Craig Box's journeys, stories and notes...


Posts Tagged ‘advertising’

All medicines have benefits and some have risks

Wednesday, August 9th, 2006

I wouldn't ever look at the web if it wasn't for AdBlock and the Filterset.G updater. It pains me to try and use a computer without these two Firefox extensions installed - there is just so much background noise that you don't remember seeing, after seeing a pain-free web for a wee while.

But, like Panadol, there are pains it fixes and pains it creates. Adblock can't tell which ads you want to see and which you don't. I first noticed this last election, when I wanted to see the National Party's thank-you-very-much ad. See the two missing boxes? A friend sent me these fantastic 50s ads, (including wallpaper for other bacon lovers). Robin Capper's link to the new Sony Bravia ad suffers much the same fate.

Two morals of the story. First, if you're putting an ad on the 'web, don't put 'ad' in the image path ?. Second, if you're setting up AdBlock for people (and I firmly believe it improves the internet experience and will defend to the death my right to use it), make sure they know about the site whitelist and when to use it.