For the longest time I never bothered with Adblock or any similar blocking software. I once tried some tool a while back and it didn't work very well; it had a habit of clearing useful content from a page as well as the ads, but regardless, I still didn't bother even when blocking software improved, mainly because I preferred to tolerate it to keep the advertisers happy.
Last night was the straw that broke the camel's back. I was looking for some wallpapers on www.deviantart.com and noticed my system slow down to a crawl. Firefox was virtually unresponsive and after checking the Task Manager, was utilizing 100% CPU. I then realized after a little experimenting that the Flash-based ad at the top of the page was hording all my available CPU cycles, just the one damn ad!
It must have been very poorly coded to use all that CPU, but this was a case where the ads were no longer just a minor intrusion - they actually caused a noticeable impact on my ability to use my computer. This has actually happened to me a couple of times before, but I'd generally just reload the page to cycle to another add. Not here - for some reason the ads were static on the deviantart pages and would continue to kill my machine unless I did something.
At this point I realized it was entirely within my right to try out Adblock, because they had crossed the line. So now, I can view sites without the bloody things locking up my system because their Flash ads weren't coded properly. I just wanted to get this off my chest because of all the whining of advertisers about Adblock - if you resort to ads that kill the performance of my machine, you've got no-one to blame but yourselves.
I NEED to use Adblock, due to dodgy Flash-ad coders
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GFree
Oh yeah, and it doesn't help when advertisers resort to Flash-based video ads that automatically run as soon as they are loaded. I've seen them; they don't even had a friggin play button or anything, they just start streaming! Doesn't help when you've got limited bandwidth on your line.
I tell ya, if only advertisers knew the reasons WHY people use Adblockers. Perhaps they'd stop using such obnoxious ads in the first place. I have no sympathy for their arguments any longer.
I tell ya, if only advertisers knew the reasons WHY people use Adblockers. Perhaps they'd stop using such obnoxious ads in the first place. I have no sympathy for their arguments any longer.
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GFree
Hmm.
Well, just for kicks I tried deviantart again with the same ad running, with Adblock disabled. The CPU usage didn't go much higher than 20-25% for the Firefox process. So, I blame the Flash plugin itself - something was causing it to buff up the CPU usage yesterday, but isn't today when don't even have Adblock running.
Damn you Adobe!
Well, just for kicks I tried deviantart again with the same ad running, with Adblock disabled. The CPU usage didn't go much higher than 20-25% for the Firefox process. So, I blame the Flash plugin itself - something was causing it to buff up the CPU usage yesterday, but isn't today when don't even have Adblock running.
Damn you Adobe!