473,326 Members | 2,136 Online
Bytes | Software Development & Data Engineering Community
Post Job

Home Posts Topics Members FAQ

Join Bytes to post your question to a community of 473,326 software developers and data experts.

How would you block this?

Go to http://www.fpba.net/campaigns/ and click on any of the
hyperlinks there. Brings up a new window that plays a flash ad. Now is
the part that gets very interesting - once it's done playing the ad it
resumes the link you were requesting. How exactly does this work? I
see that there is a superficial description of it on the fpba site but
what about the nitty gritty of it? Just for fun, can the ad be blocked
with a pop-up blocker (the site claims you cannot) or preventing
cookies, without disrupting the resumption of the linked page? I think
it's very nice, btw, that they do give you the choice of skipping the
ad with a click..
Jul 20 '05 #1
22 2463


KublaiKhan wrote:

Go to http://www.fpba.net/campaigns/ and click on any of the
hyperlinks there. Brings up a new window that plays a flash ad. Now is
the part that gets very interesting - once it's done playing the ad it
resumes the link you were requesting. How exactly does this work?


<META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="7; URL=/campaigns/">

It relies on browser behavior.

Thor

--
http://thorweb.anta.net/
Jul 20 '05 #2
KublaiKhan wrote:
Go to http://www.fpba.net/campaigns/ and click on any of the
hyperlinks there. Brings up a new window
Not on my system. (I have configured Mozilla not to allow for
unrequested pop-ups)
that plays a flash ad.
Not on my system. (I disabled Flash a long time ago)
once it's done playing the ad it resumes the link you were
requesting.
<broken record>
Not on my system. It just reloads the page of links.
what about the nitty gritty of it? Just for fun, can the ad be
blocked with a pop-up blocker (the site claims you cannot)
The site is wrong. Just get a browser that puts you, the user, in
control. Mozilla or Opera would do nicely.
or preventing cookies,
Any decent browser let's you control cookies, which are, after all,
stored on your computer. If a user-agent does not allow you to
control data on your computer, it's time for a new browser, wouldn't
you say?
without disrupting the resumption of the linked page?
Not necessarily. When authors try to force things on the web, pages
can break. But then, there's always the back button. ;-)
I think it's very nice, btw, that they do give you the choice of
skipping the ad with a click..


Uh, yeah, I guess. Since all I could see was the page of links, I
have little for which to commend the page author.

--
Brian
follow the directions in my address to email me

Jul 20 '05 #3
Sorry I'm following up to my own post. Actually, this is in reply to
Brian, who said,
Go to http://www.fpba.net/campaigns/ and click on any of the
hyperlinks there. Brings up a new window
Not on my system. (I have configured Mozilla not to allow for
unrequested pop-ups)
Works fine for me with Mozilla, thank you, even with pop-ups
blocked.
once it's done playing the ad it resumes the link you were
requesting.

<broken record>
Not on my system. It just reloads the page of links.


Yup, that's how they have designed it - page with links --> Ad -->
Back to page with links. Except for the lack of Flash playing, it
appears to be working for you too.

My question still stands: Can this be blocked or messed around with in
any way?
Jul 20 '05 #4


KublaiKhan wrote:
that's how they have designed it - page with links --> Ad -->
Back to page with links. Except for the lack of Flash playing, it
appears to be working for you too.

My question still stands: Can this be blocked or messed around with in
any way?


I'm afraid I don't understand exactly what you want to block, or where.
Access to a page, or features thereof, can be denied based on a number of
criteria.

Thor

--
http://thorweb.anta.net/
Jul 20 '05 #5
On Tue, 14 Oct 2003 14:59:16 -0400, KublaiKhan wrote
(in message <f0**************************@posting.google.com>) :
My question still stands: Can this be blocked or messed around with in
any way?


You can't. You click the link, you get the ad. The ad forwards you to
the contents that you're looking for. Without the ad, no contents,
unless you know the URL to the contents already and then you don't need
to click the original link.

You can disable flash on your computer, but then you'll have to wait for
the page to refresh. Same duration as the ad.

--
J Brady

Jul 20 '05 #6
KublaiKhan wrote:
Sorry I'm following up to my own post. Actually, this is in reply to
Brian, who said,
http://www.fpba.net/campaigns/ and click on any of the
hyperlinks there. Brings up a new window
Not on my system. (I have configured Mozilla not to allow for
unrequested pop-ups)
Works fine for me with Mozilla, thank you, even with pop-ups
blocked.


[shrug] Different version? I'm using 1.3/win2k. In any case, it
sounds like either a bug or a misconfiguration if you have pop-ups
blocked and are still getting pop-ups.
once it's done playing the ad it resumes the link you were
requesting.

It just reloads the page of links.


Yup, that's how they have designed it - page with links --> Ad -->
Back to page with links.


So, the ad is what the site offers? I guess it worked, except there
was no ad when I went there.
My question still stands: Can this be blocked or messed around with in
any way?


Is this your site? What do want to happen?

--
Brian
follow the directions in my address to email me

Jul 20 '05 #7
Sometime around 14 Oct 2003 11:59:16 -0700, KublaiKhan is reported to have
stated:
Sorry I'm following up to my own post. Actually, this is in reply to
Brian, who said,
Go to http://www.fpba.net/campaigns/ and click on any of the
hyperlinks there. Brings up a new window

Not on my system. (I have configured Mozilla not to allow for
unrequested pop-ups)


Works fine for me with Mozilla, thank you, even with pop-ups
blocked.


They all open in the same window for me, even in IE without a pop-up
blocker. I can't see anything in the code that would cause it to open a
new window, either.

--
Mark Parnell
http://www.clarkecomputers.com.au
Jul 20 '05 #8

"Brian" <us*****@mangymutt.com.invalid-remove-this-part> wrote in message
news:jg********************@rwcrnsc52.ops.asp.att. net...
[shrug] Different version? I'm using 1.3/win2k. In any case, it
sounds like either a bug or a misconfiguration if you have pop-ups
blocked and are still getting pop-ups.


Maybe tabbed browsing? I have popup's go into a new tab instead of a new
window but only when I click on them.
Jul 20 '05 #9
Jonathan Snook wrote:
"Brian" <us*****@mangymutt.com.invalid-remove-this-part> wrote in message
news:jg********************@rwcrnsc52.ops.asp.att. net...
[shrug] Different version? I'm using 1.3/win2k. In any case, it
sounds like either a bug or a misconfiguration if you have pop-ups
blocked and are still getting pop-ups.


Maybe tabbed browsing? I have popup's go into a new tab instead of a new
window but only when I click on them.


No new window, no new tab.

--
Brian
follow the directions in my address to email me

Jul 20 '05 #10
Brian <us*****@mangymutt.com.invalid-remove-this-part> wrote in message news:<jg********************@rwcrnsc52.ops.asp.att .net>...
KublaiKhan wrote:
Sorry I'm following up to my own post. Actually, this is in reply to
Brian, who said,
http://www.fpba.net/campaigns/ and click on any of the
hyperlinks there. Brings up a new windowNot on my system. (I have configured Mozilla not to allow for
unrequested pop-ups)
Works fine for me with Mozilla, thank you, even with pop-ups
blocked.


[shrug] Different version? I'm using 1.3/win2k. In any case, it
sounds like either a bug or a misconfiguration if you have pop-ups
blocked and are still getting pop-ups.


I'm using Firebird 0.6.1 with W2K. As others have mentioned, there's
no new window. You click on the link, it plays the ad and goes back to
displaying the links again.
once it's done playing the ad it resumes the link you were
requesting. It just reloads the page of links.
Yup, that's how they have designed it - page with links --> Ad -->
Back to page with links.


So, the ad is what the site offers? I guess it worked, except there
was no ad when I went there.


Was there a blank screen for a few seconds, or what?
My question still stands: Can this be blocked or messed around with in
any way?


Is this your site? What do want to happen?


Don't I wish?
This is the site of a fast growing company that has the "best thing
since sliced bread." They have what they call, user-friendly ads that
cannot be disabled by writing new code. I think we are looking at the
future of internet advertising.
You could, of course, not install a plug-in and choose to stare at the
blank screen instead. They are user friendly because they have a
little button on the top right hand corner that lets you skip the ad.
Suppose that wasn't there. How would you deal with something that's
suddenly not as user friendly?
I read somewhere that the META HTTP line is not supported by all
browsers. That seems to be false as far as IE or Mozilla go.
Jul 20 '05 #11
KublaiKhan <bi*****@hotmail.com> wrote:
I read somewhere that the META HTTP line is not supported by all
browsers. That seems to be false as far as IE or Mozilla go.


Opera allows the user to disable automatic redirection (which seems to
affect both the META hack and true HTTP redirection).
--
Darin McGrew, mc****@stanfordalumni.org, http://www.rahul.net/mcgrew/
Web Design Group, da***@htmlhelp.com, http://www.HTMLHelp.com/

key ring /'kE 'ri[ng]/ n. device enabling simultaneous loss of multiple keys
Jul 20 '05 #12
KublaiKhan wrote:

I'm using Firebird 0.6.1 with W2K. As others have mentioned, there's
no new window.
Ah. In the op, you mentioned a new window. But there is no new
window, so we're on the same page. I mean "page" figuratively, of
course. :)
So, the ad is what the site offers? I guess it worked, except there
was no ad when I went there.


Was there a blank screen for a few seconds, or what?


Almost blank. There is a heading at the top announcing the ad and
that my page is loading. With some links, that's it. With others,
there's also a big plug-in missing box.
This is the site of a fast growing company that has the "best thing
since sliced bread."
A company calls forced advertising the greatest thing since sliced
bread? Not for the users, of course.
They have what they call, user-friendly ads that
cannot be disabled by writing new code.
They are dreaming if they think that is true.
I think we are looking at the
future of internet advertising.
Up to this point, advertising on the www has failed. Companies which
make money on the web do so by direct sales, not with ad revenues.
And in a code war, the user has the upper hand on the www.
You could, of course, not install a plug-in and choose to stare at the
blank screen instead.
That's one solution. There's also image blocking, user stylesheets,
and probably several others I'm not thinking of at the moment.
I read somewhere that the META HTTP line is not supported by all
browsers. That seems to be false as far as IE or Mozilla go.


It can be blocked by Opera. I read a Bugzilla entry asking for the
ability to disable meta http forwarding. I don't know if that has
been added as a user pref or not. But such a

--
Brian
follow the directions in my address to email me

Jul 20 '05 #13
Sometime around Thu, 16 Oct 2003 02:29:01 GMT, Brian is reported to have
stated:

That's one solution. There's also image blocking, user stylesheets,
and probably several others I'm not thinking of at the moment.


The back button springs to mind. :-)

--
Mark Parnell
http://www.clarkecomputers.com.au
Jul 20 '05 #14
Mark Parnell wrote:
Sometime around Thu, 16 Oct 2003 02:29:01 GMT, Brian is reported to have
stated:
That's one solution. There's also image blocking, user stylesheets,
and probably several others I'm not thinking of at the moment.


The back button springs to mind. :-)


So often we miss the solution that is simplest.

--
Brian
follow the directions in my address to email me

Jul 20 '05 #15
Brian <us*****@mangymutt.com.invalid-remove-this-part> writes:
KublaiKhan wrote:
I read somewhere that the META HTTP line is not supported by all
browsers. That seems to be false as far as IE or Mozilla go.


It can be blocked by Opera. I read a Bugzilla entry asking for the
ability to disable meta http forwarding. I don't know if that has
been added as a user pref or not. But such a


IE has a very obscure security setting to turn it off, Lynx and some
other text browsers display it as a link but don't automatically
follow it, Mosaic 3 let you either turn it off entirely or just be
asked if you wanted to follow it or not.

--
Chris
Jul 20 '05 #16
Mark Parnell <we*******@clarkecomputers.com.au> wrote in message news:<1a*****************************@40tude.net>. ..
Sometime around Thu, 16 Oct 2003 02:29:01 GMT, Brian is reported to have
stated:

That's one solution. There's also image blocking, user stylesheets,
and probably several others I'm not thinking of at the moment.


The back button springs to mind. :-)


Or the X button or the power switch on your computer or unplugging
your machine from the network. All effective but don't exactly address
the issue. NYTimes carries these ads fashioned by the company behind
fpba.net. I suppose you would have the option of hitting the back
button and not reading the articles.. Thought about becoming a hermit?
Jul 20 '05 #17
Chris Morris <c.********@durham.ac.uk> wrote in message news:<87************@dinopsis.dur.ac.uk>...
Brian <us*****@mangymutt.com.invalid-remove-this-part> writes:
KublaiKhan wrote:
I read somewhere that the META HTTP line is not supported by all
browsers. That seems to be false as far as IE or Mozilla go.


It can be blocked by Opera. I read a Bugzilla entry asking for the
ability to disable meta http forwarding. I don't know if that has
been added as a user pref or not. But such a


IE has a very obscure security setting to turn it off, Lynx and some
other text browsers display it as a link but don't automatically
follow it, Mosaic 3 let you either turn it off entirely or just be
asked if you wanted to follow it or not.


Thanks for the suggestion. IE does indeed have a "Meta Refresh
enable/disable choice", the default being "Enable." Disabling does the
opposite of what I'd like - it keeps the ad on and turns off the
refresh to the content page!
Jul 20 '05 #18
KublaiKhan wrote:
http://www.fpba.net/campaigns/


IE does indeed have a "Meta Refresh
enable/disable choice", the default being "Enable." Disabling does the
opposite of what I'd like - it keeps the ad on and turns off the
refresh to the content page!


I'm still confused. The page is a list of links. Selecting a link
shows an ad, then returns the user via http refresh to the list of
links. That, you say, is how it is supposed to work, only you don't
want to see the ad. Then why click the link? I'm not sure what
you're after, unless this is just a point of curiousity.

--
Brian
follow the directions in my address to email me

Jul 20 '05 #19
Brian:
I'm still confused. The page is a list of links. Selecting a link
shows an ad, then returns the user via http refresh to the list of
links. That, you say, is how it is supposed to work, only you don't
want to see the ad. Then why click the link? I'm not sure what
you're after, unless this is just a point of curiousity.


These are just pages to show how their technology works. In actual
practice, as with NYT articles, the ad appears in mid-article, taking
up a whole page, and then dissolves into a continuing page of the
article. Disabling meta refresh will leave you stranded at the ad
page, and hitting the back button will deny you the article
continuation page. You HAVE to go thru the ad no matter what except
you can shorten the play time by hitting the skip button..
The question is, what if the skip option were not there and you still
want to read the article?
Jul 20 '05 #20
Sorry folks, I'm following up to my own post because I read the
newsgroups with "trn" and post via google. There's a huge time delay
between when something shows up in my newsreader and in google groups.
Just to clarify further, the demonstration pages follow 1 -> 2 -> 1
sequence with 1 being the Links page and 2 the ad page. In actual
practice, it's regular sequence like 1->2->3.., etc. with the ad page
being any one or more of these pages.

KK
Jul 20 '05 #21
Sometime around 16 Oct 2003 12:03:26 -0700, KublaiKhan is reported to have
stated:
Mark Parnell <we*******@clarkecomputers.com.au> wrote in message news:<1a*****************************@40tude.net>. ..
Sometime around Thu, 16 Oct 2003 02:29:01 GMT, Brian is reported to have
stated:

That's one solution. There's also image blocking, user stylesheets,
and probably several others I'm not thinking of at the moment.


The back button springs to mind. :-)


Or the X button or the power switch on your computer or unplugging
your machine from the network. All effective but don't exactly address
the issue. NYTimes carries these ads fashioned by the company behind
fpba.net. I suppose you would have the option of hitting the back
button and not reading the articles.. Thought about becoming a hermit?


Then buy the paper. :-) Or read a different paper. If people stop using
their site, then they might get the message that it isn't acceptable.

But seriously, for most sites the back button would be a perfectly
acceptable option - in most cases there is another site out there that
offers the same products/information, without those ads.

--
Mark Parnell
http://www.clarkecomputers.com.au
Jul 20 '05 #22
KublaiKhan wrote:
Brian:
I'm still confused. The page is a list of links. Selecting a link
shows an ad, then returns the user via http refresh to the list of
links. That, you say, is how it is supposed to work, only you don't
want to see the ad. Then why click the link? I'm not sure what
you're after, unless this is just a point of curiousity.


These are just pages to show how their technology works. In actual
practice, as with NYT articles, the ad appears in mid-article, taking
up a whole page, and then dissolves into a continuing page of the
article.

[snip]

In practice, this is implemented as a generic advert page, with the
subsequent page supplied as a parameter in the query-string. Any decent
proxy-rewriter (such as Proxomitron, I'd imagine) would let you rewrite
that into a direct URL to the article.

I suppose there are content-providers that expect this, and avoid this
implementation for this precise reason. In that case, rewrite the entire
page to be nothing more than a meta-refresh with a zero-second delay.

To be perfectly honest, if one of the sites I visited regularly started
advertising in this manner, I would reconsider visiting it. If the content
was truly worthwhile, I'd probably put up with the adverts on principle.
Otherwise, I'd just stop visiting it. However, I can't think of a single
website that has gone down this route that I'd consider to be worthwhile.
Generally speaking, the best content I find is given away freely.
Naturally, I doubt this will generalise to the average surfer, so YMMV. In
fact, the only content provider I've even heard of that went down this route
that people valued was salon.com, and from what I hear, they aren't doing
so well at all.

--
Jim Dabell

Jul 20 '05 #23

This thread has been closed and replies have been disabled. Please start a new discussion.

Similar topics

2
by: Cliff Roman | last post by:
I have been trying to find the answer on the postnuke forums and I have even tried Sitepoint but I am unable to find an answer. So now I am asking here in hopes that someone may have an idea ...
1
by: ProgrammierMan | last post by:
Hi folks, I don't know what the block attribute means. The final attribute looks like to be simple: I can prevent derivations. Did I write final="restriction" and I restrict it in another...
7
by: Jeff Thies | last post by:
I'm trying to do a nav list using list items. Roughly this is putting links styled display: block and with a background color. In IE5 (windows, haven't tried Mac yet), adding the display:...
2
by: TadPole | last post by:
Hi all, My main problems are::::::::: 1. Set a value within a block container that can be used and changed by subsequent templates/block-containers/tables etc.. 2. get/determine/find the...
3
by: Brian | last post by:
Is it possible to have more than one try/catch/finally block within a method? Also, if the code never enters the try block of code, is the finally block executed? I have a try block in a branch...
3
by: Rosario Morgan | last post by:
Hello Help is great appreciated in advance. I need to loop through a file 6000 bytes at a time. I was going to use the following but do not know how to advance through the file 6000 bytes at...
2
by: morrell | last post by:
I have a request to find out is there an easy way to solve this little poblem. ___________________ | Block 1 | | | | | | |...
6
by: foolmelon | last post by:
If a childThread is in the middle of a catch block and handling an exception caught, the main thread calls childThread.Abort(). At that time a ThreadAbortException is thrown in the childThread. ...
8
by: Alvin | last post by:
I'm making a very simple game in SDL, and I'm not asking for SDL help I hope - this looks like something C++ related, so I'll ask here. I have a class for a simple block, or tile, in the game,...
6
by: dave8421 | last post by:
Hi, I'm a bit confused about the definition about "Prinicpal Block Boxes" in CSS 2.1 draft specification. ( http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-CSS21-20061106 ) <pre> 9.2.1 Block-level elements and...
0
by: DolphinDB | last post by:
Tired of spending countless mintues downsampling your data? Look no further! In this article, you’ll learn how to efficiently downsample 6.48 billion high-frequency records to 61 million...
0
by: ryjfgjl | last post by:
ExcelToDatabase: batch import excel into database automatically...
0
isladogs
by: isladogs | last post by:
The next Access Europe meeting will be on Wednesday 6 Mar 2024 starting at 18:00 UK time (6PM UTC) and finishing at about 19:15 (7.15PM). In this month's session, we are pleased to welcome back...
0
by: Vimpel783 | last post by:
Hello! Guys, I found this code on the Internet, but I need to modify it a little. It works well, the problem is this: Data is sent from only one cell, in this case B5, but it is necessary that data...
0
by: ArrayDB | last post by:
The error message I've encountered is; ERROR:root:Error generating model response: exception: access violation writing 0x0000000000005140, which seems to be indicative of an access violation...
1
by: CloudSolutions | last post by:
Introduction: For many beginners and individual users, requiring a credit card and email registration may pose a barrier when starting to use cloud servers. However, some cloud server providers now...
1
by: Defcon1945 | last post by:
I'm trying to learn Python using Pycharm but import shutil doesn't work
0
by: af34tf | last post by:
Hi Guys, I have a domain whose name is BytesLimited.com, and I want to sell it. Does anyone know about platforms that allow me to list my domain in auction for free. Thank you
0
isladogs
by: isladogs | last post by:
The next Access Europe User Group meeting will be on Wednesday 3 Apr 2024 starting at 18:00 UK time (6PM UTC+1) and finishing by 19:30 (7.30PM). In this session, we are pleased to welcome former...

By using Bytes.com and it's services, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

To disable or enable advertisements and analytics tracking please visit the manage ads & tracking page.