, but then you just whitelist the website if it's really important.

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#170

Post by icelancer »

drey08 wrote: post #62
Kiro wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about aesthetics. I've found that AdBlock actually destroys a lot of the symmetry since the page was designed with ad elements in place.

That could actually be a novel technique against ad blocking. Make the website dysfunctional if the ads can't be displayed.

Many sites do this. Baseball-reference is one of them.
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