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Tired of blinking, flashing come-ons cluttering your screen? Even if you've developed the ability to ignore banner ads, they still waste screen real estate and slow browsing speed. Guess what: You can avoid downloading them if you want to. Many people argue that Web ads are a blessing, providing an income source to sites and services you'd have to pay for otherwise. True, but nobody says you have to watch them, any more than you're obliged to watch television commercials. Why else were the remote control and the refrigerator invented? So let other users support the advertisers. Here's how to enjoy an almost ad-free environment.

Bust the Banners

Filtering out Web ads isn't as easy as switching channels on the television, but you can do it. At least a dozen utilities--some free--banish banner ads from your browser (see "Banner-Busting Applications"). And such products aren't just hackerware--even big-time software vendors sell them. Symantec recently licensed WRQ's AtGuard ad blocker and incorporated it into its Internet Security 2000 package. And Siemens, Europe's gray eminence of Net security, promotes its WebWasher to companies that want to reduce their network bandwidth consumption.

Most of these applications are special-purpose proxy servers. Strategically situated between your browser or other Internet software and your connection to the Internet, they examine the link addresses that your browser requests when it loads a Web page, comparing them to a frequently updated list of known ad server addresses. When the proxy server finds a match, it discards the browser's request to retrieve the ad. This may alter the Web page layout slightly in some cases, but the benefits--fast loading and fewer irritating product pitches--usually outweigh this minor inconvenience. And because many banner ads use cookies to track your surfing habits, banishing the banner ads reinforces your online anonymity as well.

If ad-blocking software sounds like overkill for your needs, or if you just want to disable ads temporarily to speed page downloads, an easier alternative is to turn off all graphics. All you'll see is a page's text (and background color, if any), which could be a problem at sites that rely on image maps and buttons for navigation. To turn off graphics in Internet Explorer 5, choose Tools, Internet Options, click the Advanced tab, scroll to the "Show pictures" setting, uncheck it, and then click OK. To allow ads to download but prevent them from animating, uncheck "Play animations" instead. In Netscape Navigator, choose Edit, Preferences, select Advanced, and uncheck "Automatically load images."