It's simply that the screenreaders chose to intigrate with IE and not with FireFox. With JAWS it's a "virtual cursor," with Window Eyes it's "MSAA mode" taht they've since renamed to something less, you know, faggy. Either way, it organizes information on a page so that you can read all of it in a straight top-to-bottom order. This bitch is somewhat outdated now that the most recent versions support FireFox, but they only support FireFox, and its' only version 1.51, and it only happened last month. So I'm just pretending that it didn't happen because really, going an entire decade without being able to use even Netscape (which oyu stall can't, BTW) is just absurd and stupid. Also, I haven't bothered to pay for the upgrade yet, because I don't give enough of a shit to pay $270 just so that I can switch to a new way of reading the internet even though I'll still have to have IE on my system so that I can visit windows update or housecall or any of the other 400 idiots who still think that Active Ex is a good idea.

Don't like TABS? What's next, you don't like kittens? You're fucking EVIL.

Tabs rule. The best feature of Firefox 1.5 is that you can force pages that open new windows to just open a tab instead.

Regardless - here's a news flash for you - YOU DON'T HAVE TO USE TABS.

Speedwise, 1.5 is indeed faster, and you're batty if you're actually seeing Firefox being noticably slower. I mean, c'mon. Even if it's slower by a couple nanoseconds, it's worth it for all the improvements.

As for hosts. OK, so you find a new ad coming through. You need to go find your hosts file, get a program to open it (since you can't associate it with anything as it has no extension), look at the page source to find the source of the ad, and then put an entry into the hosts file (including a dummy location for it), save the hosts file, then reload the page to see if it blocked it.

Let's compare that to adblock. So you see an ad. Click the tiny adblock button in the corner, it gives you a list of everything blockable, and whether it's a script, image, its node name, etc. Click the offending element, cut it down to what you want to block, and hit OK. It's instantly removed.

Being able to remove URLs helps get rid of crap like "anandtech.com/banners", "nytimes.com/ads", "nytimes.com/adx", "snopes.com/info/ads", "weather.com/common/ads", as well as stuff like "*/RealMedia/ads/*", "*/fuseads/*", and other common folders.

Furthermore, since you have a nice list, you can also block the shit that isn't so obvious but is still screwing around with you. There are lots of click counters and trackers that aren't obvious but are still running on lots of sites. Adblock makes it exceedingly easy to get rid of them.

Furthermore, the pages are usually then collapsed as if the ad never even appeared, and they're usually much easier to read, especially the ones that usually have giant ads in the middle of a block of text. (Common in PC news/review sites, etc.)

It's SO goddamned easy. Futzing with a hosts file is like digging a hole in the backyard to take a crap when there's a toilet sitting inside to just flush the advertisement-laden crap down into. Quicker, easier, BETTER.

Lysander, are you sure there isn't a theme or something that's more agreeable to screenreaders? I'm surprised that you'd be having such problems with Firefox.

FIrefox 1.51's final release has been out for a few weeks, is that any faster? I can't use it. Yeah, that's right, I can use IE perfectly, but the moment you ask these screen reader companies to actually use a browser that doesn't suck they balk like... fuck, like Sony BMG does when you ask them to stop with the spyware DRMs. It's really disgusting how much Microsoft whores these people are.

JQW wrote:Using a hosts file is a stupid way to block ads.

This ought to be good.

You need a program that can block portions of URLs, not entire sites. (Well, that too, but not just that.) Ie, "goodsite.com/fuckingads" gets blocked.

No, I don't and you saying that it ought to be setup that way exposes you as the petulant miser we all secretly know you to be.

My goals are different than yours. Apparently you have to have no advertising even on sites you visit who require ads to pay the bills. So if I were to put some SnivelCo ads here and host them locally under joltcountry.com/ads you'd block that. What a topper. The sites you visit have a right to make money, my contention is that ad companies have shown themselves to be untrustworthy, so I want to block their ENTIRE site. Just ensure that everything from their ad server is not allowed to touch my system.

Here's a good example: Home of the Underdogs has ads, and they contract it out to an ad company. The ad company, IIRC, would throw up content on HotU from their server. Frequently, this meant that there was spyware ads kicking about in the old days. Now, I don't begrudge HotU for having ads, but if they are going to not control where their ads come from then I have to. Especially with Microsoft inexplicably refusing to fix a bug that allows malicious code to be installed on a host PC by simply going to a webpage in IE.

If you still refuse to use Firefox, you're DEAD to me.

I refuse to use it, myself. I have it installed on all my computers as the default browser, so anyone using those PCs but me (which is rare) gets Firefox automatically. But I find it slow and clunky and can't stand tabbed browsing. And yes, I know that IE is only fast because Microsoft is an evil corporation that bundles. I know and I don't care. It is still amazing that the latest exploit for Trojan horses has been there for six months without a patch, though. If ever there were a time to switch, it's now.

C'mon, a hosts file? Get REAL.

It fulfils my requirements perfectly.

Using a hosts file is a stupid way to block ads. You need a program that can block portions of URLs, not entire sites. (Well, that too, but not just that.) Ie, "goodsite.com/fuckingads" gets blocked.

Years ago, it was the Junkbusters proxy. Today, it's Adblock for Firefox. If you still refuse to use Firefox, you're DEAD to me. Adblock is extremely easy and extremely effective.

However, I'm sure that even dead people can find similar add-ons for IE.

C'mon, a hosts file? Get REAL.

This is only tangentially related, but that's okay, since if there's anythign I've learned about RobB it's that he loves the fuckin' tangeants.

A while ago, the RIAA (funny how they keep coming up in my rants of things I hate the most) shut WinMX down. So the Win MX community came up with a patch to get it workign again, and it uses the hosts file. You can get that at http://www.vladd44.com/mx/piepatch.php. A while later some 14-year-old did the same thing, only using a Winsock DLL file instead of a hosts file. (which you can find at http://www.winmxgroup.com.) Except that both patches can't work together, so when the DLL comes on, it asks you to remove your hosts file. Now hundreds of people are marilly deleteing their own hosts iles because this kid likes to be recognized. YOu should check out the forums on vlad, incidentally. They're absolutely hilariously aweful.

A HOSTS file will stop ads from coming up on your computer, because you told your PC that the server in question is local. It isn't, so the ads don't come up.

I use the HOSTS file which is located here: http://everythingisnt.com/hosts

Does anyone know of other good ones? I'm at the age where I don't give a shit if a webpage won't load if I can't get ads from it. I go to the same 7 websites at this point and am too old to care if I'm blocking ads too "well."