Enough with the pop-ups already...

[clutch 1]

What happened? It was only a couple of stupid pop-up ads before (anybody remember the IT training and stoplight/racecar bit?) but now it is virtually every page. Are they really paying enough to hassle everybody? I would love to be able to block pop-ups, but on my typical work box I can't throw on Firebird or anything that modifies IE (FIPS issues). I am sure that most people here are running some sort of blocker by now just to deal with this site, so you can't be getting that many impressions to pay for it.

[felix 0]

It's a shame you can't install the Google toolbar clutch.

I've installed it on both work and home machines and I'm unlucky if I get more than one popup per month on both machines combined.

Also, it has the nifty and very handy search thingy without needing to have an entire search pane open.

[Alien 1]

There are free 1s that don't necessarily integrate with IE. KillAd isn't the best, but it's free & works on its own, without integrating with IE.

 

For popups I use Popup Stopper Companion, which works as an IE toolbar, so probably not what you're looking for. I also recently [about 2 weeks ago now] got fed up with ads flickering or flashing @ me whilst I was trying to read an article, then remembered that PC-Cillin [i'm using PCC 2000] has a web filter function, which although presumably originally intended for stopping kids seeing adult content, isn't restricted to that purpose. You just type or paste in a URL & tick the box to tell it to extend it to all subpages of that URL & inplace of the ad you get a message saying "This URL has been blocked by Trend PC-cillin as a banned/restricted site.". Much easier to ignore than some flickering animated gif or flash ad that's had the ability to stop it disabled. The best part is, most of these ads are from a small number of servers, so whilst you may block a URL after being annoyed with an ad served from it from 1 URL, it'll most likely stop it being shown on a bunch of other sites too.

 

Funnily enough, now that I think of it, it wasn't actually an animated ad that was the proverbial last-straw, it was those "Smart Tag"-like links I've seen in a bunch of pages, where you think they're words in the text linked to stuff legitimately related to the article, but actually they pop up some javascript ad. If you're using Norton's internet security wotsit though, chances are you won't have seen that particular annoyance, as my friend has Norton & he never saw it until I told him to add it to the allow list to show him what I was talking about.

[clutch 1]

Typically I use Firebird or Safari, plus I have a modified hosts file thrown in there. This combo makes browsing *much* nicer than what I have at work (an overtaxed proxy server feeding clients as little as 3KB/s with a default install of IE). When at work, it just isn't worth coming here anymore since more than half the time I have to wait for some stupida$$ pop-up to load.

[Philipp 6]

Sorry guys.

 

The forums runs a different ad code. I didn't noticed that all popups are still activated. They are disabled for now.

[clutch 1]

Woohoo! Score one for the team. Is there anyway to get cool ads, like ones for MP3 players or video games? If so, there's a much better chance of people using them. Maybe Best Buy and such.

[Philipp 6]

The main problem is that many advertisers are not interested to show their ads on forums. That's also the reason why there are now two different ad codes.

[sapiens74 0]

Between zone alarm. hosts file and popup cop

 

I get nothing

[Alien 1]

The only type of ad that bothers me now is those animated flash ads that sites are storing on their own servers. Several sites that get linked to from the front page have animated ads done with flash, but I can't block them [i can only block a whole site/IP address]. Unless I find a solution to it soon I may end up just not reading those sites anymore, which would be a shame.

[adamvjackson 0]

Firebird has a plugin that requires you to click on flash you want to view... VERY handy.

[Alien 1]

Macromedia ought to change their IE flash plugin so that advertisers can't disable the option to stop the ad.

[EddiE314 0]

I'm with Clutch here i use Firebird, oh, btw Clutch, i switched to Gentoo, now my main os. thanks for suggesting it awhile back.

[ViolentGreen 0]

Quote:

Firebird has a plugin that requires you to click on flash you want to view... VERY handy.

What is this plugin called? I am very interested in it.

[adamvjackson 0]

Quote:

Quote:

Firebird has a plugin that requires you to click on flash you want to view... VERY handy.

What is this plugin called? I am very interested in it.

Here you go:

http://texturizer.net/firebird/extensions/#flashclick

[Alien 1]

I solverd all my ad probs - I switched from IE to MyIE2. It's brilliant. Whilst still not 100% perfect, it stops about 95-99% of ads by default, & it's pretty easy to add 1s that it doesn't stop to its list. You know those annoying ActiveX things that popup asking if you want to install them & do so again & again, even after you've said no? Well I found out how to stop them as well, basically the same way as you block an ad, check the source code of the page to see where the thing is trying to load from & add a suitable filter term to the filter list. I know you could block them completely in IE, but that would block all of them, not just the ones you don't want to install.