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A Plague of Floats on Your BrowserNow that Firefox 2.0 is out, I've heard a few people asking "is that it?" I remember how awesome it felt to have Firefox 1.0's popup blocking working for me—it felt like the browser was on my side. Now it's time to look ahead and see what else can help us take back the web. One of the really big issues facing us, IMHO, is the new Javascript-driven ad technology called "floats". They're not separate windows popped up, they're in-window divs that move up to obscure the web page and force the user to click to dismiss them. They can't trivially be blocked because they're generated by Javascript code within the page, and identifying such code is a similar problem to identifying viruses. They ruin the user's experience by being unavoidable and maximally intrusive. At the moment they're rare (e.g., TVNZ and MSN only show them once per user per day) but if we learned anything from 2001 it's that greed will ruin user experience if it can get an extra buck in ad revenue. We got popup blockers as a result of the 2001 popup orgy. What's going to save us from the 2007 float invasion?
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Comments: 15
Wahiaronkwas [ 2 November 2006 05:16 AM]
I turn off Javascript when I surf, unless I absolutely, positively need it. So far, I don't miss it. I've seen the dastardly little 'floats', but rarely, thanks to my habits.
Ewan Gunn [ 2 November 2006 05:24 AM]
The killer for me is the New Scientist website - roughly every second article I look at has got a float coming up asking me to subscribe.
Graham [ 2 November 2006 05:46 AM]
Would it be useful to allow javascript to be switched on/off on a per site basis
casey [ 2 November 2006 07:23 AM]
I use NoScript, it does exactly that -- allows you to "opt-in" to enabling Javascript on a per-site basis.
Besides floats, one of the other gimmicks I cannot stand is when sites use Javascript to turn words in the content into advertised links, with mouseover balloon text. Very annoying.
If NoScript catches on, AJAX sites may need to detect and politely ask the user to turn on Javascript. Or, provide graceful degradation.
But this doesn't go far enough, IMO. I would like to see an extension (but I think they're called Add-ons now in 2.0 :) that is intelligent enough to pattern-match and block *any* elements on the page with content I don't like, in an easy-to-use interface.
Its not just about ads. Sometimes sites put a lot of distracting ugly crap on their page.
James [ 2 November 2006 08:09 AM]
I'm not too worried about it because at least with these "in-page" popups, they don't steal my focus from other windows, also, there is no doubt as to which site they came from. With the old-style popups, you never knew where they came from, so you couldn't place blame in the right place.
If any of my normal sites use them in an annoying manner, then that site starts to lose my respect, and eventually my eyeballs as I find somewhere else to replace it.
Christian Flury [ 2 November 2006 09:57 AM]
I agree with James - btw, somehow your trackback URL does not seem to like me, so just to let you know I've commented on this earlier today at http://christianflury.com/blog/2006/11/how_intrusive_are_fake_popups.html
Eric Meyer [ 2 November 2006 11:23 AM]
I thought you were going to complain about the CSS implementation. Yes, I'm obsessed.
Randy J. Ray [ 2 November 2006 12:08 PM]
"What's going to save us from the 2007 float invasion?"
Greasemonkey.
Shelley [ 2 November 2006 12:16 PM]
I was going to say the noscript plugin, but I see others have beat me to it.
I also think customer demands are going to end up being a pushback on this one. The whole point on ads is to make people want to 'go there'. All a blocker does is make you want to leave the site...quickly.
Or use noscript and turn off JavaScript for the annoying sites, which means that all the site's hard work goes for naught.
Shelley [ 2 November 2006 12:18 PM]
Casey, one person's 'ugly distracting' stuff is another person's 'clever bit of coding and design'.
eye/beholder
It's ironic, but this is one case where the visually impaired may be at advantage: many times screenreaders don't 'see' these floats.
Null Pointer [ 2 November 2006 03:48 PM]
I agree with the NoScript addicts. Sites now have to earn my time. If they screw with me they don't get revisited. What's even more annoying are the sites that use JavaScript for simple linkage. Even more annoying is that some people get paid good money for implementing such broken ideas.
Matt Blodgett [ 3 November 2006 01:53 PM]
Are you friggin' kidding me? MSN's ad program is called "Eyeblaster"?!?!?
Chris [ 5 November 2006 03:56 PM]
Hopefully good user experience designers can step up and ban their use from the projects they work on. If their banning can be justified to a client then they should disappear?
simon [ 5 November 2006 09:29 PM]
Please remember to drop an email to the sites webmaster when you noscript/greasemonkey those floats. If you don't let them know that they're idiots for doing this, then they're just going to keep on doing it.
Same goes for that ghastly intelliTXT shite.
knut foss [ 6 March 2007 06:50 AM]
l like to download pop up radar, can l and whay ?