I think a lot of people get the opposite feeling. HTTPSB lets you see everything in the matrix and toggle what you want to show. If you want the carefree experience you can use this strategy[0] to unblock everything and only rely on the blocklists to which you subscribe. I currently use this method and I all I really want now is a block list for cookies (and one as good as Ghostery's list).

[0] https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard/wiki/How-to-use-H...

But I don't want to use a strategy, I want to click a button and have adverts blocked.

Then it should not be compared to adblock.

I don't follow this logic. Both do generally the same thing, but with different approaches. This to me would make a comparison of the two different approaches very valid.

That is not what is happening in the post. Only the filtering/element-hiding capabilities of both are being compared.

That is exactly what is happening in the headline, however.

You are calling HTTPSB an alternative for Adblock Plus.

One of the major use cases of Adblock Plus is effectively "Fire and Forget" mode - enable it and then don't worry about it.

You are saying HTTPSB does not support this use case.

As such, I don't see why you can call it an alternative to Adblock Plus.

It is an alternative. to all of like 1000 people worldwide who are willing to figure it out. So basically fire-and-forget mode, or broke.

That's like saying that walking isn't an alternative to driving because there's no wheels. It's different, has a superset of functionality, and a different interface. It isn't a fork of ABP.

It does not have a superset of functionality.

Adblock Plus / Edge has a "Fire and Forget" mode, as I described in my grandparent comment. HTTPSB does not. Hence, HTTPSB's functionality is not a superset of Adblock Plus/Edge's functionality.

Your analogy fails too. I use a manual javascript blocking add-on (noscript) instead of an automatic blacklisting one and its not a deal-breaker. Minor effort required.

Well the article was specifically to challenge the claim that the problem of ABP memory consumption was mostly residing with Firefox.

But in any case, regarding your point, you can set up HTTPSB as an ad blocker and forget about it:

https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard/wiki/HTTP-Switchb...

Advantage over ABP is that it discloses to you what is still not blocked, and you act on this information if you wish so.

I first had problems with it too. You have to disable matrix filtering on all sites.

Is the extension equivalent to a /etc/hosts file at that point?

I don't know /etc/hosts

You can block specific things like iframes on domains.

It's a very simple method that can prevent hostnames from resolving; see http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/

Compared to other adblocking methods it's fast and does not use a lot of memory, but it's limited in what it can block (namely connections to specified hostnames).

You can allow everything by default too with HTTPSB (it still will use blocklists and protect you), so that you won't have to enable stuff for a website to work.

I've been clicking around its user interface for a few minutes now, but I can't figure out how to do this..

Is it adding "whitelist *" somewhere or something similar?

Seems like it was the power-button looking icon found in the upper left part of the extension dropdown menu when on an actual page.

I expected this to be a part of the extension settings / options, but ah well.

The power button is what I call "hard" allow all, i.e. it turns off completely matrix filtering.

The "all" cell (top left corner of the matrix) is a "soft" allow all, i.e. it allows everything except those hostnames and types of request which are not specifically blacklisted.

I think the point is they can port the code back to ABP so it can benefit from it. It's not a competition.

Sorry to be slightly off-topic, but since you mention NoScript and are familiar with that, this (HTTPSB) and ABP, can I ask. Is HTTPSB more of a NoScript alternative or an ABP alternative?

From the little experience I have with HTTPSB, I'd say that it was more of a NoScript alternative. It feels to me like a webbrowser firewall. They seem to have moved into the adblocking field now though. Here's how I see it:

* Adblock (Plus): Blocking ads, No / minimal user action required

* NoScript: Blocking scripts. Lots and lots of user action required.

* Ghostery: Block privacy intrusions. Basically an application-level firewall for the browser. In a normal firewall, you'd block e.g. port 80 from IP x.x.x.x. In an appliction firewall you simply block, for instance, bittorrent traffic. Minimal user interaction required, and where it is required, it's very easy to use.

* HTTPSB: A low-level web browser firewall ("block port 80 from IP x.x.x.x) that now also does (better) adblocking. The adblocking is on par with Adblock (plus): no user action required. The browser "firewall" is basically unusable. Lots of user interaction required, and when it is required, it's basically impossible to understand.

Sounds a lot like we need some volunteers to build a better UI for simple (adblock mode), a 2nd option to do a noscript equivalent, and a 3rd option for wild-west-browser-firewall mode.

I have the impression it's mostly a RequestPolicy replacement; but not using Chrome I haven't actually had a chance to use it.