Here’s a really cool and useful tip for Mac users that I stumbled upon recently while browsing through Apple’s support forums for the Safari Browser.
The free Camino browser, based on the Mozilla/FireFox browser, includes ad-blocking. Safari doesn’t. It turns out that Camino’s ad-blocking is handled by a .css file. You can actually use that .css file to block ads in Safari (Camino seems to block somewhat more ads than Safari, but still, it’s better than nothing).
Here’s what you do:
- If you don’t already have it, download Camino (it’s a good browser to have anyway).
- Control-click (or right-click) on the Camino application icon in the Finder, and chose « Show Package Contents » in the contextual menu.
- A new window opens that contains a single folder named « Contents ». Open this folder.
- Open the « Resources » folder, locate the file named « ad_blocking.css » and copy it (option-drag, or Command-C/Command-V) to a convenient location (say to your Documents folder).
- Open the Safari Preferences, go to Advanced, and click on the « Style Sheet » pop-up list.
- Choose « Other », select the « ad_blocking.css » file you just copied to your Documents folder, and you’re done.
With your Safari preferences window still open, you can go to an ad-laden site, like the New York Times, and toggle the Style Sheet pop-up between the .css file and « None selected ». You’ll see the ads appear and disappear from the web page accordingly.
Voilà!