Re: El Reg - slightly OTT

Chris Croughton wrote: 

Do you actually mean Flash, the client-side thing worse than Javascript
which I won't install on any machine unless it's a 'throwaway' which
I'll be reformatting soon?  If so, the answer is simple, de-install
Flash (which may mean re-installing your system, but that's one of the
reasons I don't like it).

Yes. A significant number of ad images are, if you analyze the HTML, a link to a site that's serving flash images. I think all the animated ads work that way. A number use Javascript as well, but that seems to be just another way of somewhat disguising the ad site links or launching the animations.

I share your opinion of the way that Flash is (ab)used by many sites, but there are some that use it well and creatively. A number of the satellite image sites, for instance use it to implement reasonably portable zoom and pan. Other do the same with topo or road maps.

If you mean "flashing", I have another simple solution.  I never see any
of that jusk, I read it using links(1) (it can be read with lynx(1) but
the format is messier).

Sure. I'm too lazy the swap browsers during my morning news round. It started to niggle when (1) these things first bypassed the Opera graphics suppression by not using <IMG> tags and (b) Opera 7 still seemed to be slowed down by the images it wasn't displaying. At this point the 127.0.0.1 hosts trick was explained. It kills off ALL ad sites and does it blindingly fast.

UPDATE ON THE PROBLEM. I now think I'm seeing a problem in Opera 8.51 rather than the advertisers having gotten more clever. the hosts trick works at full speed with Mozilla and I've noticed a couple of problems with 8.51: (a) it periodically stops scrolling on the cursor keys and (b) if its reloaded when it starts to hang things are improved.

As I said, I'm lazy: this laptop gets booted every few weeks and gets quiesced overnight. As a result it stays logged on with Opera running for days on end. I think Opera 8.51 may have garbage collection issues.

--
martin@   | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. |
org       | Zappa fan & glider pilot
.

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