I understand that you need to include banner ads on many of your screens to pay your expenses.
But a number of them (such as the one for Canada’s Hottest Diet) flash or blink and really get on my nerves.
They get on my nerves to the point that I can’t stand to have the screen visible and I will write my message in an editor so that the flashing or blinking is covered and I can’t see it.
The problem is that I often don’t know the ad will flash or blink until I start writing my post or my private message and then I have to switch to an editor and eventually switch back.
That is a small nuisance. But I consider the flashing and blinking to be a large nuisance. Large enough, that I would post this thread about it.
I sure hope there might be some way for you to stop the flashing and blinking. It just drives me nuts.
I want to go further than this. While I’m a member due to a generous Doper, and thus don’t have the problem right now, I must point out that, for some of us, flashing can actually make us sick. So it’s not just a matter of annoyance. And, if I were not already a member, I would not think it proper to have to pay for the privilege of not getting sick.
Oh, believe me, if I was in charge of things, I wouldn’t accept flashing or blinking ads. And I’d track down whoever makes ads with sound in them, and reason with them in my own unique and quite violent way, quite probably involving maces and Mace. But I’m not in charge, and apparently our ad providers don’t want to sort ads into “blinking” and “still” categories. I’m just telling you the facts. And while I wish I could change them, I can’t. I don’t think that we CAN change the facts, short of being able to dispense with ads completely.
The OP’s profile describes her interests as “Computers” and her occupation as “Software Engineer.” If she can’t work out how to get rid of a few blinking ads, it’s pretty sad.
A kick in the crotch to those authors of obnoxious ads might be effective (assuming they were male; not sure what to do if they were female).
I realize that it there are probably no cost-effective sources of inoffensive ads in which case I guess TPTB have to live with what they can get. However, I hope they are not just saying “sorry-that’s just the way it is; pay if you don’t want to see them” without **actively **trying to do something about the offensive ads.
I finally decided to be nice and pay my money to be a member again (besides, I like the phrase “Vehement Maledictions” :p), but I think it is pretty clear from many respondents that “pay if you don’t want to see the ads” is **not **really a good answer to complaints about the offensive ads since that is not the only way to avoid them (note that this last comment is not addressed to any mod/admin in particular, just anyone that provides that answer).
I also detest flashing ads, but I prefer not to block ads altogether.
The animation of animated gifs can be stopped just by pressing the Esc key. For Flash animations, I use the Flashblock extension in Firefox (the Nuke Almost Anything extension is handy too). This means I can see non-obnoxious ads, and can remove most of the obnoxiousness of others, but can still see them (and other Flash based items) if I want to.
I suppose I really should respond to the person who criticized me for being a software engineer but being ignorant of how to go about blocking flashing ads. Given that person has no idea what kind of hardware and software I work with and no idea of what web browser I use, I have to say that criticising me while being ignorant of the facts does not speak very highly of that person.
There are many people who work on all kinds of software and hardware that have nothing to do with browsing the web or dealing with HTML. There are many professionals who have very little experience dealing with the web inside their professional work. The only expertise these people would have developed for dealing with flashing and blinking ads would be that expertise they had developed on their own. Their background would not be of any help to them in dealing with this problem.
Blah, blah blah. Ooh, ooh, you don’t know what sort of computer work i do. Waaaaaah!
Get a grip.
I thought careers like software engineering encouraged problem-solving skills. Here’s one for ya, free of charge: type “block flashing ads” into Google .It gives you basically the same information you’ve received here.
That, or subscribe.
I have no problem with people who don’t want to pay for this site, but if you don’t want to fork over a whole 15 bucks a year, you could at least have the decency to work out for yourself how to disable the website’s revenue stream.
