An Internet without any images?

[fiby41]

How many people here have had internet plans with limited costs and unlimited usage? I've found that the ISP usually compensates for this by making the speed painfully slow.

Now I have 1 GB / month for a limited cost plan and if I use up that, the connection shuts down and I get an option to buy another 250 MB+ usage.

I've disabled images for all pages and so far can't say I miss anything.

If a site requires images to work and you need it regularly you can create an exception for it.

Has anyone else tried doing this?

Here's how to block all images in Google Chrome :
Got to chrome://settings/ >>
Show advanced settings >>
Privacy >>
Content settings >>
Images >>
Do not show any images

There is also a button below which the option of creating exceptions for specific pages and websites.

I can however still use BBCode and Smilies to show ya'll images though. :p

In the same vein, you might also want to disable Macromedia Flash Player or Adobe Flash Player which Steve Jobs describes as "an energy sucking hog."

How to disable Macromedia Flash Player or Adobe Flash Player in Google Chrome :

Go to chrome://plugins/ find Adobe Flash Player and Disable it. Make sure if there are multiple versions of Shockwave Flash Player installed, then that all are disabled.

Whenever a website has flash content, that space will now show a message to get a flash player. In most cases, I've realized that I didn't need the flash content anyway or worse those were intrusive advertisements.

I don't regret / miss anything.

[Tyler9000]

Rather than disabling all flash, my favorite Chrome feature is that you can set all plugins as "click to play". That lets you watch content you actually want while completely avoiding all of the auto-play videos and ads out there today.

[C40]

I bookmarked this for later (when I likely won't have unlimited data). Thanks!

[jennypenny]

Rather than disabling all flash, my favorite Chrome feature is that you can set all plugins as "click to play". That lets you watch content you actually want while completely avoiding all of the auto-play videos and ads out there today.

How do you do that? I can't find it in Settings.

[Tyler9000]

@Jennypenny -- Yeah, it's pretty buried.

Settings > Show advanced settings > Content Settings (under Privacy) > Plug-Ins

Set it to Click-to-Play and you'll never have annoying video or audio auto-start again.

[jennypenny]

That's brilliant. Thanks, Tyler.

[Scrubby]

Even if you don't care about bandwidth, using the click to play will increase security. Security problems are being discovered fairly frequently in plugins, especially those from Adobe. Some times all you need to do to get infected is opening a page with an infected flash ad. Also I recommend an ad blocker.

[Kriegsspiel]

I don't mean to be crass, but that would put a major crimp in my esoteric Japanese tentacle porn.

[fiby41]

I don't mean to be crass, but that would put a major crimp in my esoteric Japanese tentacle porn.

I've gone porn free for a year with two relapses so far.

[Kriegsspiel]

Don't tell me you've devolved into reading erotica? Are you aware of the groundbreaking advances in camera angles and resolution?

[fiby41]

No I went completely cold turkey.

[Kriegsspiel]

When you re-enable mpegs you'll be impressed.

[Scrubby]

The above post showed up so yes, lynx can even post to phpbb forums! But if you want to still keep some of the html formatting that modern browsers are able to render, you could set up a local proxy and set up rules so that only .html files are allowed. But that's quite more involved.

Adblock Plus will block anything you like based on URL filters. By default it blocks a whole lot of assets which are only there to track you.

[fiby41]

@Kriegsspiel: You can not tempt me. :p I didn't watch it because I was interested in it in general or in a particular genre, category etc. like you seem to be, which is okay, but because I was bored.

Anyway it is very difficult to find good stuff which is neither overly sanitized nor amateur when you are already disinterested.

Nowadays I try to more or less mitigate boredom before it strikes.

@Scrubby:

I would recommend AdGuard AdBlocker over AdBlock Plus because ABP memory consumption increases sharply with the number of tabs you have open while AGAB stays about the same. Besides that both function identically.

I suggest you test for yourself using Shift+Esc in Chrome.

[Quadalupe]

Thanks for this tip, I'll try it out for some time and see how I'll like it. Additional bonus: procrastination sites like Reddit are boring when there are no cute cat pics to be found!

[Ydobon]

I do this all the time at work, saves you from NSFW forum images, smileys, bloody obvious big banners that show you're reading up on FI instead of useful stuff

[fiby41]

@Quadalupe: You could replace them with predominantly text post subreddits from the side bar of/r/financialindependence.

[leeholsen]

No I went completely cold turkey.

I have almost done this with the internet. routinely go weeknights and the whole weekend without checking it. there's about 130 million books and several live sports games on that are a lot more interesting than the latest you tube video imo and I figure I was able to go without just 20 years ago.

[Kriegsspiel]

I'm pretty much done with this internet too. Let me know when they make another one.

[fiby41]

Another way of saving the oh so precious MBs is to go directly to the mobile versions of websites with the added benefit of mobile having less clutter and baggage.

Example if you want to get started:

Instead of facebook.com go to m.facebook.com

Instead of reddit.com try m.reddit.com

And so on.