The web experience can be an ad-filled mess if the ad blocking program does not work well. With advertising becoming more invasive and ennobling, ad blockers are a growing industry and are becoming an absolute necessity from being convenient for control to users. Add the risk of injecting malware from hacked or corrupted ads, and ban them. Two of the leading brands are Adblock and Adblock Plus right now.
Despite their almost identical names, they are unrelated to the two items, although they do the same thing in a somewhat similar way. I will address these two tools in this post, bringing them to head. I hope you have a clear idea which one would fit better for you at the end. Well, here is Adblock vs Adblock Plus – What’s best?
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Adblockers and their Use
The using of software to block ads is expected all the time, with good reason. So, Ads are becoming more invasive, more annoying and are working harder to get your attention, all of which gets in the way of the content you’re trying to enjoy. Many sites depend on ad revenue to survive, and there is a school of thought that says ad blockers deny them that revenue. In my opinion, it isn’t the ad blockers that prohibit websites their income, and it is the broken ad system itself. If websites hosted their ads or had tighter control over what ads they displayed, there would be no such thing as ad blockers as they wouldn’t be necessary.
Rather than, websites rely on third-party ad services that dynamically serve advertisements from a remote server. Those ads can be annoying, infected, annoying, compromised, annoying and irrelevant to the site itself. Hackers love breaking into them an injecting their malware-infested ads to be served on legitimate sites.
Meanwhile, the ad model remains so self-serving, ad blockers will continue to increase in popularity. Even though, if I didn’t mind pages loading slowly or flashing banners on every page, there is no way I am leaving my computer open to malware through an infected ad server.
Adblock vs Adblock Plus – Features
Adblock has initially been inspired by Adblock Plus and programmed by an individual rather than a collective like its contemporary. This began life as a Chrome extension before being made available to other browsers. Meanwhile, Adblock Plus was the first ‘proper’ ad-blocking extension released. Originally only available Firefox, it quickly gained traction and is now available for all mainstream browsers. This extension is open source and was created by a community of coders who wanted a much cleaner browsing experience.
As well, Both Adblock and Adblock Plus are very similar in look, feel and features. Here, Each plugin offer whitelists, blacklists, counters, tracking control, infected domain warnings and more. Additionally, both allow ‘acceptable ads’ by default, along with blocks for Facebook and YouTube ads. Every blocker is sourced from the same ad filter, EasyList maintained by the people behind Adblock Plus. Therefore, if one extension blocks an ad, both will. In addition, if one finds an ad acceptable, they both will.
The Adblock has one feature advantage over Adblock Plus. So, In Adblock, you can right-click in a web page element to block that element. Suppose a particular ad gets through, you can right-click on it and select block element. Whether the advertiser isn’t paying Adblock to ignore the ad, it will be blocked.
So which is best? Both are neck and neck, but I think Adblock edges it to block a page element. You will now use it more than you might imagine.
Adblock vs Adblock Plus – Usability
To be successful, any software has to be easy to use, intuitive and straightforward to understand. The Adblock and Adblock Plus are all of these. Here, Both extensions are quick to install, the default options are enough to get you started, and you don’t have to do anything else to improve your browsing experience if you don’t want to. Well, Both can be easily turned off by clicking the icon in the browser. So, Both can add exceptions, allow you to build entire whitelists, add websites to a blacklist and customize specific options.
Click the icon in the browser and show you a decent amount of information and quick access to options. The Adblock Plus looks more user friendly and shows you how many ads are blocked on the current page while Adblock does not. However, both are very simple to use.
So, Which is best for usability? Here Again, it’s tight between them, but I think the UI for Adblock Plus is friendlier. Meanwhile, the options are buried a little deeper, and the average user wouldn’t use them anyway.
Adblock vs Adblock Plus – Performance
Now we get down to it. How do Adblock and Adblock Plus perform? Both are r reasonably good at blocking the majority of ads. Now, the results are muddied somewhat by the ‘acceptable ads’ situation. As well, We know some companies pay both extensions to whitelist their ads. Even we know that Google dodges these extensions somehow in Chrome, so some ads still get through. This gets in the way slightly. But, both block the vast majority of ads, popups, text ads, flashing banners, video ads and pop-under ads.
Further, In our tests, Adblock was slower in both Chrome and Firefox. These more tabs you have open, the slower they run and enabling and disabling Adblock while testing multiple accounts shows a slight but noticeable slowdown in browser speed. The Adblock Plus copes better with various tabs and works very well in Firefox. Each Chrome sideloading of ads slips them through occasionally, but I don’t think that is the fault of either extension. So, Performance is right across the board, and we experienced no noticeable slowdowns in our test browser even with 25 tabs open at once.
Accordingly, which is best for Performance? Adblock Plus. Suppose you’re continually using multiple tabs, you will need something that can handle the increased workload.
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Adblock vs Adblock Plus – Final Words:
Well, Any head to head battle like this Adblock vs Adblock Plus one is mainly subjective, and this one certainly is. So, Both extensions work well. Both work very similarly, and both use the same lists to block or allow ads, so there is little to choose between them.
It is then annoying to have to opt-out of ‘acceptable ads’ both extensions, make it simple, and make any changes. Accordingly, which should you choose? This is up to you, but if like me, you use multiple tabs and care about speed, Adblock Plus has the edge.
