Without ads, many good Web sites wouldn’t exist, so I favor having ads and supporting sponsors. But distracting ads can make it difficult to actually read some sites. That’s where comes in.

GlimmerBlocker is an ad blocker that is safe to install because it doesn’t hack Safari. You’ll be able to update Safari without a problem. The utility works via a proxy server (a Web server go-between) to intercept your browser’s calls for some ads.

GlimmerBlocker appears as a System Preferences pane. Its default settings are immediately helpful for average users.

(Image Caption: A hidden feature in GlimmerBlocker lets you define keywords so you can quickly search sites from the address bar.)

While some ad blockers may block too much, GlimmerBlocker chooses not to cripple Web sites. Ideally, GlimmerBlocker would filter only flashy ads, leaving the rest for you to see. However, this would make performance defeatingly slow. Instead, GlimmerBlocker blocks known ad servers, which means nice ads are blocked as well. And if a site serves its own ads, even obnoxious ones will be seen. Google’s text ads are not blocked.