IE to Suck Less
- Thread starter Mercutio
- Start date
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
Why must M$ wait literally years after everyone else to do this? I tend to think popup blocking should be an integral part of any browser unless you're somehow getting paid off by the advertisers. They should also include something like AdShield. It's been so long since I've seen a popup(or Flash) I've almost forgotton how annoying they can be. I wonder if M$ plans to allow Flash to be disabled at will as well? That's another extremely annoying thing, especially for a 56K user. Anyway, this is good news, especially combined with the fact that they're turning off messenger by default in XP. The fewer conduits you give to advertisers, the better. Maybe if we're really lucky web advertising will fade off into the dust bin of history.
BTW, I think that's the most links I've seen in two sentences, ever. :aok:
BTW, I think that's the most links I've seen in two sentences, ever. :aok:
Fushigi
Storage Is My Life
... along with many of the web sites that advertising supports. I agree popups are evil and don't add value, but well-placed, targeted ads within a page are acceptable to me as a compromise since it keeps the content free. Out of curiosity, what do you expect will take the place of the ads to provide revenue for the sites?jtr1962 said:
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
Fushigi said:
Honestly, I haven't a clue but it's been an observation of mine that most of the better sites(at least to me) tend to be ad free. I don't mean that they're better because they don't have ads, but rather that the content is more relevant to my needs. This includes manufacturer's sites with data, academic sites with research papers, etc. Many of these sites were here preadvertising and will be here long after the last ad server is put to rest. Most of the ad supported sites, especially ones which are heavy with ads, tend to cater to the AOL crowd. As a rule they tend to be dumbed down and with more flash than substance. As far as I'm concerned, if the majority of these sites died, so much the better. Of course, you'll lose a few worthy sites as well, but I for one would be happy to get rid of the LCN(lowest common denominator) on the Internet. I heard spamming didn't really take off until you had large numbers of relatively uneducated users online. This makes perfect sense to me-the spammers would have absolutely nobody responding to their ads if the Internet were frequented solely by people similar to those at SR and SF so they wouldn't bother spamming. Of course, once the AOL crowd came they fell for nearly every scam in the book.
Anyway, that's pretty much my feelings on this. Unsolicited ads in general, whether online, via phone, on TV, or in print are geared mostly with morons in mind. That's not to say I don't find some types of advertising useful, but those consist entirely of printed ads and catalogs relevant to my areas of interest. In any case, it's immaterial as I don't see ads any more thanks to AdShield and Proxomitron. Somehow I don't think it's fair that I should take 3 times as long to load a page when I'm on 56K and won't buy the products advertised anyway. Unless I'm on eBay or an online store of my choosing, I'm just plain not interested in buying things when I surf the web.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
It's the PBS/NPR model for web sites (i.e. "User Supported")!
This makes a great deal of sense to me as well. Some jerk advertiser - not naming any names (x10) can shotgun ads all over the web for its problems, maybe decide those ads aren't working, or maybe decide they need more attention ON their ads, and switch to an extra-annoying new scheme (the x10 popups were distributed on a banner ad network. Dunno if you all knew that).
As more people block ads and banners - as I continue to do for the major ad networks, just because I hate that my browser is a giant frickin' billboard otherwise - advertisers are going to demand increasingly obnoxious new ways to make people Punch the Monkey. We'll see things like Interstitial Ads - ads in the middle of mulitpage stories. We'll see Java or Flash based ads that demand interaction to view the content of the page (e.g. Experts Exchange, which, when viewed in IE, has a graphic that "falls" to the middle of the screen, obscuring the text behind it).
The saving grace to this is that anyone with any sense of decency will make their content available for the blind (and hopefully low-bandwidth users on modems and cell networks). If it gets to the point where every site is flash and all the ads are 200kb java apps, there will STILL be plain text SOMEWHERE for the screen reader programs blind folks use.
Anyway, back to the user-supported thing...
When I view a monkey-punching banner ad, I'm not REALLY supporting the site I saw it on. I'm supporting the ad network that served up the monkey-punching banner. The Monkey Puncher has his ad all over the place, and doesn't give a rat's ass about the site I saw the ad on. The ad network doesn't give a rat's ass either. If my site up and died, it'd be one less creditor that ad network would owe at the end of the month.
So who cares about my site? Only me, the person who visits it regularly enough to know that sometimes there's a Punch-the-Monkey banner.
As a little sidebar, I don't believe for a moment that I should have to pay to be advertised to. I hate going to the movies now because I see ads before the trailers. I never got cable TV because I didn't want to pay $50 a month to see 20 minutes of commercials in every hour.
This makes a great deal of sense to me as well. Some jerk advertiser - not naming any names (x10) can shotgun ads all over the web for its problems, maybe decide those ads aren't working, or maybe decide they need more attention ON their ads, and switch to an extra-annoying new scheme (the x10 popups were distributed on a banner ad network. Dunno if you all knew that).
As more people block ads and banners - as I continue to do for the major ad networks, just because I hate that my browser is a giant frickin' billboard otherwise - advertisers are going to demand increasingly obnoxious new ways to make people Punch the Monkey. We'll see things like Interstitial Ads - ads in the middle of mulitpage stories. We'll see Java or Flash based ads that demand interaction to view the content of the page (e.g. Experts Exchange, which, when viewed in IE, has a graphic that "falls" to the middle of the screen, obscuring the text behind it).
The saving grace to this is that anyone with any sense of decency will make their content available for the blind (and hopefully low-bandwidth users on modems and cell networks). If it gets to the point where every site is flash and all the ads are 200kb java apps, there will STILL be plain text SOMEWHERE for the screen reader programs blind folks use.
Anyway, back to the user-supported thing...
When I view a monkey-punching banner ad, I'm not REALLY supporting the site I saw it on. I'm supporting the ad network that served up the monkey-punching banner. The Monkey Puncher has his ad all over the place, and doesn't give a rat's ass about the site I saw the ad on. The ad network doesn't give a rat's ass either. If my site up and died, it'd be one less creditor that ad network would owe at the end of the month.
So who cares about my site? Only me, the person who visits it regularly enough to know that sometimes there's a Punch-the-Monkey banner.
As a little sidebar, I don't believe for a moment that I should have to pay to be advertised to. I hate going to the movies now because I see ads before the trailers. I never got cable TV because I didn't want to pay $50 a month to see 20 minutes of commercials in every hour.
Fushigi
Storage Is My Life
Or the pr0n model...Mercutio said:
For the non-adult site, how much free content will be provided to entice users to pay? How to convince people you're worth paying for? What percentage of sites that try this model fail?
In all of my years on the net I've never joined a pay-for-play site. I donated to SR a couple of times and pitched in for Doug's gift here, but otherwise I've relied on free content. It's not that I'm too cheap (well, partially) but that I've never felt either obligated or that content/my interest was sufficient to justify my $. Not to mention reluctance to provide billing data to companies I don't know I can trust.
Yahoo Groups message forums already do this. Not every time but every once in a while.
Already see this here & there as well. Generally leads to an Alt-F4 or Control-W on my part.
Given how little attention is paid to making sites accessible for the impaired, I doubt that'll be a concern for most sites in the future. However, the growing popularity of web surfing from phones & handhelds with small screens & limited bandwidth may restrain some sites from making their pages too large.
I used to make sure my home page was always under 30K (text + graphics) to ensure quick loading from any type of connection. I hit some sites currently where the home page is 200+K. Disgusting. Lazy.
Well, it's actually the still ads (slide show) before the advertised start time. Then, at the time the movie is advertised to start, the moving picture ads (commercials) before the trailers. Then the trailers, which are really just MORE ads, then the movie itself, which will nowadays frequently feature blatant advertisements & product placements. As far as I'm concerned, movies always start 12-15 late because of the ads. So I no longer concern myself with getting to the theater on time.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
I pay for salon.com. $30 for a year. To me that's about right.
Pradeep
Storage? I am Storage!
Ever since I got my ReplayTV, I've been saving 20 mins per 60 mins of recorded TV. Either the RTV auto skips the commercials or I hit the 30 sec skip button a few times. It's painful having to watch live TV.