Thread: Optimizing Adblock Plus lists and filtering ad junk faster

Optimizing Adblock Plus lists and filtering ad junk faster. Adblock Plus is the online ad filter of choice for many users. However, a large number of self-defined filters can put the brakes on the browser, making it increasingly sluggish.

Long self-defined filter lists for the Adblock Plus extension can slow down Firefox considerably because websites are checked against the entire list every time they are loaded. Making an optimized list can lessen the problem to a great extent. First of all, you need to save your filter list. Select 'Tools Adblock Plus' in Firefox, and open 'Filters Export Filters' from the settings dialog box. Then navigate to the desired folder, enter a name for the export file and click on 'Save'. Open Windows Explorer and open the text file with an editor. Select the content using [Ctrl!+[AI and copy it to the clipboard with [CtrIJ+[C) Click on the large input field and paste the list using [Ctrl] + [V].

Now check the options that are set-you can use the presets most of the time. It is important here that the 'Optimize URLs' and 'Remove Filters matched by others'options are active. If you are working with a list already optimized beforehand, you should activate the 'Optimize including pre-existing Reg Exes' option. With that, new and simple filters are integrated into the regular ones already available if possible. Then, click 'Optimize'. The following dialog box will display how the list is compressed. Select the optimized list and copy it into a new blank text file. Save the same. Back in the Adblock settings dialog box, Open 'Filters I Import Filters', navigate to the new text file and click on 'Open'. When it asks about replacing the available filters, click on 'Overwrite', otherwise Firefox will add the new list to the old one. Subsequently confirm it with 'OK'.