This post marks the start of a new series on my blog "Wired Weekends" in which I will discuss computing, technology, and other interesting tid-bits I pick up in the field of electronics
Greetings, fellow fans of dilatory discourse. For the maiden voyage of “Wired Weekend” I want to concentrate on browsing the internet (You know that thing Al Gore invented-Video).
If you are reading this, chances are you are doing it through either Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox. (perhaps a few of you are even using Google Chrome or Opera or even Safari as well). While I don’t want to leave any of you out, I am a Firefox user; therefore, I will be concentrating on it today.
Mozilla Firefox, in my opinion, is a great browser; it allows you to add custom plug-ins to both enhance and protect your browsing experience. Since my current daily series is on porn, I wanted to focus on a few plug-ins that can help you avoid unwanted images and videos on your screen.
“AdBlock Plus” is a great plug-in to help you avoid unwanted images; not only does it allow you to automatically block advertisements on websites, it also allows you to block all images of a domain or sub-domain. (Screenshot) Let’s get practical:
During my research, one of the websites I frequented was “Adult Video News: Industry Business”. (caution-explicit) Before I went, however, I opened up my handy-dandy AdBlock Plus filter and added the following “http://www.avn.com-Block All Images”. That way, no dirty pictures showed up on my screen. Yay!
Another handy tool to have is one called NoScript. NoScript allows you to control what scripts are allowed to run when you visit a webpage. (Screenshot) Let’s take the pragmatic path:
Using the aforementioned example, if I visit the AVN website without NoScript, a video will begin playing because the website used a “script” to tell your browser to play the video; however, if I do have NoScript, I have to give the website permission to start the video before it plays.
The final plug-in that I want to mention today is ProCon. ProCon (sometimes called ProCon Latee) is a filter that can block or filter out explicit content. It has several filters, including a profanity filter. It also allows you to put in a personalized message for the content filter. You can check it out, it is a pretty good tool.
I hope these tools help you delete some of the frustration out of your browsing experience. Please note that the aforementioned tools also block out more than just porn, including annoying-ads, spyware, script viruses and more. Imagine browsing MySpace or Facebook with no ads.
Well, that wraps up this edition of “Wired Weekend”, Monday and Tuesday I will wrap my series on pornography. See you then.
