How to Block all the Annoying Ads in SlimBrowser

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Introduction to IE11

Before we start talking about ad-blocking, let's talk a little about IE11 since SlimBrowser is based on IE's trident engine. Many of you probably have updated to IE11 either automatically via Windows update or installed it manually out of eagerness to try new things. IE11 is another step forward in terms of performance and standard compatibility from Microsoft. However, don't expect a significant performance improvement on most websites. New technologies won't produce much benefit until the majority of the websites start to adopt them. If you are still using IE10, there is no need to rush to the upgrade.

IE11 does bring compatibility problems to a lot of websites that are not frequently updated because IE11 kills quite a few legacy features supported by earlier versions of Internet Explorer. If you happen to run into problems with some websites due to compatibility issues, most likely you can solve the problem by applying a different rendering mode to that domain. You can do that by opening the problem site first, select the menu "Tools:Compatbility settings" and pick a mode other than IE11 mode. Usually going one step back to IE10 mode should fix the problem in most cases. If you can't solve the problem by playing with different rendering modes, shoot an email to us and we will take a look.

The benefits of Ad blocking

Few people likes watching ads, especially those that are flashing and obtrusive. Big Internet companies are getting more and more aggressive when it comes to mixing ads into their contents. Facebook directly mixes the ads into everyone's news stream and the newly remodeled Yahoo.com followed suit as well by mixing ads directly into the news list. Blocking ads can let you better focus on the real content. But it's more than just about saving eye pain. Blocking ads also save you bandwidth, memory and help SlimBrowser run a lot faster. A web page filled up with aggressive ads can easily hog up all the precious CPU resource on your computer. So, let's block them!

Enable Ad Blocker in SlimBrowser

To enable ad blocker in SlimBrowser, first choose "Tools:Ad Blocker:Ad Blocker Options" to open the Ad Blocker options dialog and select the filter list you want to enable. If you browse English websites only, selecting "EasyList (English Sites)" only is enough. If you also browse websites in other languages, select a list targeted at that particular language as well. Don't select more lists than necessary. Otherwise, it will slow down the surfing speed. After that, turn on the option "Enable Ad Blocker" at the top and click OK to close the dialog. You will be prompted to reload all the existing tabs. Select YES to let them reload and you will see all the ads are gone from the existing tabs. Everything is a lot cleaner than before. Hurray to ad blocking!

What if the Ad Blocker blocks something I want to see?

From time to time, the Ad Blocker might block the real content that you want to see by mistake. Or you simply want to see the ads on a particular website. The simple solution is to disable the ad blocker on this particular domain. You can select "Tools:Ad Blocker:Disable Ad Blocker on Current Domain" to disable it on the current sub-domain only. Or you can select "Tools:Ad Blocker:Disable Ad Blocker on Top Domain" to disable it on all the subdomains from the same top domain. However, in rare cases, it might not fix the problem since the blocked items might come from a completely different domain. If you are really frustrated, you always have the option to disable the ad blocker completely or contact us for help.

Advance users can select "Tools:Ad Blocker:Ad Blocker History" to view the items recently blocked and selectively unblock items from the ad blocker history dialog.

What if the Ad Blocker fails to block a really annoying Ad?

After you have enabled the ad blocker, you might still see one or two ads missed by the ad blocker. First thing you can try is to go to the Ad blocker options dialog and click the button "Update Filters" button to update the filtering rules to the latest version. If that doesn't help, you can pick out the ads and block them manually. To do that, select the menu "Tools:Ad Blocker:Select Ad Components to Block", then use the mouse to hover on the ads that you want to block. If you see the ad you want to block is correctly highlighted in yellow color, click on it and you will see a dialog popping up showing the URL or CSS style of the ad component. Click the button "Block This Ad" to block the selected Ad.

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