I Hate Firefox
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@Lorne Kates said:
But unless you followed that ad, or used some sort of promo code directly from that ad, or explicitly told them "I saw your ad on TheDailyWtf.com on [datetime]", there's no way they can connect your sale to the website's display of the ad.
And without that connection, they can't directly reward the site owner for the referal.
Some sites will host ads that encourage (or at least facilitate) one-click ordering via the banner itself, so the referrer is able to gain from a passthrough code (some key in the URL).
These sites tend to be an exception to the norm, in that they get plenty of visitors and throw so much custom in the merchant's way that they can negotiate a cut of the profits. Groupon and FatCheese are two such examples.
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@boomzilla said:
@boomzilla said:
So, I'm genuinely curious. What do you guys have open in so many tabs?
I have 1 tab open, currently.
So, interestingly, it looks like this:
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@morbiuswilters said:
I want to start a dead pool--how long until Firefox goes away for good?
I wish it would go away right now.
A couple of years ago, I became a convert to Firefox, because of some useful add-ons like HTTP Headers and Firebug, that at the time none of the other major browsers had, and it was a godsend to developers such as myself. I started telling my friends, and recommending to my clients, to make the switch as it was simply better and faster than MSIE.
I think that was at about version 3.5 ... but in the last 12 months, since they've gone into this frantic overdrive war with Chrome to see who can reach browser version 100 the fastest, it's gone to absolute shit. Every version is purported to be faster than the last, when to be honest I'd rather sacrifice those extra 10ms rendering time and get my 500Mb of RAM back, thank you very much. They need to forget about benchmarks and competing with Chrome, and fix the major complaints that have dogged it for years.
And last week was the final straw, as they rolled out version 11 seemingly with some rendering engine "improvements", that promptly broke TinyMCE, one of the most popular cross-browser JS text editor widgets. I've spent the last few days frantically dealing with clients whose web-based applications no longer work on the browser I recommended them to use, trawling forums to see if they intend to actually roll out a fix and generally cursing the name Mozilla for jumping the shark in a more spectacular way than Henry Winkler on waterskis.
I'm almost frightened to leave the automatic update switched on anymore ... I don't know what they are going to screw up next.
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@dhromed said:
@morbiuswilters said:
Flash is much more likely to crash in Firefox and when it does it takes down the whole browser.
Not always.
For me, that is. I mean, I guess Firefox is supposed to have some sort of isolation for plugins but I've never seen Flash die and Firefox continue working. I don't even know what that would look like--I know in Chrome you get the "dead puzzle piece" placeholders.
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@morbiuswilters said:
I know in Chrome you get the "dead puzzle piece" placeholders.
I used to get that a lot, but I haven't seen it in at least a few months.
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@morbiuswilters said:
I've never seen Flash die and Firefox continue working. I don't even know what that would look like--I know in Chrome you get the "dead puzzle piece" placeholders.
That's what you get in Firefox too. I've seen it quite often.
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@Scarlet Manuka said:
@morbiuswilters said:
I've never seen Flash die and Firefox continue working. I don't even know what that would look like--I know in Chrome you get the "dead puzzle piece" placeholders.
That's what you get in Firefox too. I've seen it quite often.It's entirely possible that I have had it happen in Firefox but conflated it with Chrome because Chrome was the first place I saw it. Still, Firefox is (in my experience) far more likely to crash hard when Flash dies.
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@morbiuswilters said:
For the record, Firefox is 64-bit as is the Flash plugin. Chrome is also 64-bit but uses the built-in Flash plugin.
I think part of the problem may be that I'm using a 32-bit plugin with 64-bit browsers (both Chrome and Fx) so the wrapper could be causing problems too. It's not a big problem for me though, as I've got several other browsers on the machine all of which are capable of running Flash content.
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@morbiuswilters said:
I support all of those, just not Opera. I also don't specifically support Konqueror or whatever the hell it is. If Opera starts gaining traction I suppose it will have to be supported but I won't be the one doing it because I'll have already swallowed the business-end of a shotgun. I do not want to live in a world where Opera is used.
Things is, it's pretty hard to support browsers like Chrome and Firefox and still manage to not support others like Konqueror, Opera, Galleon, or Epiphany. The browsers that tend to be the worst cuplrits for doing their own thing in my experience are IE for basically everything, and Safari for it's odd behaviour with fonts and quirky JS bugs.
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@morbiuswilters said:
OGG is shit and hopefully will die soon. My solution: HTML5 video should only be H.264. The browser should not have its own codec but just use the H.264 codec installed on the system. Don't have the codec? Can't play video. Linux users can opt to install a licensed codec or live without video; I really don't care either way.
Don't sit on the fence, say what you really mean.
The thing is, Chrome is the browser with the most growth with regards to market share right now, and if they're making the decision to drop H.264, then maybe they see something you don't. Couple that with Firefox not supporting it too, then you have a large swathe of the market that you're gonna have to cater for, whether you like it or not.
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Clearly it's 'erotic art'.
For what it's worth, the best I've seen for number of tabs open at once is Opera (although they became so small that it was hard to select them properly) with about 100-150 tabs at once. The browser was still quick to respond, although starting it up with that many tabs (by default it remembers the session once closed) did cause it to pause for a few seconds, and loading that many tabs' content all at once took a while.
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@blakeyrat said:
This is one of those cases, BTW, where if you knew ANYTHING AT ALL about the industry or technology it uses, you'd instantly realize HOW FUCKING STUPID your STUPID ASS QUESTION IS. Idiot.
FlashBlock doesn't offer up the alternative content because Flash is still being used, only it's being used to display a play button that loads in the intended Flash content.
Seems you're the fucking idiot that doesn't know about the industry technology. By the way, what industry were you in again? Isn't it kind of your job to at least have a general knowledge of these things?
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@morbiuswilters said:
Besides, most of the assholes blocking ads are the same assholes who pirate everything because they feel they are entitled to it or that information should be free or whatever, so they're just going to steal it anyway.
Statistics to back this up or you're jsut full of bullshit.
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@morbiuswilters said:
I've had nothing but pain with ATI and nVidia.
I've had quite good results with both the Nvidia binary modules and the open source Nouveau drivers. On my Fedora machine it was enough to run World of Warcraft at decent settings through Wine. Playing around I even had it running well split across the cube effect in Kwin.
Also, Nvidia have just joined the Linux Foundation, so that is a good sign that they might start contributing towards the Nouveau driver themselves, as they currently don't, which could mean even better support.
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@morbiuswilters said:
I don't even know what that would look like--I know in Chrome you get the "dead puzzle piece" placeholders.
FFX has a Sad Lego Brick. Google for images of "firefox plugin crash"
I actually wonder whether they licensed the lego brick from the Lego company.
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@Ragnax said:
@morbiuswilters said:
Your machine sounds insane. Flash in Chrome does not stutter for me but Flash in Firefox does. Flash is much more likely to crash in Firefox and when it does it takes down the whole browser. Flash sometimes crashes in Chrome but when it does I just get the little "dead puzzle piece" where the Flash objects were (it does usually affect multiple tabs). For the record, Firefox is 64-bit as is the Flash plugin. Chrome is also 64-bit but uses the built-in Flash plugin.
Very strange, because Flash has been running out-of-process (using the plugin container process) since Firefox 3.x. You should only be getting crashes if you've installed the debug version of Flash Player. The popup dialog that the debug version displays for uncaught errors may cause the entire plugin container and everything connected to it (including screen redraws in Firefox itself) to stall until a timeout is detected by the main Firefox process. Iirc the root cause there is bad coding practices on the part of Adobe. The Firefox end of things finds itself having to jump through all manner of awkward hoops to try to cover up and/or smooth out a lot of Adobe's crap...
Yeah, but Firefox isn't the issue for me, it's Flash running in Chrome that causes the problems.
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@dhromed said:
@morbiuswilters said:
I don't even know what that would look like--I know in Chrome you get the "dead puzzle piece" placeholders.
FFX has a Sad Lego Brick. Google for images of "firefox plugin crash"
I actually wonder whether they licensed the lego brick from the Lego company.
Not sure they would have to : http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100915/01140511024.shtml
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@morbiuswilters said:
For me, that is. I mean, I guess Firefox is supposed to have some sort of isolation for plugins but I've never seen Flash die and Firefox continue working. I don't even know what that would look like--I know in Chrome you get the "dead puzzle piece" placeholders.
I've had Flash die fairly regularly without taking Firefox down with it - thing is if it crashes in one tab, it crashes in all tabs.
You get a similar screen to Chrome:
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@morbiuswilters said:
I used to flame Opera users but then I stopped caring; if you want to drive your car around with the parking brake on, be my guest. I have never worked anywhere that gaves two shits about Opera. At several places I've worked I've directed support to tell Opera users who call in to use a real browser (in nicer language, of course). I've had bosses ask me "Do we support Opera?" to which I reply "I don't know, it's your call. But out of the 20 billion pages we served this month only 7 went to Opera" which is usually met with "Why are we even wasting our time talking about this?"
Opera is still the only browser that allows resizing tabs. I will consider switching when other browsers start supporting it (which is most likely never). It's quite rare to find page that doesn't work on it (then again, there are that kind of pages on each browser).
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@morbiuswilters said:
For the record, Firefox is 64-bit as is the Flash plugin. Chrome is also 64-bit but uses the built-in Flash plugin.
Have you always had 64-bit FFX etc?
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@morbiuswilters said:
if you want to drive your car around with the parking brake on, be my guest. I have never worked anywhere that gaves two shits about Opera. At several places I've worked I've directed support to tell Opera users who call in to use a real browser (in nicer language, of course). I've had bosses ask me "Do we support Opera?" to which I reply "I don't know, it's your call. But out of the 20 billion pages we served this month only 7 went to Opera" which is usually met with "Why are we even wasting our time talking about this?"
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@morbiuswilters said:I used to flame Opera users but then I stopped caring
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.....
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@morbiuswilters said:
@Lorne Kates said:
Again, not arguing or anything-- truly want to know if there's a way to support a content owner with ad revenue while still blocking ads.
You could download-but-hide the ads and probably nobody would be the wiser, but it's one of those "only I can do it" things. I can take a piss in the city's water supply and it won't hurt anybody and nobody will ever know. If we all piss in the water supply we're only going to have piss to drink from now on.
So download-and-hide is OK, as long as only an acceptable minority of people do it. Sounds good.
(And given that anytime I see someone else's screen, it's 90% full of flashing, jumping ads, I'd say it's safe that a majority of people aren't)
Now that we've got that cleared, back to your regularly scheduled trolling.
Asshole.
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@Lorne Kates said:
@morbiuswilters said:
@Lorne Kates said:
Again, not arguing or anything-- truly want to know if there's a way to support a content owner with ad revenue while still blocking ads.
You could download-but-hide the ads and probably nobody would be the wiser, but it's one of those "only I can do it" things. I can take a piss in the city's water supply and it won't hurt anybody and nobody will ever know. If we all piss in the water supply we're only going to have piss to drink from now on.
So download-and-hide is OK, as long as only an acceptable minority of people do it. Sounds good.This argument (sort of a tragedy of the commons scenario) works for both hiding the ads or blocking the ads. It's just a matter of whom you're more willing to screw over. Given other posts, I'll assume that Lorne is very happy to screw over the advertisers to the benefit of their accomplices, the content providers.
My livelihood is in no way connected to ad revenue, and I just can't get worked up enough to care either way. Modern hardware and software don't generally result in ads bringing my machine to a crawl, and it's only truly offensive ads that I block any more (to repeat myself, it's those hover-popups). That seems like a more likely way to encourage providers to not use the worst of the advertisers than simply avoiding their site. They'll get decreasing revenue per page view from the awful guys, and will have a natural incentive to change the ads that they show.
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@ASheridan said:
The browsers that tend to be the worst cuplrits for doing their own thing in my experience are IE for basically everything, and Safari for it's odd behaviour with fonts and quirky JS bugs.
Only if you:
1) Consider Firefox the default "gold standard"
2) Have to work with old versions of IE (IE7)IMO, Firefox (due to its many weird DOM bugs/maybe-not-bugs) and Safari (due to its cookie handling) are the weirdos. Safari is usually the biggest nightmare for me to support.
IE8 and IE9 are fine, I barely test in them anymore-- if it works in Chrome, it works in those. (IE8 needs a once-over.)
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@ASheridan said:
@morbiuswilters said:
Besides, most of the assholes blocking ads are the same assholes who pirate everything because they feel they are entitled to it or that information should be free or whatever, so they're just going to steal it anyway.
Statistics to back this up or you're jsut full of bullshit.
Yeah well I'm not willing to block ads like an asshole, so excuse me if I'm not Professor Master of Ad Blocking PhD +1 Super Knows-A-Lot all the fucking time.
If Flashblock doesn't actually ... block Flash, why the fuck is it named that?
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@Buzer said:
Opera is still the only browser that allows resizing tabs. I will consider switching when other browsers start supporting it (which is most likely never). It's quite rare to find page that doesn't work on it (then again, there are that kind of pages on each browser).
What does "resizing tabs" mean in this context, and why would it require page-level support?
I assume you don't literally mean resizing the tab icon at the top of the window...
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@blakeyrat said:
IE8 and IE9 are fine
I still have to support IE7, but other versions have their own problems, for example, IE8 and IE9 don't support PNG transparency properly, still. It's not obvious, but they've just internally applied their filter to the image. If you use a filter on a transparent PNG you see the ugly background and grey boxing again. This is pretty basic stuff, but it still doesn't work. CSS outlines don't work properly, and get overlapped by nearby elements, even in IE9.
@blakeyrat said:
IE8 needs a many-times-over
ftfy
@blakeyrat said:
1) Consider Firefox the default "gold standard"
I don't consider it the gold standard, hence why I picked on the browsers that I thought were poorly behaved, which you actually agreed with in your post, so what this opening statement is all about is anybodies guess. Maybe you just felt you had to argue somewhere along the line, but you didn't have your heart in it?
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@blakeyrat said:
Yeah well I'm an asshole
Couldn't agree more
@blakeyrat said:
If Flashblock doesn't actually ... block Flash, why the fuck is it named that?
They probably felt that "Replaces-Flash-with-a-play-button-to-launch-the-original-Flash-content" was too long for a product name.
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@ASheridan said:
@blakeyrat said:
IE8 and IE9 are fine
I still have to support IE7, but other versions have their own problems, for example, IE8 and IE9 don't support PNG transparency properly, still. It's not obvious, but they've just internally applied their filter to the image. If you use a filter on a transparent PNG you see the ugly background and grey boxing again. This is pretty basic stuff, but it still doesn't work. CSS outlines don't work properly, and get overlapped by nearby elements, even in IE9.
Oh well excuse me, I'm a developer not a fixie-riding, granola-eating designer who watches 2 hour movies based on fonts.
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@blakeyrat said:
What does "resizing tabs" mean in this context
At a push, I'd say he means resizing the tabs, but I could be wrong. There is a book for looking up terms you don't understand, like 'resizing' which is called a dictionary. I recommend you invest in one.
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@blakeyrat said:
Oh well excuse me, I'm a developer not a fixie-riding, granola-eating designer who watches 2 hour movies based on fonts.
I'm a developer too, but I just happen to know what I'm doing.
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@blakeyrat said:
Yeah well I'm not willing to block ads like an asshole, so excuse me if I'm not Professor Master of Ad Blocking PhD +1 Super Knows-A-Lot all the fucking time.
I think Boomz was trying to call Morbs out on his trollbait. Seems it didn't work.
@blakeyrat said:
If Flashblock doesn't actually ... block Flash, why the fuck is it named that?
This is a valid point, given that it doesn't actually block flash, it just stops it from running automatically... showing a "play" icon to permit execution - and also permits URLs to be added to the whitelist for non-interference, so treats any flash object as something to be held back unless whitelisted. Maybe a more descriptive name would have been "FlashControl" or "FlashBouncer", but they don't trip off the tongue as easily.
AdBlock works in a similar fashion but starts with loading blacklists and actually hides them from the page (rather than substitutes with a placeholder showing an option to reveal).
Does NoScript work in one of these ways, anyone know?
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@ASheridan said:
@blakeyrat said:
Yeah well I'm an asshole
Couldn't agree moreYou know if you're going to do that, at least put in a FTFY.@ASheridan said:
They probably felt that "Replaces-Flash-with-a-play-button-to-launch-the-original-Flash-content" was too long for a product name.
Well ok, but much like ad-block I'd say I'm ok with their idea, but not ok with their implementation. They should be replacing the Flash media with the alternate content served from the Exchange, not simply hiding it.
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@Cassidy said:
Does NoScript work in one of these ways, anyone know?
I know that NoScript has a similar feature to FlashBlock (excellent pedantic dickweedery, blakeyrat!). I'm not sure exactly how it decides where to block and where not to block (been a while since I've used FF enough), but if you have NoScript, you probably don't need FlashBlock.
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@boomzilla said:
@Cassidy said:
Does NoScript work in one of these ways, anyone know?
I know that NoScript has a similar feature to FlashBlock (excellent pedantic dickweedery, blakeyrat!)
What the fuck are you talking about? At least transcribe the evil mind-gremlins so we have some context!
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@blakeyrat said:
@boomzilla said:
@Cassidy said:
Does NoScript work in one of these ways, anyone know?
I know that NoScript has a similar feature to FlashBlock (excellent pedantic dickweedery, blakeyrat!)
What the fuck are you talking about? At least transcribe the evil mind-gremlins so we have some context!
Sorry, I was referring to your disagreements about the appropriateness of the name of FlashBlock. It seems pretty reasonable to me, since its default behavior is to block flash from playing. I'll try to be more pedantic in the future, and less lazy about quoting up-thread.
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Okay, hang on, wait a sec.
No, I'm not a specialist in the Web advertising business. All I know is that when I don't run NoScript, I get pop-up offers for free trips I can't afford, win free iPads that cost me $499, etc. If that makes me an asshole, then so fucking be it.
All that said . . . what is the problem with download and hide? If the ad content is being downloaded isn't that enough of a record? Or are these ads also embedded with a code stub that has to run in order to make them "count"?
If downloading is enough, I don't see how download and hide makes anyone an asshole. The only ads I've ever followed have been accidental clicks.
And yes, this is a real question, not a troll. I can discuss spanning tree and routing tables all day but I freely admit to not knowing what goes on behind the scenes of Web advertising. Never had an interest in knowing (or caring) until now.
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@nonpartisan said:
All that said . . . what is the problem with download and hide? If the ad content is being downloaded isn't that enough of a record? Or are these ads also embedded with a code stub that has to run in order to make them "count"?
If downloading is enough, I don't see how download and hide makes anyone an asshole. The only ads I've ever followed have been accidental clicks.
The advertiser is presumably paying the site for getting their ad in front of your eyeballs. Downloading it onto your computer without ever displaying it means that the advertiser isn't getting what he paid for. So now, using the same logic as the anti-adblocker hysterics, you're stealing from the advertiser on behalf of the site you're visiting.
Obviously, if they're paying for clicks then it's different, and you're back to denying the site of potential revenue just as though you'd simply blocked the ad entirely.
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@nonpartisan said:
I freely admit to not knowing what goes on behind the scenes of Web advertising
To be honest, I don't think many web advertisers do either, considering all the WTF requests I get on a regular basis at work. My favourite is when I'm asked to add clickTAG code intoa Flash banner, that needs to link to a static URL. For those of you that don't know what clickTAG code is, basically it passes a dynamic URL variable to Flash that can be inserted by whoever hosts the Flash file, it's not for static links. Another classic is where I'm given oversized/wrong aspect ratio videos and told to "make them work" on the website, despite video work not being what I do. Apparently, because I can resize and crop an image, I must be able to do that just as quickly for a video too?
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@boomzilla said:
The advertiser is presumably paying the site for getting their ad in front of your eyeballs. Downloading it onto your computer without ever displaying it means that the advertiser isn't getting what he paid for. So now, using the same logic as the anti-adblocker hysterics, you're stealing from the advertiser on behalf of the site you're visiting.
Well shit, there's only so much the content provider can do for the ad provider. If I get something shipped to me that requires a signature, my wife signs for it, then burns it or pitches it in the trash . . . the company that shipped me my order can't be liable. The shipping company can't be liable. It falls to my wife's shoulder pure and simple.
If I decide to go ahead and download the ads but they don't actually get in front of my face due to my own choice, the content provider can't be held liable to the ad supplier. It's not their fault. Another analogy: the Sunday newspaper has boatloads of ads in it. Most of them get thrown out without even looking at them. Is it the newspaper's fault that I chose not to even look through them?
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@blakeyrat said:
@Buzer said:
I assume it means "not having the web page occupy the entire browser window", aka [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_document_interface] Multiple document interface [/url]. It's kinda useful when you want to see two pages at the same time without having to open them in a new browser window. Like this:Opera is still the only browser that allows resizing tabs. I will consider switching when other browsers start supporting it (which is most likely never). It's quite rare to find page that doesn't work on it (then again, there are that kind of pages on each browser).
What does "resizing tabs" mean in this context, and why would it require page-level support?
I assume you don't literally mean resizing the tab icon at the top of the window...
[url=http://s7.postimage.org/58yimzj89/Opera.png][img]http://s7.postimage.org/tpgohgjyv/Opera.jpg[/img][/url]
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@Strolskon said:
without having to open them in a new browser window.
What are the intense drawbacks of this?
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@nonpartisan said:
If I decide to go ahead and download the ads but they don't actually get in front of my face due to my own choice, the content provider can't be held liable to the ad supplier.
Yes, any sort of adblocking is obviously the fault of the guy operating the browser. I don't think anyone has claimed anything different. +1 Strawman.
@nonpartisan said:
Another analogy: the Sunday newspaper has boatloads of ads in it. Most of them get thrown out without even looking at them. Is it the newspaper's fault that I chose not to even look through them?
The newspaper's rates are usually based on circulation (roughly, I'm sure there's more to it than that). I'm sure that such figures get a grain of salt in considering ad rates (plus other demographic breakdown, subscription vs newsstand, etc). But the newspaper isn't promising that people will actually look at the ads, or even at any particular section. Your analogy is off. If you (the reader) somehow managed to falsely inflate the circulation numbers of the paper, then your analogy might make sense.
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@boomzilla said:
@nonpartisan said:
If I decide to go ahead and download the ads but they don't actually get in front of my face due to my own choice, the content provider can't be held liable to the ad supplier.
Yes, any sort of adblocking is obviously the fault of the guy operating the browser. I don't think anyone has claimed anything different. +1 Strawman.
You said:
@boomzilla said:
The advertiser is presumably paying the site for getting their ad in
front of your eyeballs. Downloading it onto your computer without ever
displaying it means that the advertiser isn't getting what he paid forI read that to mean that there's some kind of breach of agreement between the content provider and the ad provider; my apologies if I saw something implied there that wasn't intended. But I believe my point still stands: the content provider gave me the ad. They fulfilled their part of the agreement (unless there's more to the agreement than I know -- if the agreement says the content provider guarantees it will appear on the screen, then that's a different story -- is that the case?). Once it was in my hands, I chose not to look at it. The content provider can still honestly say "I served up 10,000 copies of your ad." The newspaper can say "I served up 10,000 copies of your ad." In either case, the end user chose not to look at it. What's the difference?
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@nonpartisan said:
@boomzilla said:
The advertiser is presumably paying the site for getting their ad in
front of your eyeballs. Downloading it onto your computer without ever
displaying it means that the advertiser isn't getting what he paid forI read that to mean that there's some kind of breach of agreement between the content provider and the ad provider; my apologies if I saw something implied there that wasn't intended.
I agree that there's no breach of an explicit agreement going on here, but neither do I think that blocking ads from a site is breach of an explicit agreement. Obviously, the site has no control over your actions when you view their page, but I can't believe that anyone would seriously argue that the advertisers would feel like they were getting actual value from downloaded but undisplayed impressions.
@nonpartisan said:
In either case, the end user chose not to look at it. What's the difference?
There is a claim, common especially on this forum, that people blocking ads are lowly forms of life, and are a threat to the Free World. I'm simply applying the same logic to point out that downloading but not displaying (assuming the payment is per download, not clicks) is not really any different, just that the party being injured is changed. The only real difference, I suspect, is that not displaying an ad is more difficult to detect than not downloading an ad. So in that sense, it's probably worse, since the advertisers don't know that they're not getting their money's worth.
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@boomzilla said:
@nonpartisan said:
Newspapers know that x% of the time the ads wont even be looked at, Internet advertisers probably have the same thing for the % of users who download & hide (and if they dont then they should do the research and get these numbers). TV advertisers know that a % of people always mute commercials or in the case of TiVo fastforward through them. The user should not be at fault for any misconceptions of the Internet advertiser has that 100% of all users will actually see their ad.@boomzilla said:
I agree that there's no breach of an explicit agreement going on here, but neither do I think that blocking ads from a site is breach of an explicit agreement. Obviously, the site has no control over your actions when you view their page, but I can't believe that anyone would seriously argue that the advertisers would feel like they were getting actual value from downloaded but undisplayed impressions. @nonpartisan said:The advertiser is presumably paying the site for getting their ad in front of your eyeballs. Downloading it onto your computer without ever displaying it means that the advertiser isn't getting what he paid for
I read that to mean that there's some kind of breach of agreement between the content provider and the ad provider; my apologies if I saw something implied there that wasn't intended.In either case, the end user chose not to look at it. What's the difference?
There is a claim, common especially on this forum, that people blocking ads are lowly forms of life, and are a threat to the Free World. I'm simply applying the same logic to point out that downloading but not displaying (assuming the payment is per download, not clicks) is not really any different, just that the party being injured is changed. The only real difference, I suspect, is that not displaying an ad is more difficult to detect than not downloading an ad. So in that sense, it's probably worse, since the advertisers don't know that they're not getting their money's worth.
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@boomzilla said:
There is a claim, common especially on this forum, that people blocking ads are lowly forms of life, and are a threat to the Free World. I'm simply applying the same logic to point out that downloading but not displaying (assuming the payment is per download, not clicks) is not really any different, just that the party being injured is changed. The only real difference, I suspect, is that not displaying an ad is more difficult to detect than not downloading an ad. So in that sense, it's probably worse, since the advertisers don't know that they're not getting their money's worth.
If this was still the late 90's or so, when ad blockers didn't exist or weren't in common use, then I'd agree. The flip side of that would be that those with the technical know-how to block such ads would probably be in the minority. I think the ad providers are delusional to think that people aren't using ad blockers and that every single hit automatically means the end user saw the ad. It may not be exact, but it brings it closer to the realm of a newspaper's circulation numbers where there's no guarantee that the end user actually saw the ad.
NoScript makes my browsing life much easier. If I'm an asshole or a low life for it, then fine. I don't care.
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@nonpartisan said:
If this was still the late 90's or so, when ad blockers didn't exist or weren't in common use
Damn, I remember having to run an external Pop Up Blocker so I wouldn't get Spy Cam popups everytime I tried to go to-- fuck, I don't even remember what I did on the Internet in the late 90s.
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@nonpartisan said:
If this was still the late 90's or so, when ad blockers didn't exist or weren't in common use, then I'd agree. The flip side of that would be that those with the technical know-how to block such ads would probably be in the minority. I think the ad providers are delusional to think that people aren't using ad blockers and that every single hit automatically means the end user saw the ad. It may not be exact, but it brings it closer to the realm of a newspaper's circulation numbers where there's no guarantee that the end user actually saw the ad.
I don't really disagree with anything you've said here, but look out, because there are some serious adblockerists on this forum.
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@boomzilla said:
I don't really disagree with anything you've said here, but look out, because there are some serious adblockerists on this forum.
I just use AdBlock to block his comments, and I can safely ignore him.
