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Evil Flash banners and FireFox

Started by Crispy Jul 3, 2005 at 8:54 PM 39 replies 7.6k views

Original Post

Jul 3, 2005 at 8:54 PM

I am genuinely frustrated with the banners on GameDev. No, they're not bothering me visually, but this is pretty much outrageous:

one tab of GameDev only I'm running an AthlonXP 1600+ (running at 1.4GHz, so eating up 30 something per cent of cycles is something like 420-500 Hz). I don't mind the banners, but I'd kill anyone who makes one like that. And yes - there's only one tab open in FireFox, and yes - the culprit is GameDev. My suggestion to the staff is to at least manage the banners. This is no less harmful than spam - in fact it's way more annoying than spam because it's grinding my computer to a halt if more than one pages are open. And this isn't a first time thing - I've noticed a similar tendency before. I don't know how to link to a Flash banner, but it's the one with G8Rally.com that's currently running. In fact:

two tabs of GameDev only

three tabs of GameDev only Suggesting GDNet+ at this point would be kind of cheap. And even if someone did, it'd just constitute a cheap form of blackmail. Something which I do not appreciate. [Edited by - Crispy on July 4, 2005 5:48:46 PM]

kSquared

Jul 3, 2005 at 9:02 PM

Quote:
Original post by Crispy
I'm running an AthlonXP 1600+ (running at 1.4GHz, so eating up 30 something per cent of cycles is something like 420-500 Hz). I don't mind the banners, but I'd kill anyone who makes one like that. And yes - there's only one tab open in FireFox, and yes - the culprit is GameDev.

I hit reload until I came to a Flash banner (the "Psych Test" one with a search box in the lower-right). CPU usage in IE never got above 7% on a 2.0 GHz Pentium. Also, for your comparison to be of any merit, you'd have to show us the baseline results for Firefox when you load GDNet with a non-flash banner.

Quote:
Suggesting GDNet+ at this point would be kind of cheap. And even if someone did, it'd just constitute a cheap form of blackmail. Something which I do not appreciate.

Blackmail? Let's not get carried away here.

cowsarenotevil

Jul 3, 2005 at 9:02 PM

My CPU hovers between 10 and 13% with eight GameDev tabs open on a 1 GHz processor. Your FireFox is just broken.

Samith

Jul 3, 2005 at 9:03 PM

There's a plugin you can get for Firefox that blocks ads. I can't remember what it's called though, so I'm basically no help right now. If you search my profile, you'll find a link to it in one of the threads I posted in the past. It was fairly recent I believe. I'll see if I can't find it myself and get you the link.

EDIT: Here is a link to that thread I was talking about.

Drakkcon

Jul 3, 2005 at 9:03 PM

Right click on the banner and change the quality to low. Solved my problem.

Crispy

Jul 3, 2005 at 9:08 PM

kSquare - that was a preventive statement to avoid getting a one-line response such as "Get GDNet+". If you think about it in a very rational way, with GDNet+ not having any banners, this could be used as a form of blackmail because you'll have to admit the site is damn addicting.

Non-Flash banners produce 0-1% CPU usage for me. I'll try the quality control thing, though! Thanks Drakkcon and thanks for the link Samith!

cutthepeace

Jul 3, 2005 at 9:10 PM

I don't really see a lot of the banners, all I see is just a white box instead. Most times the only banners up there I see are the ones from GameDev like the Casual Conference thing...

I love my HOSTS file...

PumpkinPieman

Jul 3, 2005 at 9:20 PM

So that's what it is, I have firefox open to gamedev all the time and there are point in the day when FireFox will halt the system. Leaving everything hanging and 300 MB of undisplayed allocated memory, so after that I must kill FireFox and reload it. It could be just FireFox though.

falkone

Jul 3, 2005 at 9:21 PM

Same here.. running four tabs of gamedev in firefox and my total cpu consumption is less than 4%. XP 2400 mobile.

nprz

Jul 3, 2005 at 9:56 PM

Is Adblock not allowed here or something? The only problem I get is when someone posts an ad and thinks it is funny, causing me to respond with "are you going to post the picture".

yves032784

Jul 3, 2005 at 10:58 PM

Try the adblock extension. I have a 1.0 ghz celeron, 4 tabs on gamedev, and 2 on SomethingAwful, CPU consumption= 0

Rayno

Jul 3, 2005 at 11:03 PM

What banners? I only see one little tiny one. I'm not using any ad-block stuff either.

DukeAtreides076

Jul 3, 2005 at 11:40 PM

Use IE.

Benjamin Heath

Jul 3, 2005 at 11:55 PM

No problems here.

lucky_monkey

Jul 4, 2005 at 1:57 AM

I have no problems...

Luke Philpot

Jul 4, 2005 at 2:31 AM

lucky_monkey: is the ad you are looking at a flash one of a gif one?

Even with quality on low it still uses up about 10% CPU time for me...

Toolmaker

Jul 4, 2005 at 3:07 AM

Crispy: I suggest you get the Mozilla FlashBlock extension for FF. I installed it after I got hit in the middle of the night by that fucking frog. I installed it, and now all Flash players are replaced by this wicked giant play button.

Plus, it saves my CPU cycles ^_^.

Toolmaker

Eelco

Jul 4, 2005 at 4:12 AM

i thought this was going to be about the 'congratulations, youve won teh prize!! click here to claim it' banner.

its an outright insult to the intelligence of the people on this board.

Wan

Jul 4, 2005 at 5:55 AM

I've put some banner hosts in my host file, "redirecting" the requests to localhost. Works for me.
I don't have a real problem with banners, especially since I use a free membership and GDNet needs and deserves a source of income.
However, I do agree that some of them (that %#$%*!@ frog is a prime example) are annoying the hell out of me.

MrEvil

Jul 4, 2005 at 6:22 AM

Quote:
Original post by Crispy
If you think about it in a very rational way, with GDNet+ not having any banners, this could be used as a form of blackmail because you'll have to admit the site is damn addicting.

GDNet+ doesn't have banners?

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