Bill Slowsky, is that you?
On IE, the stop button just stops whatever download is in progress. Once the gif, flash movie, or what-have-you has downloaded, it will play regardless of the stop button.
Least intrusive, annoying banner ads ever.
Not in my experience. All fully downloaded anigifs do stop. And it’s been known to stop sound too.
Yeah, that’s right. It stops gifs but not swfs.
(That’s because Flash is an extension, and not a part of the browser itself.)
Yeah, and Poland was “just” a country.
And then Hitler came along.
I encounter them periodically on a free games site (“Congratulations! You have just won a free Whatever*”) and because I have to surf that site with Safari I can’t adblock them. We hates them, precious, we hates them with a passion.
But then, I don’t think TV advertisements should have sound, either.
(*assuming you click through and sign up for even more annoying advertisements and get your friends to do it, too!)
You’re kidding, right?
Well, for me, they look nothing like that.
Acvtually this might change my view: Since I do hate (in principle) the ad that overlays what you are trying to look at, and gives you a non-win32api close button (which for all you know could really be a ‘download this evil malicious bit of fuckyouintheanus-ware’)
I’ve still yet to hear any sound and I’ve been browsing for a while.
Yes, my speakers are on. 
Loud enough for me to hear my mouse clicking and stuff.
Count me in with the “It’s not the Adpocolypse” crowd.
I don’t get the problem with the banner ads either. I mean, I like complaining. I get a semi-chubby when I’m complaining. But I can’t move myself to complain about the banner ads. It takes about an eighth of a second to scroll down to where you can’t see them any more and then I forget about them. I can’t even be bothered to download the firefox plug-in that would block them for me. Far more deserving of our ire, in my opinion, is the lag times the board experiences on occasion. That gets on my tits a bit.
Dunno if you’ve noticed, but the banner ads make the pages load slower. I saw a clear difference when I started getting them, and a restoration to the usual page-loading rate when I banished the banners with Adblock.
I’m another who hadn’t noticed. Turns out I was scrolling down to read before they loaded. The rest of the page seems to load fast enough. And I haven’t heard any sound, yet.
So far, I couldn’t even tell you what the ads were for.
I was concerned the boards were going down the toilet.
Not because of the ads, they don’t bother me. Without the threads about them I wouldn’t have known we had them, and thankfully I’ve heard no sounds from them.
No, I thought the boards were doomed because of the reaction to the ads.
Thankfully the people in this thread have made me feel a lot better.
Thus comes the end of this thread.
I’ll lump myself in with the “don’t give a shit” crowd. I barely noticed them, and with my sound down I certainly don’t hear them. All of the “drama” this is causing is far more irritating.
Good. Since you don’t give a shit what effects the banners have on us, it’s pure justice that our drama should irritate the shit out of you. Enjoy.
Hmmm, it’s not like the graphics are downloading from the Dope’s beleaguered server. From its point of view, it’s just a few bytes of text pointing to an ad server in some honking huge server farm, to which the few hundred extra hits from the sudden influx of SDMB eyeballs is but a flea’s bite on an elephant’s bum.
Quite impressed with the SDMB collective capacity to complain, though. “It interferes with my ability to listen to music and surf the web while at work.” Uh huh. Maybe we should start airlifting people out of this distressing situation.
There y’all go… if it doesn’t effect you specifically, on purpose, then all is well and don’t worry about the magnitudes that it does. If it’s logistical, like work related, well you KNOW you shouldn’t be surfing then anyway, despite the boss giving the okay and you just not wanting to disturb your cube-mates in that call center. Never mind if it means you have to download add-ons although you basically paid for what many assume is part of the service; being ad-free and all. Instead, I suggest you stock up on your batteries so that your MP3 is good to go. Have some sort of physical problem that this triggers? Get over yourself, right? I mean, you contribute a large percentage of the content to magazines, so why shouldn’t you buy them regardless of the advertising? Right?
So, my new mantra shall be; “It doesn’t effect ME, therefore it mustn’t really effect anyone. Truly. Bunch of histrionic bullshit, I’m sure. So, I think I’ll forgo any other point of view other than my own (even those possibly laced with principles) all in order to say “meh.” I feel above all this drama and constant kevetching now.” See? Life must be better than we realized.