Dear Moderators: I’m not sure if this belongs in GQ or IMHO. I’m starting it in GQ, but please move it if I have chosen incorrectly.
I am getting very annoyed with web sites that will NOT let you scroll down to the content you are visiting the site to see, until every single advertisement (that I will studiously ignore anyway) has loaded.
I am also getting very annoyed at web browsers that complain that the a script is preventing the web page from responding. Why can’t the browser just stop the script (instead of asking me if I want to continue waiting) and ask the web site to resend the page?
Then there is the famous “Web site is not responding. Would you like to refresh?” If you click “Yes,”, the next thing that happens is it pops up a message, “Looking for a solution.” Looking for a solution? If it is the web site that is misbehaving, what business is that of the browser? And what is the ultimate solution? Apparently, the browser closes (including all tabs), restarts, and reopens all of the tabs.
Sometimes, more than one of these conditions will occur at the same time. When that occurs, I have two options: go away for an hour or two while the browser tries to get its act together, or just press the power button until the computer turns off. The second method is slightly quicker.
I have tried Firefox (got tired of being nagged multiple times per day to download their latest security upgrade – why don’t you just leave me alone and tell me when you have a version that doesn’t need to be update daily?), Chrome (rather have a message than some line-drawn face with X’s for eyes) and IE.
I am currently on Windows 7 (Home Pro). Is there any web browser that does NOT usurp user control while loading a page full of ads? Is there any web browser that will not hang up if a web page’s scripts are fubar’d. Is there a web browser that just refreshes the page if it detects that the site is not responding?
Adblock and its adjunct tools like the popup blocker on almost any browser you choose. As well as enabling private browsing, popup block and other distraction-blockers built into most of the new browsers. You can install several layers of blocking and deflection and never see another ad or popup or pause panel again.
Pages with broken scripts are only fixable by turning off scripts in the browser, which pretty much limits you to ca. 2003 web sites. Better to avoid those sites altogether if they’re so shoddy they can’t keep their code working.
You can also find alternatives to most ad-maxed sites. And, if you truly hate the ads that much, have something of an obligation to do so. (IMHO.)
Firefox does not update several times a day. Maybe once a month or so, but not every day. Install Ad Block Plus and Flash Block. Make sure you have a good anti-virus installed and that it is running.
The “unresponsive script” issue is usually caused by a crappy Internet connection, low memory, or both. Some browsers are memory hos (including Firefox and Chrome), so close out of all browser sessions completely at least once a day.
“Unresponsive script” is pretty much always a problem on the user’s end, at least, from a technical perspective.
Say you go to the site of the local news, and click on a link to a story. Typically, along with the text of the story you get a video of the reporters talking about the story. To run that video, the browser is running a video-rendering program. If your system, due to low memory, high CPU, or whatever, is unable to run that program properly, that is the “unresponsive script.” It’s not that the website is unable to send the video to you, it’s that your system is unable to run the program to play the video for whatever reason.
If your entire browser is restarting, again, that’s not because the internet site you are connecting to is having a problem, that’s because the browser program itself is locking up to the point where the operating system itself has marked it as locked up, so it kills and restarts it.
A lot of the times, the updates you complain about are fixes, or attempts at fixes, for memory leaks and other bugs that cause these sorts of lockups. Of course, other times, they’re adding new features that you may or may not want, and generally require more resources.
If you’re running on a system with marginal resources, then things like AdBlock, Flashblock, NoScript and the like can help by blocking the things that tend to suck up most of the resources (particularly the ones you might not even care about)
I would run those things even on a fast computer. My suggestion is Firefox or Chrome with the following:
Adblock Plus
uBlock
Disconnect
NoScript
That will get rid of 99% of your problems and make browsing much faster, cleaner, and safer. In fact it may block too much, sometimes I can’t get slideshows on sites like Wired.com to work. But better to block too much than too little.
Over the last 10 years I have been using Adblock Plus Adblock Plus – Get this Extension for 🦊 Firefox (en-US) , NoScript https://noscript.net/ , Ghostery Ghostery – Privacy Ad Blocker – Get this Extension for 🦊 Firefox (en-US) . that’s with Firefox and Win8.1 but it works just as well with Linux, most sites are relatively tolerant and will show most of the page content, on some pages you will have to manually switch the Java Script on, one can do that with a click of the mouse.
As for updating software, Firefox and Win8.1 will allow you to switch of updates altogether and I do/did this with every machine I owned, with this configuration you can surf without a antivirus software and I do so without having to deal with an infection so far. Make the effort and break this insane ad-business that chokes so many desktops and drives people like you and me crazy…
You might want to try out the new Edge browser that comes with Microsoft Windows 10. It has a REALLY cool reading mode, that strips out all the crap on a website. It’s the same view you get some times when you hit print, and it gives you formatted text only. I’m on a beta version of Edge now and Windows 10 is available at the end of July.
This is the entire reason that I use AdBlock. I have no moral objection to advertisments. What I object to is websites that are coded in such a way that the ads load before the content, and if one of the adservers is borked, the page hangs while it tries and fails to load the ad.
I have a bunch of webcomics that I read, and I believe that the creators should be able to make a living from the free entertainment they provide me, so I really hate to use an ad blocker on their sites. But, dammit, they all use many of the same ad servers, and there are days when one of the adservers is borked, or at least the connection between the adserver and my computer is borked, and I can hardly get a single webcomic to load.