I have been playing around with using privoxy. Privoxy is an open source web proxy that can be used to filter out a lot of the junk that is in web pages (animated gifs, banners, etc.) and also handle cookie management, block pop-ups etc. It really makes some of the more annoying websites that I visit much more pleasant.
The default configuration is pretty reasonable and will get rid of a lot of internet junk. Customization to your specific needs is pretty simple, especially if you understand regular expression syntax (but it is not mandatory).