Our Opinion August 2001

Our Opinion Page for August 2001

Cookies and pop-up advertising.

Two things that really bug me about the WWW are cookies and pop-up windows that open at the same time as the main window I am viewing or worse still, some of these pop-up windows appear as I am closing the main window - most annoying. Personally I very seldom even pay the advert any attention. A quick glance as I close the window because by then it will have already bugged me. I appreciate some of you webmasters have no choice and the pop-up windows are a part of the hosts service when using free or really cheap hosting services. The rest of you however have no excuse for bombarding me with advertising campaigns as I am trying to browse your pages.

I know in America, TV viewers are used to being constantly interrupted by advertising and commercial breaks or a word from a sponsor but here, in Scotland and the United Kingdom advertising is scheduled during intervals in the main program, at most every 15 minutes and that is only certain channels. The BBC doesn't take commercial breaks and that includes their radio stations. Obviously it is down to revenue, the independent stations need to advertise, but at least it is only every 15 minutes and that's it, no more adverts until the next break. Take a hint, webmasters. I do not like returning to your site if banners, adds and pop-ups appear all the time. Give me a break and either put the all your advertising in one place, and let me know where to find it or at least spare my bandwidth and pop the window up once in a while, a long while.

Take warning all you who use free, banner laden hosts. I do not like visiting your sites, regardless of how good your pages. There is software that prevents banners and pop-ups displaying in your browser or better still do not download advertising but the programs I have used crashed my browser, some more frequently than others.

Enough said.

Cookies are useful for webmasters that need to store users details for later. I like dynamic sites that for instance, know the last time I was on the site because of data stored in a little cookie and show me only content that has updated. However, tracking me as I browse and storing my keystrokes for personal gain is well out of line. I use cookie crusher to delete all the unwanted cookies from my computer and at the end of a couple of hours browsing it's usually always the same ones that appear, which means each time I revisit one of these pages I get the same advert, because the cookie is meant to be used by them to cycle their adverts to me, the poor sod that's got to put up with them.

Finally, at least most of the ads on TV are reasonably well made, and the products usually sell themselves. The adds on the net are a different matter because most of them are crap.

This month I have been so busy revamping the site and adding lots more content. For that reason alone I have ran out of things to say. Which doesn't happen very often I assure you. I hope you like the new navigation and overall look, but most importantly I know all of you will like the fact that most of my pages have been halved in size and know load twice as quickly. I would appreciate any feedback if any readers would mind taking the time.

Until next month cya in cyberspace.

September's Opinion

July's Opinion