No thread adverts for me :)

Simply by turning Javascript off you render yourself immune from those "in-thread" adverts.

...Just for those annoyed by them.

However, it does seriously cripple the features of VBullitin.

I don't see what the big deal is... there's been a few things that JC has done that I don't like, I'm sure he knows a few things I disagree with him on, but advertising is definately not one of them.

The ads are out of the way, don't make noise, and rarely animate. I don't see what the big deal is with a small text advertisement at the top of the thread. I bet he'd get 5 times as much money for a blinking banner at the top of the thread, which would you prefer.

In fact the only thing i'm unhappy with the ads is he puts them on a */ads.* path, which is a common advertising path so my adblocker blocks a lot of them... which for how often I use these sites is too bad...

I've seen a lot worse... if you're that worried about a small text ad go somewhere with popups.

-MBirchmeier

<edit> this rant didn't come from nowhere... i have been an active member of DevShed for about a year now... so I have a bit of room to rant.

Okay... granted, the "in-thread" adverts are actually the way forward, since they're more akin to "product placement" in movies than in-your-face adverts like Gamespy.com has (those full-screen flash adverts are a nightmare over Terminal Services, good thing Firefox has FlashBlock)

Yeah, my ad-block automatically took care of them.

When reading articles with a changing advertistement I get particularly distracted and I find it slightly frustrating. Has anyone see the granny that comes into view occassionally on Yahoo!? I find that one really creepy.

I quite like pop ups every now and again as they do and can provide some good information. More than one pop takes advantage of us.

Advertisements should be in single pop ups, at the top or around ONE of the sides of the page. They should certainly not take up too much bandwidth as this is taking our choice away.

As I read before, this can be simply taken care of with the Firefox extension, AdBlock. You've gotta love it.

Yes and for those of you using ad blockers, -that- will be fixed shortly.

Gotta love it

go Jcaputo!

How, exactly?

Since Firefox extensions can intercept HTTP connections, (thus, deny them) and be initiated at any point in time, they have a higher "priority" than Javascript.

Bottom line: You cannot, as a webmaster, stop ad-blockers (unless you install a nasty ActiveX control, but that's not going to work with me)

...Why not just do it the more "surfer-friendly" way and display aesthetically pleasing (and non-terminal server crashing) Google AdWords adverts then?

Right back at ya baby. Couldn't stop laughing for 5 minutes. Wicked. Well funny. Love it.

Gotta love it and we do.

Well done Jcaputo!!!!!!!!!

Phoenix: I'm confident you will be eating your words very soon. We all know anything is possible with computers. ANYTHING!

Has anyone noticed a dramatic slowing on this site or is it just me? I think there was an update yesterday and ever since then the final hit on the page can take ages to load. It might just be me.

The delays in loading are caused by http://ads.devshed.com (or something like that) that take forever to HTTP GET files from.

...but since Firefox blocks those, I don't get loading delays

And not everything is possible on computers. I know the limitations of HTTP and XHTML + ECMAScript and the DOM, and it is impossible to stop AdBlock.

All he has to do is modify the PhpBB to return his ad as the first post of each thread. then you wouldn't be able to block the ad without blocking the entire board.

PHP is a hell of a drug...

or something like that.

-MBirchmeier

That could be easily countered by a CSS rule that sets "display: none;" to the first table row in the main thread table.