uMatrix for Firefox

Most ad-blockers have simple, focused settings for disabling ads and banners while you're casually browsing the web. Unfortunately, they fail in many cases and don't allow users to look under the hood for tweaking.

If you're part of the second category, you can take a look at uMatrix, an ad blocker that gives you control over the exact types of browser objects you want to stop working, such as cookies, CSS or XHR code. It's available for Firefox, Chrome and Opera users.

Once the addon is integrated with Firefox (restart isn't necessary), it gets activated right away, monitoring all visited pages and blocking requests made by sites. If you click the browser icon, you can immediately spot the types of objects controlled by uMatrix: cookies, CSS, images, other media, scripts, HR, frames, and others.

Staying true to the name, the extension's layout is represented by a matrix, where the columns are represented by each object type, and the rows contain each affected domain. To allow/block a specific object on a specific domain, you only have to click the matching cell in the matrix.

It's also possible to activate/deactivate uMatrix for all objects on a particular domain by clicking the domain's name, and vice versa. Buttons make it easy to toggle matrix filtering for the current scope, referrer spoofing strict HTTPS, <noscript> tags spoofing, as well as to save and revert all temporary changes for the current scope.

For additional information about the blocked requests, you can head over to the logging area. Besides showing the exact time for each event, it can filter expressions.

Taking into accounts its practicality and ease of use, uMatrix is ideal for any Firefox user interested in effortlessly blocking and filtering browser requests. If you prefer even more control, though, you can try uBlock Origin.