I'm just blown away by Bluhell Firewall!

You know, I love working with regexes, but this sounds like it's getting a little into "man with a hammer" territory...

 

If your browser is suddenly starting faster, it means you're doing something wrong.
A properly configured system leaves no room for optimization.
Mrk

 

I never mentioned anything about optimization! Besides, how can you sit there and make that statement when every running application, the number of running applications, browser configuration (extension(s)) and compatibility among the above cannot/would not have varying affects on performance? Indeed, the worse case examples of performance degradation is software conflicts which can even lead to blue and black screens on systems that have had no previous issues or a history of the user "doing something wrong," other than installing a new program.

 

Exactly my point. All those conflicts come from misuse.
Mrk

 

Wow! What a piece of work you are! So "Joe" decides to try Acme Backup because he is not quite satisfied with the backup program he is using now, or he wants to change his anti-virus, or he wants to change his office suite and he has failed to get your permission, and it causes a problem, he should be considered misusing his PC? Quite full of yourself aren't you? Go tell everyone in the Backup/imaging forum that has trialled AX64 how foolish to misuse their PCs they were. Frankly, if you have nothing but egotistical opinions you need to step back! Sorry mods, but this person's ego is to hard for me to ignore.

 

No ... it goes this way: Do not use software without understanding what it does and how it works. Especially security or network-aware software that interferes with browser functionality. Unfortunately, most people do exactly that, assume the crippled slow mode is the baseline, and when they change a few programs, they are amazed by the speed or something along those lines.

If you use your system in its default configuration - nothing extra - you will discover that there's virtually no room for improvement, and that there's no software that can give any speed. On the contrary, there are tons of badly configured programs that will only take away from some of that baseline.

Not sure why you're feeling so agitated. But if you seek speed, and software impairs that, then it's a misuse, yes.

Mrk

 

Sigh! Look, you know you mis-spoke with your broad generalizations in your original reply and being a "know it all" (or at least acting like one) you continue to try to double talk your way out of it, making more blanket, generalized statements. Great, you have the perfect setup and anyone that doesn't mirror yours, even though they have a completely different system with different needs, is misusing theirs, and of course don't ever, ever try another piece of software! I find it interesting that I received private messages from folks I never, ever communicated with, informing me that there is an ignore feature and to put you on it, so you must do this often!

 

Why call it a firewall? It is just some blocker as far as I understand. I would not install something that is called a firewall when it is not.

 

You hit the nail on the head. They try to create an impression that it's more than an ad blocker, in fact it's only ad blocker and moreover not as good as others.

 

It is not very nice to imply such things, particularly not when you're the owner of a competing brand. There is no reason to doubt Diego's integrity; the 'not too honest marketing trick' is yours, not his.

 

I retained Adblock Edge with no filter subscriptions and Element Hiding Helper, then used both to block ads that were not filtered.

 

Not very nice when gorhill does it but it'd have been OK if this was your repeated "ABE better than ABP" implied posts? Oh the irony.

Just to let u know...HTTP Switchboard is for Chrome while Bluhell Firewall is for Firefox...so not really a "competing brand".

I have had my differences with gorhill on the subject of adblocking but I feel compelled to post this in defense thanks to how lame your argument is.

 

@ratchet, there are two ways to handle new information:
Try to analyze it and apply it to your reality
Feel threatened and go ad hominem

The whole point, which you are obviously missing, is that I'm not advocating ANY software. You can use whatever software, if you understand what it does and what it does not, and how it impacts system performance. The same goes for adblocking software and everything else. You found one that reduces the penalty you imposed on your system. Good for you. Now, remove your other conflicting software and see that Firefox does all that amazing speed and low performance without any extras.

BTW, you mentioned you assumed the slow startups were due to Sandboxie - it shows that you do not 100% understand the architecture of your setup and the implications of each component in it. Therefore, with only limited knowledge, all future steps and changes are guesswork. Therefore, this particular program is no different than any other. You just got lucky.

Not gonna reply to this thread any more.

Mrk

 

I'm doing this too, except that I am using a single filter subscription for Malware Domains.

 

Excerpt:

The bolded part above is pure BS. EasyList does indeed contains "thousands of different items to check", but it does not "iterate [...] each entry". By the same logic, his regexes also contain thousands of items to check (and yet he describes them as only five items). Later in the sentence he asks the user to "figure things out for themselves", i.e. to picture the consequences of his (BS) description of how other blockers work.

Note that the "competing brand" I work on is not available on Firefox, and also I am myself a pretty harsh critic of Adblock Plus (I critic real technical details though, not invented ones.)

Try something, go ask the author: "You say popular AdBlockers iterate through thousands of different items for each URL... Is it really what they are doing?"

 

There is nothing fishy there, as Diego uses parts of the Malware domain list for the BluHell Firewall extension. He also uses the EasyPrivacy list to prevent online tracking, which is great. Even if it blocks 80-90% of ads and not all, it still a powerful and extremely lightweight addon. Very easy on ressources. I've been using it for 2 years now and it works exactly as advertised to be. It's not Adblock Plus but it stikes a healthy balance between blocking ads, privacy and performance.

Pertaining to your concern, Diego wrote in 2013:

''EasyPrivacy is also included in Bluhell, even a few hand-crafted domains known for spreading malware are included too, but i didn't put much emphasis on adding more of these since Firefox comes already with good malware lists by default as distributed by Google. There shouldn't be any conflict on using both extensions at the same time, i'm aware of several users using that combo (plus the Element Hidding Helper add-on)''

Source: https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/bluhell-firewall/reviews/?page=7 (See the response to the comment by Moonycat dated December 20, 2013.)

 

Bluhell misses a TON of stuff.

I don't even find it usable.. Why do people like it so much

 

You have to realize that BluHell Firewall is not intended to block random in-page elements, the ones you see on Facebook, Gmail or Bing Search for exemple. If you want a full-featured adblocker like ABP, than go for it but BlueHell focuses instead on 7 hard-coded blocking rules covering about 8000 .com and .net domain, as well as a list of online trackers, thanks to the EasyList+EasyPrivacy. This is how this extension manage to be extremely lightweight and not severely bloated.

BluHell Firewall is for those for who are looking for a fair compromise between adblocking, privacy and performance first and foremost. It will still block 80-90% the ads (I can vouch for this estimate after 2 years of crawling the web with this addon only) and most importantly, will not bring your browser down to it's knees.

 

Thanks for explaining this!

 

I also like Bluhell Firewall for its lightness and effectiveness.
I moved to Ghostery tough because of the latter config options.

 

this isnt a firewall, filtering by domain/url isnt a firewall.