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The Successor To Popunder Ads?
Croaker writes: "So, apparently, boston.com is trying out these new ads called "Shoshkeles" (the marketeer who came up with that name was on crack, no doubt). The result is an incredibly annoying experience of having crap run around the page you are reading, along with sound. And you thought banner ads sucked. The company responsible for the technology, United Virtualities says these are 'browser driven, platform agnostic, sound enabled, free moving forms that marry total creative license to a whole new level of effectiveness.' Effective in annoying, I guess." The site says "the ads only appear when using an Internet Explorer browser," though. Darn.
The best way to kill them is to go into your IE security settings and change Download Signed ActiveX controls, Download Unsigned ActiveX controls, and Run ActiveX controls and Plugins from Enabled to Prompt in the Internet Zone.
Spiritual Remains
I agree, the Wired one is highly annoying. They will hopefully get the point when people start spending less than 2 seconds on their site.
Well, on IE5 for OS X anyway...
If you control-click (or right click if you have a two-button mouse) the menu that pops up as a bunch of Flash options. Click on "Rewind" (there's no "Stop" option) and the ad goes away and doesn't come back.
I know the obvious solution would be to disable Flash, but my daughter likes playing online games that require it, so that's not an option...
and how about
"Finally, they are plug-in, browser and platform agnostic and require no action from the users in order to be viewed. "
but they use SWF...
I think that qualifies as out-right lying - but isn't that what advertising is all about?
RC
Then, if you want ads, you can just turn them on.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
it's a diminutive form of Shoshana, which is the Hebrew name that Susan is derived from. So Shoshkele is approximately the same as Susie.
1px square images can be effectively disabled in Mozilla by adding the following to your userContent.css file:
IMG[height="1"][width="1"], IMG[height="1px"][width="1px"]
{display: none !important;}
This file is in the chrome subdirectory of your person profile. It's a bit of stylesheet that overrides everything else and prevents mozilla from loading any 1x1 image. OK so some pages where webauthors might be using these as spacers might display a bit. Boohoo.
It not only kills this kinda crap, it also protects you from the malicious IE/activeX hole of the week.
Now, since all plugins are installed as an activeX control of sometype (including java and flash), you need to say Yes when prompted for those. You'll quickly learn when to say yes and no from practice. You can't make a mistake since you're basically always saying yes by default. If you say No and some page functionality you WANT to see is lost, reload and answer Yes.
Sure, some banner ads are the internet equivalent of normal TV ads, such as Thinkgeek's banners, for one, and others that just show you something humerous or witty and hope you remember their company in the future. The banner ads that are doing their best to be the most annoying shit on the planet are the internet equivalents of the short informercials trying to get you to buy their stupid compilation CD, or handy-dandy new gadget that is "Only available through this special TV offer! Buy now! Operators are standing by!" If they don't see sales jump immediately, they're going to cancel those TV commercials (or pull their banner ads from an ad network).
;)
Big companies can afford to run ads that just get you interesting in the brand name, or force you to remember their name whether you like it or not. They plan to be around for years, so they can play the waiting game... aww the waiting game sucks, let's play hungry hungry hippos instead! Smaller companies that rely on selling one little invention or gadget or service can't afford to wait weeks or months for business to start rolling in, they need clicks to their sites now, and if they don't get them, they're going to either start pulling their ads, or finding ways to make their ads more intrusive, so you have no choice but to watch them, and probably will be more likely to click on them (if for no other reason than by mistake cause they're covering up the story you want to read
Could this be because Mozilla does not support Flash? Or the JavaScript statements "setTimer" and "setInterval"?
y ing.htm
This type of ad can be implemented without Flash, using only DHTML and transparent GIF's.
I would be careful before declaring complete immunity. It looks like this particular advertiser chose to target only IE users.
For an intelligent and mostly accurate discussion (with examples)of the technology, called "DHTML Flying Ads", go to the DoubleClick site: http://richmedia.doubleclick.net/floating/dhtmlfl
I really like this sentence: "However, because they command so much attention, there is the potential for a negative user reponse -- to help prevent this, campaigns should be run in short flights or with frequency caps."
Judging by the activity level here, they sure got that right.
I have detailed knowledge of the techniques because I am the author of PopUpCop, a shareware add-in for IE 5 and above that can block this type of annoying web site behavior, if the user turns of script timers and Flash autoplay....
Apparently ever /. weenie sees this as a golden opportunity to crawl out from under their rock and scream about IE sucking. Here's a tip for you clueless wankers:
/.ers knocking IE for being Evil without acknowledging its strengths.
Tools | Internet Options
Security Tab. Click Custom Level. Select everything under "ActiveX" to "prompt" (or "disable").
Click Ok. Click Apply.
Enjoy your Shoshkele-less surfing.
Sheeeeesh.
-Kasreyn,
who is tired of
P.S. Since Boston.com were so nice about carefully commenting what their HTML does, I should have my "Kill Shoshkeles" rule for the Proxomitron written in about 20 minutes.
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
A lot of the comments have been based on not understanding this. People post "it works in $browser on $OS."
More fundamentally, this is a persistent problem with Slashdot. Neither the story submitter nor the editor takes the two minutes to dig up and answer the most obvious question or confusion that will arise from the provided links. Therefore instead of an informed discussion we get lots of people blundering around in the dark, powered by misconceptions.