How To Block Youtube Ads With Adblock Adblock's Blogadblock's Blog

Adblock Plus and (a little) more

Adblock for Internet Explorer is not an option · 2007-08-29 15:59 by Wladimir Palant

I already answered that question several times but recently a few people asked me again to create an Adblock Plus version for Internet Explorer. So I thought it would be worth answering in detail in my blog. Fact is, this is extremely unlikely to happen, for various reasons.

Internet Explorer is very different from Firefox. Firefox is extensible, this is one of its very basic features. You can write extensions in XUL and JavaScript, this does not only allow extensions to be built fast but also makes sure that you can change virtually anything the browser does. Internet Explorer on the other hand requires binary plugins meaning that you have to use a compiled language like C++, this already increases the development effort by factor 10 at the very least (that's the main reason why there are only few really free Internet Explorer extensions). Furthermore, these extensions can only communicate with the browser through predefined interfaces. "New toolbar? Great! Context menu item? Should be doable. Checking everything the browser loads before the browser loads it? Why would you want that? Go build a local proxy server."

This means that the effort of developing Adblock Plus for Internet Explorer would be very high, as well as nothing can be reused from the existing Adblock Plus for Firefox. Even after working full-time on it for a few months you would only get a rather poor copy — you just cannot have the same user-interface integration in Internet Explorer. And, personally, I don't see any gain from supporting such an outdated browser. I switched to Mozilla four years ago and never looked back. Here in Germany Internet Explorer is steadily moving into a position of a minority browser — with a good reason.

Of course there are ad blocking solutions for Internet Explorer. But most don't have a real user interface, you can only use predefined lists and cannot add your own filters (or it is complicated). Some people tried to create Adblock Plus clones — with large effort and less convincing results. But I am not going to waste my time on that.

Tags: adblock plus

Commenting is closed for this article.

Cookie preferences

We use some cookies to give you the best experience on our website. By using our site you are aware that we are using cookies and you can change this any time. Learn more