We are living in a world where ads are everywhere. With powerful servers, web advertisement is ubiquitous. Unfortunately, I think they are too intrusive most of time. So, it is generally a good idea to disable the online ads. For a free solution, there are several common techniques. First, figure the ad servers’ IP, and use /etc/hosts to send the ad request call into void. Second, use a userContent.css to filter out ads. For example, if you don’t like the Google ads. You can put the following lines in your /etc/hosts (for OS X or other unix).
127.0.0.1 pagead.googlesyndication.com 127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com 127.0.0.1 domains.googlesyndication.com 127.0.0.1 googlesyndication.com 127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com 127.0.0.1 partner.googleadservices.com
For OS X, you will need to use the Terminal.app to run the command lookupd -flushcache to re-flush the DNS cache.
Now, with this setup, I am free from all mighty Google ads. You can do the same to block other ad providers. Combined with the userContent.css, I have regain the nice web browsing experience without the interferences from ads.
I also find out that the Safari plugin SafariBlock can block images and flash ads in a convenient way. Moreover, it can also block specific javascripts although you might have to type the URL pointing to the javascript in SafariBlock’s preferences by yourself. For example, you can block the annoying in-text pop-out type ads from Intellitext by putting a new rule in the SafariBlock preferences to block out the URL ‘http://*.intellitxt.com/*.js’. This will block all javascript from Intellitext without disabling javascript totally.
