Slashdot Mirror


Opera Introduces Native Adblocking, 45% Faster Than Chrome With Adblock Plus (thestack.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A new version of the Opera desktop web browser introduces fully-featured native adblocking which is able to load adblocked pages significantly faster than rivals running the Adblock Plus browser. The new feature includes whitelisting of domains and a benchmarker to test the difference between page load-times with and without ads. Krystian Kolondra, head of Opera desktop, indicates in his post that the company's hope is to encourage the 'simpler' and less intrusive advertising which has been promised, but does not yet seem to be evident.

17 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. What about uBlock Origin? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    How about comparing it to a good adblocker instead?

    1. Re:What about uBlock Origin? by KGIII · · Score: 2

      Oh, I have it installed. I've been using it, off and on, since an early beta. I'm not that fond of it. I just can't really like it, try as I might. It also has a show-stopper bug for me on a couple of different computers and I've described both the problem and given them the solution but they've failed to implement it and seem inclined to not acknowledge it.

      So, no Vivaldi for me yet but I have hope. It works fine on several systems but fails in some VMs and fails on bare metal with two different (fairly modern but not bleeding edge) GPUs. I can start it from the terminal with the switch to disable GPU compositing. It works fine. They've failed to put the damned switch in the settings. I'm less than impressed. I've given up on bringing it to their attention. The same thing happens on those same boxes with Chromium and Opera. I just hit the switch, the problem goes away. I can start them all with the terminal and switch and the problem goes away. Just put the damned button there - it's based on Chromium, they had to physically alter the code to remove it. Put it back.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  2. Re:How about by Tukz · · Score: 2

    3...2...1....

    --
    - Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
  3. Re:How about by danbob999 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    because it has many flaws, here are just a few I can think of:

    -can't list blocked elements
    -can't disable ad-blocking for a single web site
    -can't disable ad-blocking temporarily without restarting browser (or even PC)
    -need admin rights
    -doesn't allow complex patterns (regex), which makes the database huge
    -can't block ads located on the same server (host name) as the main site

  4. Adblock Plus? by c · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ABP is known to be a pig. A comparison with uBlock Origin would be a lot more meaningful. A comparison with a hostsfile would, of course, not reflect well on any ad blocking extension.

    --
    Log in or piss off.
    1. Re:Adblock Plus? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      The piggyness of ABP is mostly gone. The issue was it used a CSS file to block everything and that file had to be reloaded for every single page. Recent versions of Firefox now allow CSS files to be shared across pages so now ABP only has to load it once. I haven't seen any comparison benchmarks on newer Firefox versions. Anyone got any?

  5. who cares by softnewsit · · Score: 2, Interesting

    who cares, it's still opera... and owned by chinese.... Vivaldi is better

    --
    Go away!
  6. Re: How about by Harold+Halloway · · Score: 2

    You can lead a hos to water but you can't make it drink.

  7. Re:How about by I4ko · · Score: 2

    No it isn't and it is insufficient at blocking malicious javascript that is part of the page itself.

    That javascript can manipulate the CSS and load and add, or malware. So hosts file could be just one layer of the security onion, but by far not the only one.
    You still need a deep packet inspection proxy, that manipulates pages (e.g. like privoxy) or you need an inbrowser object dom blocker, like adblock or ublock origin.
    And if I have more than one PC at home, it is much better that I properly bock on my border router than use a hosts file, as hosts files are useless for mobile devices, and you have to apply on each PC, whereas with the firewall you only do it once. Also I redirect all DNS requests to my local resolver on my border router and have local static entries for e number of sites, that point them out to IP addresses in the 239/24 and block those out in my firewall, but have the benefit of using counters and a centralized syslog for dropped packets so I can inspect which machine is sending request.

    Hosts file just don't cut it. Not by a long shot on their own. Anybody advocating hosts file as the ultimate solution, is a ultimate fool if they don't understand that is insufficient, and an ultimate tool if they understand it, yet don't speak about the rest.

  8. What about Vivaldi? by evolutionary · · Score: 4, Informative

    While Vivaldi browser is still in beta (on Linux anyway) I've found it amazingly fast. It can use Chrome plug in and combined with the uMatrix plugin (NoSlash on major steroids) I've found it amazing .Made by the guys who created Opera.

    --
    "Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
    1. Re:What about Vivaldi? by malditaenvidia · · Score: 2

      I've been using it as my main browser for a few months. While I appreciate the effort to bring the old Opera features back, it's still not there, I don't know if they even intend for it to get there or if they'll work it differently. I can't have single private tabs, or list all the links on a webpage and filter them, set custom CSS per site, etc. It's also quite hefty in the memory department, which was one of the main draws of Opera Presto. As it is, Firefox is a better Opera placeholder than Vivaldi, but they're still running through those snapshots and adding features, so we'll see. The new opera is an ugly skin on top of chromium and the company is being bought by some Chinese ad company, so I wouldn't touch it with a 10' pole.

  9. Re:How about by jafiwam · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Host files also cause issues when the domain is pointing to 127.0.0.1 A request is made, but there probably isn't an http daemon waiting on the localhost, which in turn causes wait delays and IP stack issues. For those of us that have a local http, we have to deal with all these pointless requests, which will return 404s.

    Anyone pushing hostfiles to defeat adverts is a twat and doesn't know what they're talking about. Steve Gibson level twattery no less.

    You can change the IP to anything you want. It's text, edit it if you use a local HTTP deamon.

    But if you do that, you are probably also running local BIND, use that to insert authoritative zones to catch new subdomains, and speed up the process with NXDOMAIN

    HOSTS files with tens of thousands of entries (like mine) do not cause any noticeable delay. None. Something is wrong with your operating system if it chokes.

    The Twats are the advertisers. The whiner is you.

  10. Re:How about by kheldan · · Score: 2, Informative

    I have an even better idea, that bypasses the entire problem: Get rid of any Microsoft 'operating system' (using the term loosely here, since it's getting to be more and more like a 'botnet system' or 'advertising delivery system' than anything else) and install some flavor of Linux (or literally anything else you can get your hands on) instead. Then there won't be ads, 'telemetry' (read as: 'spyware') or any of this other bullshit. Don't really care what your difficulties with the alternatives are, either. Deal with it.

    --
    Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
  11. Re:How about by kheldan · · Score: 4, Funny

    Somehow that got posted to the wrong story.. not sure how that happened!

    --
    Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
  12. Re:How about by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 2

    As for "can't disable ad-blocking for a single web site", true but irrelevant - why would you do that?

    I have disabled ad-blocks on a few sites that a.) I wish to remain alive and b.) I've used regularly for years and never had one complaint about their advertising. If you've never felt altruistic in this regard then I can also mention that sometimes ad-blockers get false positives, preventing me from using some features of sites.

    --

    "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  13. Re:How about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Weird... your fervent and zealous supporter, whose style is extremely similar to yours, also posted to the wrong story.

  14. Re:Good to see by Cramer · · Score: 2

    Opera has been a Chrome ripoff for a long time now. Real Opera(tm) is INFINITELY better than anything else... the same set of tabs open in Opera vs. Chrome (and New Opera): 200M vs. 1.2G -- New Opera makes no meaningful improvements.