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Google Tests Ads That Load Faster and Use Less Power (bbc.co.uk)
Slashdot reader Big Hairy Ian quotes a report from the BBC: Google says it has found a way to make ads load faster on web pages viewed on smartphones and tablets. The company said the ads would also be less taxing on the handsets' processors, meaning their batteries should last longer. The technique is based on work it has already done to make news publishers' articles load more quickly. But it is still in development, and one expert said Google still had questions to answer. The California-based company's online advertising revenue totalled $67.4 billion last year...
The technique limits the scope of JavaScript, and "provides its own activity measurement tools, which are said to be much more efficient," according to article. A Google software engineer explains that this technique "only animates things that are visible on the screen," and throttles animation to fewer frames per second for weaker devices -- or disables the animations altogether. "This ensures that every device gets the best experience it can deliver and makes sure that ads cannot have a negative impact on important aspects of the user experience such as scrolling."
The technique limits the scope of JavaScript, and "provides its own activity measurement tools, which are said to be much more efficient," according to article. A Google software engineer explains that this technique "only animates things that are visible on the screen," and throttles animation to fewer frames per second for weaker devices -- or disables the animations altogether. "This ensures that every device gets the best experience it can deliver and makes sure that ads cannot have a negative impact on important aspects of the user experience such as scrolling."
apk is clearly wrong on this.
We want to track you for longer, which we can't do because ads drain your battery. Don't worry, we have our customer's best interests in mind. *wink*
Love, Google
"Anything you say can and will be used against you in a targeted advertisement" - Adam Harvey
with uBlock origin
Too bad I keep JS disabled at all times on mobile for "Best experience"
If computers were people, I'd be a misanthrope.
Back in the day, Google played an important role in showing that relevant ads were better than animated interruptions, punch the monkey banners, sounds coming out of www pages unexpectedly, etc. Now they're optimising performance of the same crap they were making obsolete.
It's sad but the www was ruined by ads, like email was before it, like TV, radio and printed media.
A Google software engineer explains that this technique "only animates things that are visible on the screen," and throttles animation to fewer frames per second for weaker devices -- or disables the animations altogether.
Here's an idea - how about disabling animation by default, and regardless of device? Annoying animated ads are what drove me to completely block them in the first place.
#DeleteChrome
That sounds like a textbook definition of requestAnimationFrame (like setTimeout/setInterval but doesn't run when not visible).
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/window/requestAnimationFrame
That would make batteries last much longer.
Yeah like it isn't obvious and therefore needs more exposure...
The only difference will be that without Hillary in office they will no longer be untouchable.
Something has seriously gone off the rails when an ad/image designer either a) cares directly, and/or b) has insight into device power management and usage.
You're doing it wrong.
How about devices, firmware writers, OS writers, library writers, and application writers (browsers in this case) focus on the power management and we keep remote content creators out of the loop. If you need end-to-end awareness of things like this, it's a sign that your different layers are unable to make sane design choices or write sane platform specifications internally. It's also a sign that you don't care about leaking data far and wide to things that should have no need for that info. (cf. Uber and pricing changes when your battery is low.)
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Ads in videos, whether pre-roll or interstitial, make a lot of free content possible. But why do so many of the ads stutter and freeze, requiring restart of the vid from the beginning?
hmmmm... let's expand on that and get rid of the scripting and tracking completely. then the ads will load even faster.... but then, might as well get rid of the damn things completely. there. problem solved. pages load faster, lightning fast at this point. mobile devices last longer on battery. and finally, since it's really all about the page load times and battery life (ya right), lets eliminate all unnecessary scripting, especially scripting that is used for navigation or to display the fucking page content itself. it is entirely possible to build a "responsive" "mobile first" page without any scripting. really, it is. javascript is a crutch for the weak and unskilled (designer)
My battery lasts fine, it's bandwidth that bothers me, reduce that instead.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Oh boy, faster ads, just what I've ALWAYS wanted!!
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
...only it was in the form of text only ads? I wish ad companies would do text only with a "Click here to learn more about Brand X", but this probaly won't attract the dullards who need shiny, sometimes flashing/seizure inducing ads to get the 2 brain cells they have to rub together. :| (another reason ads on tv are typicaly 30 seconds long when you think they should not have to be longer than 5, maybe 10 seconds long to convey the same message.)
I do admit, this new thing sounds pretty impressive from a tech/programming standpoint
Will you entertain the idea that ad networks are potential vectors for malware?
How about forbidding Javascript ads over 10K, instead of the not so uncommon 2MB javascript ads presently out there in the wild.
tossers...
I have a LIMITED dataplan... they waste MY bandwidth
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
That's not what he meant.
would be to have no ads at all.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Why the fuck are browsers animating content that you can't see and/or aren't in your current tab? Games have been using similar optimizations for decades. How about instead of masturbating on the UI, browsers make some fundamental improvements to their rendering engines? You don't need to study this stuff, it's common sense to not waste resources working on things you don't need or can't see the effects of. Browsers known when something is visible or not. Here's how simple it should be:
OnWindowScrollBySomeAmount visibleSet, hiddenSet = getAnimatedObjs().filter(isVisible); visibleSet.resumeAnimations(); hiddenSet.pauseAnimations();
OnSwitchTab: oldTab.pauseAnimations(); newTab.resumeAnimations();
That's not the most efficient way to implement it but it would work. You'd also need a setting to allow the user to play videos+sound in background tabs so they can listen to something while browsing elsewhere, but GIFs should always be halted when not visible.
If you want me to care about "content creators", you're going to have to call them something other than "content creators". I find that appellation irritating in the extreme. It says absolutely nothing about what they've done to deserve my money.
I mean, I work very hard on adding value to Slashdot with my shitty comments, so I am also a "content creator". So pay me my money, motherfucker. GIVE ME MY GODDAMN MONEY.
https://youtu.be/0N4b2dmLZII
You are welcome on my lawn.
"By blocking the only remaining avenue for content creators to earn a living from their extremely hard work, you are helping put them out of business"
I'm more than happy to put sites that depend solely on advertising derived from third-party ad-feed companies out of business. These, more than any other cause, are the monstrosities that have ruined the web experience for so many people and given any form of advertising a bad name.
Men, get a real job, you snooty DH ;). You know the kind of job you people sneer at and say it's only a training job that deserve less than the already shitty minimum wage. Want to express your creative talents, do it in your own time, out of your own pocket and like any busker, beg for money.
Unsympathetic, yep, because to many rich geek/nerd arseholes do not give one fuck about those doing hard work, real fucking work, on shitty minimum wage, not being able to afford a reasonable place to live or much of anything else. You fuckers still demand access to their wallets. Ain't no limit on how rich anal tech types become and still greedily demand to be able empty the wallets of the poorest.
No fucking protection for advertisements unless they stick to the rules, no fucking screaming, no fucking lies, no false association and no targeting people and absolutely no targeting of minors. PS fucking off with the psuedo celebrity bullshit would also be cool, I would rather pay for some quality in the product being sold than paying the bloated wage of some egoistic dickhead lying to me about how great the product is (which it would be if they had spent the money on the product instead of paying some egoistic dickhead to lie to me about that quality of the product because that quality is missing as they had to pay the dickhead instead).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Of course they won't. And until the ad industry gets their shit together then this current scenario won't change and more people will move to block ads. They did this themselves and are doubling down on stupid instead of going "why are people blocking ads..." Oh right, because we fucked up and allow malware authors to ride along on our networks and screw people over.
Sorry ad people, but using adblockers in some form is basic malware protection these days.
Om, nomnomnom...
O'Really?
When somebody puts a site on the web they are making it publicly available to anybody that wants to connect to it. Trying to to then impose constraints on how people access that content *after making it available* has no moral validity at all. The web was not invented to be "monetised", and fuck corporate apologists like you would try to rewrite history to make it so.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
My worry is that it becomes an arms race. Advertisers looking for ever more intrusive and annoying ways to bypass ad-blocking. We have already seen attempts to detect ad blockers, and then ad blockers blocking the ad blocker blockers in response.
In that sense maybe a standard API for adverts, that is extremely limiting and enforces good behaviour in exchange for not getting blocked, might be a good solution. Static images, maximum file size, no javascript, no ping backs, no cookies, maximum 10% of the page, served from the same domain as the rest of the content. That removes most of the scope for malware and the stuff that slows down loading and wastes battery.
I'd have to give it a trial run, but I'd consider lowering my ad-blocking shields enough to allow that through.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Brave gave them the option to get around this by not only paying people to see ads but to openly vet ads to make sure they're malware free. The major advertising companies turned their nose up at it, though he hasn't given up and is still fighting to get the system in place. I honestly expect that he'll manage with a bit of luck create a new ad network out of it. And with luck, will displace the existing companies.
Any type of API like that I expect would be abused and exploited heavily.
Om, nomnomnom...
Consumers, on the other hand, are looking for ways to block ads faster and with less power consumption.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If that's your reason, you're doing it wrong.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It costs a lot of money to create quality content,
...and should I ever find a webpage again that contains some, I will gladly turn the adblocker off or even directly support them with my money.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If user-created works are derivatives of other underlying works, such as fan art of video game characters or videos containing music, don't the authors of said underlying works need to be paid?
served from the same domain as the rest of the content
Once this is the case, how will publishers* be able to reassure advertisers that reported impressions and clicks are real, not fraudulent?
* In ad industry jargon, a "publisher" is the operator of a site on which ads are placed.
If you want me to care about "content creators", you're going to have to call them something other than "content creators". I find that appellation irritating in the extreme.
FSF isn't a big fan of the term "content creator" either, which sounds too much like "happy god". So mentally replace these terms with the terms used in the actual U.S. copyright statute: "creator" becomes "author", and "content" becomes "works".
It says absolutely nothing about what they've done to deserve my money.
With the terminology issue hopefully out of the way: How do we encourage people to continue being an "author of a work of substantial length"?
and like any busker, beg for money.
The difference is that online transaction fees are a lot higher than those for a busker operating in person. Someone seeking online donations has to deal with the payment card industry's swipe fees, which can overwhelm the small donations that buskers tend to receive. Bitcoin isn't the answer either, as the Chinese mining cartel has driven up transaction fees to be near those of plastic by refusing to accept the years-overdue hard fork to increase the block size.
Uhm.. quality websites with well researched articles are generally subscription based
:
Which means readers end up turned away when they try to read one article that was found through a search engine or shared through social media. People have shown themselves unwilling to buy a whole month's worth of access just to read one article.
Webpages that don't work without JS ARE broken in the first place. The least I'd expect is some kind of minimal functionality, if you can't provide that, ok, it's fine.
I'm interested in implementing "some kind of minimal functionality" for a page on my website. Currently JSNES Arcade requires JavaScript for its core function of interpreting a video game and displaying its graphics. What "kind of minimal functionality" would be appropriate here?
Something has seriously gone off the rails when an ad/image designer either a) cares directly, and/or b) has insight into device power management and usage.
"I've designed an ad and tested it on my phone. Doing it this way makes the battery go from 90% to 85% in x amount of time while displaying the ad on loop; doing it another way makes it take twice as long." Now how is this insight "off the rails"?
As a content creator on Slashdot you already get the option of switching off ads.
Yes the content can be good quality, but the ads are almost universally crap. And i think the subscription model is not very good as well, as many of the sites I visit, I read less than ten articles a month. Allowing a micro-transaction alternative would be great if you could get most of the sites on the same page, or at least a grouping of compatible pages. A monthly subscription fee is split over the sites you actually visit that month, with some bonus or incentive for higher levels.
TLDR: If the business model is annoying, it deserves to die.
I remember when the text ads next to Google search were touted as a good thing as they were unobtrusive and people clicked on them more often than on banners and popups. Having blocked ads for nearly 20 years now, I dunno what they're doing but have they started showing image and video ads too?
"..One hosts to look them up, one DNS to find them, and in the darkness BIND them."
A button where I can download it and play it locally.
Would it be acceptable if the downloadable version of a web application required you to run a webserver on localhost in order to serve the JavaScript files to your browser? Or if you meant a downloadable native app, for which operating system should this native app be produced?
Would it be acceptable if the play button is available without charge but requires JavaScript to use, and the download button works without JavaScript but requires payment to obtain? Or what am I missing?
What you describe sounds like "cost per action". I've seen where that has gone in the past with networks like CPALead where sites require you to sign up for a free trial of something (with your credit card number so it can auto-renew) or download and install a Windows-only, binary-only application before a page will display.
Would it be acceptable if the play button is available without charge but requires JavaScript to use, and the download button works without JavaScript but requires payment to obtain? Or what am I missing?
In your previous example the application in question is native to the NES so it seems you've already made up your mind. Just provide the native NES ROM file
Would it be acceptable if the play button is available without charge but requires JavaScript to use, and the "Download ROM for use in FCEUX or PowerPak" button works without JavaScript but requires payment to obtain?
Eliminating the NES from the equation:
I imagine that Orteil, developer of the game Cookie Clicker, might be interested in implementing "some kind of minimal functionality" for a page on his website. Currently the game requires JavaScript for its core function of executing game rules and displaying its graphics. What "kind of minimal functionality" would be appropriate here? How could a game written in JavaScript be made downloadable? Are you referring to providing a zipfile with all game assets and then hoping the user knows how to override Chrome's default policy of not allowing XMLHttpRequest to the file: URL scheme? Overriding this policy requires closing all tabs and restarting Chrome with the --allow-file-access-from-files command-line option.
Likewise with the game Pirates Love Daisies.
Readable source, developer blog, bug tracker and notes on same, lists of currently played games. There's a lot you can provide. I suppose for a minimal version, I would expect a static image, an auto refresh, and a link for every button in the new controller, talking to a node.js backend. Slow and unplayable, sure. But you could actually knock it out in a week or so. But, more realistically,new can distinguish between a web page, and a web application.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Readable source, developer blog, bug tracker and notes on same, lists of currently played games.
Wouldn't "Readable source" enable others to make available modded, rebranded versions, thereby requiring severe changes to a proprietary game's revenue model? Wouldn't a bug tracker need some sort of policy to keep bugs private to block cheating by reading and exploiting others' bugs? And by "currently played games", did you mean a list of instances of this game in progress, or did you mean other game products that the developersimfile have been playing over the past several weeks?
But, more realistically,new can distinguish between a web page, and a web application.
There appears to be a vocal minority on Slashdot who is of the opinion that "web applications" should never have existed in the first place, that apps should be made in Qt/C++ and not HTML/CSS/JavaScript.
It seems to be a NES emulator. So, I actually meant "ROMs currently being played." Similar lack of concern about people hacking their own clients. And it is in JS, so it's totally modifiable already, but probably with minimized JS.
I'm big on the "web applications should die in a fire." line of thinking. I've never been keen on running arbitrary code on my computer, even if it is sandboxed (build a perfect sandbox, and then, maybe). Also, it's pretty high cost in terms of overhead, downloading, ability to parse via computer, etc. Maybe if they didn't try to turn a bunch of web content into web apps, I wouldn't hate all web apps reflexively.
There's also the SaaS, forced upgrades, inability to own your own software problem I have with it, so it's possible that even if used well, I wouldn't like them.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
It seems to be a NES emulator.
As I wrote in this comment, I was hoping for a more general reply that didn't take advantage of the fact that this particular browser game operated by emulating an NES. For another browser game that does not operate by emulating a classic video game console, would I need to make three versions: one for Windows, one for macOS, and one for X11/Linux?
So, I actually meant "ROMs currently being played."
As I wrote in this comment, would you be fine with the following choices, or would you instead leave?
I've never been keen on running arbitrary code on my computer, even if it is sandboxed (build a perfect sandbox, and then, maybe).
If an application is available for download, it is also "arbitrary code". How do you run it?
i hope so i need to work with google and add google ads to my site http://www.fiverralarab.com/ i will be happy if Tests Ads That Load Faster