[Jeff Vader]

There's quite a few guys around here that would kick your ass for using an ad blocker.  You realize HLP is funded by ads right?  I don't think the ad blockers are selective about letting the good ads through and just blocking the bad ones, but I might be one.

Basically popups and the flash monsters that jump around the screen flashing and yelling are the reason why I use ABP. I mean, if a site resorts to ads that are nothing but annoying, I find it appropriate to punish them by blocking their ads. But, if a site does things tacktfully like HLP by having the ads on fixed locations and basically as mere background elements, I'm cool with them.

As a side note, I also use ABP for script control.

[colecampbell666]

I will try most of those. I do notice a speed increase when loading pages in Firefox and also it seems that I can download files faster, or maybe that was just the website I downloaded a file from being very fast since I know it depends on their end too. However, that was the first time I have ever seen my download transfer rate go all the way up to 396KB/sec. It usually goes no higher than around 320KB/sec. Does Firefox have any real drawbacks? It doesn't seem to really.

Edit: It was easy to find addons just by using the Firefox search add-on dialog box. I installed all except the chat one.

Use also AutoPager for auto-loading web-page page breaks, and

[MP-Ryan]

Stealther disables cookies and history for pages while active.  Useful for browsing sites that drop cookies all over your system without having to configure rules or constantly go clean them up.  I use it when browsing pretty much anything other than my trusted sites.  But it's easy to turn off in case some web developer broke the rules and made basic browsing of their page require cookies.

I also have FireBug, IE Tab, and FireFTP installed, but I don't consider those essential for your average user.

As for AdBlock... given that Flash has been compromised for malware insertion multiple times, and that most sites do not play fair with ads, it is becoming a necessary tool.  It's unfortunate that sites like HLP get caught in the crossfire, but HLP is in a tiny, tiny minority of communities on the web that use relatively unobtrusive ads.  I also spend less than 2 hours a week here, versus time spent browsing other pages rife with ads.  If I remember, I shut it off if I'm on HLP for a prolonged period of time, but that's rare.

[colecampbell666]

You can disable it permanently on a page, click on the arrow.

[High Max]

.

[chief1983]

And that's exactly why I mentioned FlashBlock, it blocks the flash ads without worrying about the stuff that probably isn't going to get in your way.  It's not a hassle on youtube or anything either, you just click on the flash stuff you do want to see and it loads it.

[ssmit132]

You can disable it permanently on a page, click on the arrow.

Which I just did for HLP.

[High Max]

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