The Opera browser for PCs now comes with a new feature. With version 37, it has a built-in ad blocker which allows you to get rid of ads on any web sites you visit! This can attract many more users to this Norwegian browser.
Opera is known for switching the rendering backend from their own Presto engine to a Chromium-based engine. They also dumped all the features from their old code base and made a fresh start. With this big change, Opera lost all its power user features and became an ordinary browser like Microsoft Edge or Apple Safari, without anything special. Today, new impressive features arrive seldom in Opera. However, this change is very nice and an unexpected pleasant surprise for all Opera users.
The built-in ad blocker in not a new idea for web browsers. Many desktop and mobile browsers already have ad-blocking capabilities with the help of extensions or have a native ability. Maxthon has AdBlockPlus integrated for example. The popular Russian browser, Yandex for desktop also has a built-in ad blocker. There are also Adblock and Ghostery browsers available for Android, created by developers of these popular ad blocking extensions for mainstream browsers.
In Opera, the ad blocking feature has arrived finally with version 37, which is under development as of this writing. Once you install it and open any site with ads, the browser will prompt you to block them. This is how it looks:
A special icon in the address bar indicates that ads are being blocked. The user can click it and see the page loading statistics. The browser reports the speed benefits of loading the web page with ads disabled.
The ad blocker can be enabled or disabled via the browser's settings. This option is located under "Privacy" as shown below:
There, the user can specify exceptions by adding sites to the list. Some sites are already added to the exceptions list by default.
This is a good move from Opera to allow the average user to enjoy the ad-free web. The user does not need to do anything or install anything extra apart from installing Opera to block advertisements. This definitely makes it easier for novice users.
The situation is not beneficial for web site owners however. Most websites today cover their expenses by showing ads. To write quality content is not an easy task and users are not willing to pay subscription fees for reading content. So the only other option is show ads next to the content. Winaero is no exception to this. Ad revenue allows me to cover all hosting and management related expenses and the revenue is still barely enough to keep the site going. If browsers with built-in ad blockers become mainstream, I will be forced to shut down Winaero. Or I will have to make my apps paid which I have always avoided so far. However, the world is changing.
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Interesting. Cheers. I’ve been using Opera as my main browser for a couple of years now, along with AdBlock.
(Current Opera version 35.0. The Beta version is 36.0.)
I would recommend charging for apps, if this is your living.
Quite honestly, I’m one of those people who likes to use Ad Blockers for a smoother browsing experience.
Many people say they will happily switch to Edge, as soon as plugin support for AdBlock is there.
Another way to improve ads might be for the advertiser to contact the site, and then the site design the ad to better fit in with page design and function. I might be way off though. I don’t even know what the advertising rules are. If an ad blends in with a site too nicely, would it not then be considered subliminal or something?
Anyway, I will automatically update to Opera 37 when it’s ready. Thanks.
Just following up to say that this ad blocking is in the Opera developer edition which we can get here: http://www.opera.com/developer
(We needn’t wait for a future release to try it.)