In another thread (meant for those without a great deal of technical knowledge) I mentioned how to completely stop ads using BFilter before they load in Chrome. It's very simple to set up and use, and it works as well as Adblock Plus in Firefox. The post is here.

I just realised there's an unexpected plus for Iron users (or those playing around with it as I am at the moment). Iron's error messages are somewhat messy; just a couple of dots and a [+] widget, which when clicked displays a basic message. Using BFilter fixes that, as BFilter sends its own comprehensive error message to the browser. Nice.

instead of running an outdated Iron, have you considered running the current Chrome in Portable mode with incognito

I have the latest Chrome Beta too, and am playing around to see what's what. Incognito isn't what I want, content blocking before it loads is what I want, and now have regardless of the browser.

As I said in the other thread mentioned, with BFilter an Adblock Plus extension isn't even needed. BFilter doesn't need huge site blocking lists but works superbly, and adding your own blocking rules is very easy. I'm sure that's why it's so fast too. I know Adblock Plus (in Firefox) doesn't have terribly massive lists, but Hostsman for example, slowed my machine down badly.

BFilter to stop ads even loading, and also remove annoying slow-downs from page connections to stat sites, etc., is superb. Lex1's Adblock+ content hider then does a great job of just tidying up things you don't want to see, rather than hiding a whole bunch of rubbish after it's loaded up and lagged your browser.

Oh, the thing with Iron is just an added advantage. (Though why SRWare left Iron with a nasty error page in the first place I can't think).

Originally Posted by sulasno

instead of running an outdated Iron, have you considered running the current Chrome in Portable mode with incognito

I thought it might be worth a quick update on this.

I changed to Iron not long ago because Chrome Beta wouldn't load .crx extensions. I use a cut-down Adsweep script to hide some content on favourite sites, so the filters are easily accessible. I also like and use the Smooth Scroll extension, so I then changed to Chrome Dev. All seemed to work well, but I really dislike the idiot prompts I can't remove from new tab pages. Also, I started seeing errors here and there. For example, my online banking log-in form has a few numeric drop-down list boxes; in Dev they stopped working properly. So I've just ditched Chrome and gone back to Iron, which does everything as it should. Which brings me to the point about 'outdated software'.

Iron isn't 'outdated', it's barely a couple of months old. I'd suggest the best definition of outdated is "software which can no longer perform previously useful functions due to changes in the OS or other essential connected tools". For example, a drive defragmenter which can't be used because the sector format was changed in the new OS release. Or a browser extension which fails because the underlying browser code changed in a new release. New changes to the test/development version of a browser doesn't make all previous versions 'outdated'. Anyone who's automatically using each new unstable release is choosing to be a development tester (some say "guinea pig"), rather than a regular user.

SRWare's Iron was last updated on 9th August, yet I've seen posts saying it's old, hasn't been updated in ages, etc. It's pretty obvious to me that the rush-rush way of doing things just creates further problems, mainly due to what people call 'cutting edge', or worse, 'bleeding edge' releases not being thoroughly tested yet, and therefore bound to contain bugs. On top of that, design changes will undoubtedly make much of the hard work people are putting into extensions largely a waste of time, as some will fail to function in future versions, and a few may require a complete re-write. Those design changes may also be just plain annoying, as I and others have mentioned in another thread.

Playing around and having fun is great if you have time to spare and enjoy it (I certainly do), but if the main reason for having a cleanly designed and fast browser is to do the job it was meant for, then stability is required along with functionality. I guess it's a trade-off; how much play, and how much does it have to do its job correctly?

Personally, I think Google may have been better keeping public releases of their own version of Chromium to Beta versions at most. It may even be damaging Chrome's image around the web, as anyone who reads up on it knows that Beta does more than Stable, but doesn't run extensions, so you need Dev., but Dev regularly has problems, etc. For most users - and that runs into millions - one browser is quite enough to be messing with. Rather than every version of Chrome more than a day old being seen as 'outdated', it needs to be the opposite way around; stable and reliable versions need to be widely used, and the new version well tested before public release.

Bit of a long blah, but I have some time to spare, and don't want to play with my browser today!