A lot of the users of the Mozilla type browsers ward off ads with the help of AdBlock Plus in combination with the Filterset G. Updater to actualize this combination on the fly.
There has been a nice addition to this two-some: Adblock Plus Element Hiding Helper.
You go over the element with the mouse, click and you can block it “on the fly” with AdBlockPlus.
What it actually does you can read here: http://adblockplus.org/development-builds/element-hiding-helper-the-first-try
Nice add-on by Vladimir Palant. I would like to accomplish this trio with a fourth add-on as the so-called “cream on top” of the “anti-ad espresso team” the add-on Nuke Anything Enhanced: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/951/
Truly friends, when I use a browser without these adblocking features it makes my eyes hurt,
so anyways we have another adblocking extension to install.
Yes tweaking the hostfile with hoster or hostess for instance can be a great tool to ward off these annoyances from your browser. Remember that this is advisable for Win98 (SE) or ME mainly, but in XP the hostfile cannot grow out of proportions, because then you will experience problems loading. Furthermore malcreants know about your glorious hosts file and can change the contents with directed malware in such a way that you can no longer contact your av or security sites.
Adopting your hostfile is OK, but do this sensibly and check the contents for changes once in a while.
I am on Windows 2000, which also suffers from that loading problem. There’s a ‘cure’ for it I’ve heard of, but I don’t really want to try it as I know it would prevent some other things from working. The ‘cure’ is disabling the “DNS Client” service.
Bah, I work with a seperate file and just copy it over my system’s one every time I edit it. Then any possible malware won’t harm my work and I will overwrite what the malware does anyway. Not that I’ve ever had a program on my computer that has tampered with my HOSTS file without my permission… Yet…