Web Ads with Sound? 49
Mina asks: "Just noticed that some sites, About.com in particular, started piping sound adds in their pages - one in particular (the Harry Potter themed CocaCola subsidized reading campaign from Reading is Fundamental). This isn't something that can easily be turned off - unlike popups, they can't just be clicked on or elminated by a nifty browser plugin. I'm interested in seeing how the Slashdot community deals with the new, more annoying ads that the more desperate companies are implementing now. Do you just live with them? Are there even niftier plugins to the browsers that I'm just not aware of?" And you thought pop-ups were the worst, now you can get sudden and annoying sounds played as well. Maybe browsers will have volume sliders bundled with them in the near future. God, I hope not, but if such ads become commonplace, it may be a good idea.
Sure they can be turned off... (Score:2)
Kill the Infidels (Score:1)
Konqueror (Score:2, Interesting)
Marketing People (Score:1)
I hope the online community is strong enough to stave off the "dumbing down" of the internet.
-- MetaCosm
P.S. This posting made after being up all night without sleep, trying to hunt down one bug, and generally being grumpy, take it with a grain of salt, and PLEASE ignore spelling and "grammah"
Re:Marketing People (Score:1)
For alot of people, that is what the home computer is. It is yet another appliance that is used for entertainment. Not everybody out there is a creative genious. Many people are only consumers.
No such problem... (Score:1)
Use a better browser (Score:1, Insightful)
Considering most of the users of slashdot are running some flavor of IE, I would anticipate this is the answer to your question.
Re:Use a better browser (Score:2)
This doesn't stop Shockwave, etc from making sound. The audio settings only affect the standard html and javascript-controlled sound. You'd have to remove all your plugins to stop the sounds in IE.
Re:Use a better browser (Score:2)
That doesn't stop the new noisy banner ads.
Ads? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Just Don't Go (Score:1)
Re:Just Don't Go (Score:2)
Yes, Lynx is a good way to avoid multimedia advertisements, as well as a lot of worthwile content. Thats like saying you should stop driving your red sprotscar and get a Geo, because youre less likely to get a ticket...sure it's more or less true, but its about the tradeoff and what you think is valuable enough to wade through ads to get at. Face it, not many sites get designed with the Lynx user in mind anymore.
What you need is a browser firewall (Score:1)
Re:What you need is a browser firewall (Score:2)
New mozilla features? (Score:1)
2. Block Flash plugins from this site
Starting to seem better and better every day.
Re:New mozilla features? (Score:2)
doesn't mozilla allready block flash plugins?
(i couldn't get mozilla/linux to work with any flash plugins available on macromedia.com... it tried to work, but instead of running flash, it crashed mozilla)
Re:New mozilla features? (Score:1)
This is strange, because I have never used a version of Mozilla that would not cooperate with the Flash plugin =)
(There's one thing to note: The plugin should be installed to *global* plugin directory, *not* to ~/.mozilla/.../plugins.)
(Oh yeah, an on-topic comment that's probably -10 redundant: Jungbuster rocks, and Mozilla's security policy settings can easily kill all pop-ups/pop-unders dead if so desired.)
lynx (Score:1)
Ohh.... you WANT the pretty graphics! You like the cool mouse overs.... Then move to Windoze and run IE.
Re:lynx (Score:1)
Do what I do (Score:2)
Problem solved.
Has anyone seen. (Score:1)
Has anyone seen the ads that come up in the middle of the page you are trying to view? I believe it's an image in another layer that they put on top of the page for n seconds and then it fades away.
I think those only work on IE since I haven't seen it happen on Netscape or Mozilla yet.
With the popups, sounds, flashing banners, and these images I'm really missing gopher
I started doing this when people started with MIDI (Score:3, Interesting)
That way you can keep using all your sound generating apps without your browser butting in.
Unfortuantly all you windows users can't do this...
Sound? Like from a sound card? (Score:2)
yay, a luddite! (Score:2)
Midi (Score:1)
deaf ears (Score:2)
You can always disable your sound plugins. Unless you are going to download a movie they really should not be doing that. I know that when I worked at a web portol we had strick guidlines about sound on the site. If it existed it should play only once and the user should be able to disable the sound. If this site does not do that I'd like to know what the name of the sites that are doing this are and then I can avoid them, which is what I'd really suggest you'd do unless there is something that you MUST have from that site and cannot get elsewhere.
Easily, get the Proxomitron (Score:2)
Not only will it block all conventional banner ads and popups, it also does useful things with respect to stopping embedded multimedia. By default stuff like flash, embedded quicktime, embedded midi's or wav files, etc are all filtered out and a link to them is inserted in their place so if it is ever something you actually want to view you just click the link and it loads.
Works flawlessly... no aggravating floating flash ads at IGN, makes it easier to save embedded videos (right click on the link, save as), and I haven't seen a popup since I installed it.
Re:Easily, get the Proxomitron (Score:1)
Why? (Score:1)
Do they think the internet is a TV or something?
I for one like the text based ads on other sites more so than the picture based ones. Namely
because I can get information about the product/site w/o visiting it first, this sounds
counter productive to what ads try to do (generate hits to websites) but I normally go to websites
I wouldn't normally with a picture ad with a text based ad.
Maybe websites/advertisers should take a hint.
Annoying flash banner that makes noise... (Score:1)
Example URL: http://www.tvguide.com/Listings/index.asp?I=61286
It should be the Michael Jackson banner
They also designed to the interface so that 99% of the time you will accidently mouseover it while navigating the different times and start the ad sounds.
Re:Annoying flash banner that makes noise... (Score:1)
Re:Annoying flash banner that makes noise... (Score:1)
here goes the standard smart-aleck answer... Well, you could always try the yahoo listings [yahoo.com]
note - I have yet to find a web-based TV listing I like (yahoo is the cleanest and fastest, but for some reason has the channel numbers wrong for my cable system).
Re:Annoying flash banner that makes noise... (Score:2)
Re:Annoying flash banner that makes noise... (Score:1)
Uh-oh (Score:1)
Yes! And they will be scriptable!
Re:Porno Ads (Score:1)
Email the advertiser (Score:2)
So email the actual company advertising
Use a proxy filtering program (Score:1)
Once you've found the correct url to use in the filters, the majority of the ads you had been seeing will disappear. You'll be surfing 95% ads free! You can also filter headers transmitted to and from the server (cookies, browser version,
My results so far are:
about.com (Score:1)