What is the most effective ad blocking software?

Factual Questions
1

I’ve recently discovered the AdBlock Plus addon for Firefox, and I’m quite pleased with it, but I’m wondering what else is available that might be even better?

My work computer is ancient, and uses an older version of Netscape. Will anything effectively eliminate ads on it? What about Macs?
What about ad blockers for Internet Explorer?

Thanks for any replies…

2

I use Privoxy on my laptop that runs Google Chrome, since there’s no AdBlock for Chrome (not sure if there is now or not…). When I first installed it and was all “WTF, ads?!” I looked around for what others were doing to block ads with Chrome and that’s what they recommended.

It’s a light program and is browser-independent.

3

I use a separate app that edits and updates the Hosts file. It’s called HostsMan.

4

IE7Pro is a must if you’re using Internet Explorer. It has a lot of other great features too, although I had to go back to using an older version when downloading the newest one screwed some things up. Maybe they’ve fixed that in updates, I dunno.

5

Adblock Plus, in conjunction with the Element Hiding Helper addon and a filter subscription to EasyList eliminated 95% of ads for me. Nothing else I’ve ever used has ever come close, and probably never will because EasyList is continually and automatically updated.

For the few that slip through the cracks, a quick CTRL-SHIFT-K on the offending site will pop up the Element Hiding Helper; click on the ad and it’ll disappear. If you learn a bit about Element Hiding Helper, it’ll let you kill ads at the HTML level (like the layer or table cell they appear in), at which point it doesn’t matter who the source of the ad is anymore, you still won’t see it.

6

I’m also using ABP with the Element Hiding Helper just like Reply. For filter lists, I’m subscribed to “ABP Tracking Filter” and “EasyElement + EasyList”. The top filter rules for each of those two subscriptions have tens of thousands of hits, so they’re both working out pretty well.

I’m also heard good things about Flashblock and NoScript. They’re a little different from ABP in that they default to blocking things. Flashblock blocks anything Flash related while NoScript cover Flash as well as Java and Javascript. In order for such things to run, you have to explicitly enable them every time or permanently add a site to a whitelist. Personally, I find it a bit too much of a hassle, but some people absolutely swear by those plugins.