Flash-based advertising: a devil’s idea?
Paul Carr is a brave man, that’s no doubt. Just read his today’s column on MediaGuardian.co.uk, in which he attacks Flash-based online advertising:
“It’s hard to imagine Satan himself being able to invent a more annoying and intrusive type of advertisement.”
I don’t complete agree with what he says, but I no doubt admire him for taking the risk of such a statement.
I use No!Flash while surfing, and it prevents ALL Macromedia Flash ads, animated Gifs, pop-ups, and Javascript. VERY nice when going to sites like news.com.com (cnet), cnn.com, weather.com, and others that like to throw crap all over the screen. It does disable features here (like the auto-jump when you select the forum from the dropdown bar, and the animated smileys), but I can live without those features. It also impacts some other sites I frequent (banking, UPS shipping, etc), so I do have to turn it on and off, depending on what I’m doing. I no longer get ‘do you want to download Macromedia Flash’ either. If I want to re-enable the features, it’s a click of the mouse, fire off a new browser, and it’s good to go again. http://www.geocities.jp/baryonlee/noflash/ to download.
I think the all-time winner in the “site from hell” category is tvguide-dot-com. I used to love their site for TV programming info, but now they have ads that literally walk across the page in front of your eyes and mouse, while you are trying to read the page. Fortunately, that stuff doesn’t work with my old Mozilla browser, but it’s a freak show in Internet Explorer.