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Flashblock is my middleground. The advertisers can have images, but the worst offenders are the Flash ads, and they get blocked.

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Flashblock is not needed on Chrome - go to settings/advanced/content settings/plugins and select "click to play". Now flash will not run automatically. But you can decide to click on something and allow it to play if you want. Works great - no plugin needed.

Same in Firefox.

https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2012/10/11/click-to-play-p...

Though I just never bothered installing Flash. If I need Flash for a site, I use Chrome (which comes with Flash embedded, I believe).

Firefox differs from Chrome in that it will enable Flash for a whole page, rather than per-element. This means you still need an extension for blocking Flash ads on Flash video sites.

And that extension doesn't work if javascript isn't enabled for that page :(

Firefox's model is better, I think. Plenty of sites use hidden flash videos for various utility functionality. How are you supposed to click on these hidden videos so that you can enable them?

You can get the equivalent in Chrome by clicking the puzzle piece in the location bar and selecting "Run all plug-ins this time".

fixes facebook's attempts to autoplay videos too

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