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There are several things that frustrate me about the Internet.
- Downloads with no size information. Seriously, is this thing 12KB or
1.2GB? It kind of matters!
- Links that won't open in a new tab. So you've got a screenful of
search results, but you *cannot* open each result in a seperate tab.
Sometimes a new tab opens, but the original tab navigates to the new
location as well. Sometimes you get a new blank tab. Sometimes you get
no tab at all. Either way, I've got a huge number of links to
investigate, and I have to do it by manually using the back button to
get back to the search results. WTF?
- Network installers. You know, you download the "installation package",
but it's just a 5KB executable that downloads the *real* installation
files. And redownloads them every single time you want to install the
application. Thank you, genius, the entire reason I manually downloaded
rather than clicking "install now" is that I don't have much bandwidth
and I've got 20 PCs to install this thing on!
- Advertising. You know the sort of thing. Excessive Flash animations.
Windows that pop up every time your mouse pointer happens to brush past
something. Every third paragraph being a bannar ad. Pages that open with
"First, a word from our sponsors. (Click below to skip this.)" Are you
TRYING to annoy me to the point of leaving your site?
- In a similar vein, "Would you like to chat to a customer advisor?" (If
I WANTED to talk to the pushy salesman, I would have clicked the "talk
to pushy salesman" button! :-P ) "Would you like to take part in this
survey?" (How about AFTER I've been using the site for more than 12
seconds?) "CONGRATULATIONS! You are visitor number 1,000,000. You just
won a car!" (...do I *look* stupid?)
- Stuff which is "free", yet you still have to "register" to actually
get it. Sometimes they won't let you download it until you give them
your life history. Sometimes you have to give them an email address so
they can email you the download link (and a bunch of spam for the rest
of your life). Sometimes the software is "free for anyone to use", but
each time you install it you have to enter a machine-specific "license
key" to "activate" the program. (I.e., you can't just install it on any
machine you want.)
- Products which utterly fail to explain what they are. "It has feature
X! It has feature Y! New in v0.0.0.2.4 is features Z!" Yes, but WHAT
DOES IT DO??
- Websites where every link takes approximately fourteen millennia to load.
- Broken links that pretend not to be broken links. I.e., you request a
page that doesn't exist, and the server attempts to "guess" what you
mean and provide that, rather than actually telling you "sorry, that
page doesn't exist". Obviously, being a machine, it always guesses
wrong. And so you end up with a random unrelated page and no idea why it
happened.
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Invisible wrote:
> - Network installers.
At least MS usually gives you a full-download link if you look around for
it. Most other software too. The network install is when you don't want to
install the whole package, so it automatically picks out the bits that work
for you. (E.g., it doesn't download the firefox add-ins if you don't have
firefox installed.)
> TRYING to annoy me to the point of leaving your site?
Actually, yes. Once you get the advertisement, it's actually negative value
to have you look at the content you wanted to see.
> won a car!" (...do I *look* stupid?)
Turn off your webcam. You might get fewer of these.
> - Stuff which is "free", yet you still have to "register" to actually
> get it.
That's what a free junk email address is for.
> - Products which utterly fail to explain what they are. "It has feature
> X! It has feature Y! New in v0.0.0.2.4 is features Z!" Yes, but WHAT
> DOES IT DO??
Welcome to open source! :-) [Or any free software, for that matter.]
I also like the ones that describe themselves only in terms of feature sets
of other products, usually other products that no longer exist. "Version 3
is just like Version 1, except the frobnitz option is spelled spangulg."
> - Broken links that pretend not to be broken links. I.e., you request a
> page that doesn't exist, and the server attempts to "guess" what you
> mean and provide that, rather than actually telling you "sorry, that
> page doesn't exist". Obviously, being a machine, it always guesses
> wrong. And so you end up with a random unrelated page and no idea why it
> happened.
Or a broken link handler that redirects you to a page saying you're screwed,
making it impossible to simply fix the URL instead of typing it in again.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Yes, we're traveling together,
but to different destinations.
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Invisible <voi### [at] dev null> wrote:
> - Links that won't open in a new tab. So you've got a screenful of
> search results, but you *cannot* open each result in a seperate tab.
> Sometimes a new tab opens, but the original tab navigates to the new
> location as well. Sometimes you get a new blank tab. Sometimes you get
> no tab at all. Either way, I've got a huge number of links to
> investigate, and I have to do it by manually using the back button to
> get back to the search results. WTF?
What browser are you using which does that? I have never noticed such
a thing.
> - Advertising. You know the sort of thing. Excessive Flash animations.
> Windows that pop up every time your mouse pointer happens to brush past
> something. Every third paragraph being a bannar ad. Pages that open with
> "First, a word from our sponsors. (Click below to skip this.)" Are you
> TRYING to annoy me to the point of leaving your site?
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865
It's surprisingly effective. It very transparently removes ad banners
from webpages (it uses a known blacklist, and you can manually add to
the list if you want). It's even able to remove ads from flash videos
(you know those which some video sites play before every video you want
to watch?)
As for popups, Firefox has a setting that blocks them. I thought it was
on by default.
> - Stuff which is "free", yet you still have to "register" to actually
> get it. Sometimes they won't let you download it until you give them
> your life history. Sometimes you have to give them an email address so
> they can email you the download link (and a bunch of spam for the rest
> of your life). Sometimes the software is "free for anyone to use", but
> each time you install it you have to enter a machine-specific "license
> key" to "activate" the program. (I.e., you can't just install it on any
> machine you want.)
What irritates me is when some people want to share some file and they
put it on one of those free file sharing websites where you have to jump
through a dozen of hoops and enable *everything* in your browser (javascripts,
cookies, referrers...) in order to get the file. And of course you don't get
the file by simply using the provided url, nor even by clicking on a link
at the page behind that url, but you click a link, and then you click another
link, and then you click a third link, and then you wait like a minute
because the free sharing site makes you wait if you don't pay money for
them and then you *might* get the file if you are really lucky. (More often
than not the website will choke because it doesn't like your browser or
its settings.)
--
- Warp
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On Thu, 15 Apr 2010 14:19:42 +0100, Invisible wrote:
> - Advertising. You know the sort of thing. Excessive Flash animations.
> Windows that pop up every time your mouse pointer happens to brush past
> something. Every third paragraph being a bannar ad. Pages that open with
> "First, a word from our sponsors. (Click below to skip this.)" Are you
> TRYING to annoy me to the point of leaving your site?
Adblock Pro is what I use to avoid that. :-)
But I agree that it's annoying - the latest trend that I really dislike
is on many news sites, they now break a story down into multiple "pages"
- and on each page, the space for the story is a small percentage of the
total space. Reason I use adblock: So I don't have to be distracted by
50 flashing ads per page.
> - Stuff which is "free", yet you still have to "register" to actually
> get it. Sometimes they won't let you download it until you give them
> your life history. Sometimes you have to give them an email address so
> they can email you the download link (and a bunch of spam for the rest
> of your life). Sometimes the software is "free for anyone to use", but
> each time you install it you have to enter a machine-specific "license
> key" to "activate" the program. (I.e., you can't just install it on any
> machine you want.)
"Free" always comes with a cost when dealing with a commercial entity.
You get something, the provider gets something. Them giving you
something and getting nothing in return doesn't give them reason to give
stuff away for free. Commercial businesses are in business for one
reason: to turn a profit. So everything they do is in pursuit of that
goal. If you want something for free, go OSS or become a charity. ;-)
Of course, you could always use a jetable mail address or a mailinator
address.
Jim
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Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> - Network installers.
>
> At least MS usually gives you a full-download link if you look around
> for it.
Yes, MS at least actually understand that people might want to do this.
Usually you need to look for "network administrator install" or "IT
professional install" or similar terms.
> Most other software too.
Sure, for suitable definition of "most". :-P
> The network install is when you don't
> want to install the whole package, so it automatically picks out the
> bits that work for you. (E.g., it doesn't download the firefox add-ins
> if you don't have firefox installed.)
If you're an end-user trying to install a service pack, for example,
there might be huge wedges of stuff that isn't applicable and there's no
reason to download it all. But as an administrator trying to update 20
machines to the latest service pack, I do *not* want to download several
hundred MB multiple times! o_O
>> TRYING to annoy me to the point of leaving your site?
>
> Actually, yes. Once you get the advertisement, it's actually negative
> value to have you look at the content you wanted to see.
Heh, cold economics, eh? Fortunately the TV channels haven't started to
think like that yet...
>> won a car!" (...do I *look* stupid?)
>
> Turn off your webcam. You might get fewer of these.
I don't own a webcam?
>> - Stuff which is "free", yet you still have to "register" to actually
>> get it.
>
> That's what a free junk email address is for.
Except some of them actually check for this. And you still need to go to
all the bother of setting up that email address in the first place. And
often when you "register" you must also provide a real street address,
telephone number, inside leg measurement and a few other items. Even if
you lie, it's a lot of work to make up enough data to trick the system
into thinking it's real.
>> - Products which utterly fail to explain what they are. "It has
>> feature X! It has feature Y! New in v0.0.0.2.4 is features Z!" Yes,
>> but WHAT DOES IT DO??
>
> Welcome to open source! :-) [Or any free software, for that matter.]
It's worse with open-source, since it usually starts out as a one-person
hobby project. Ther person who wrote it knows what it does and why
that's useful, but they forget to explain this part on their website!
>> - Broken links that pretend not to be broken links.
>
> Or a broken link handler that redirects you to a page saying you're
> screwed, making it impossible to simply fix the URL instead of typing it
> in again.
Heh. Certain versions of Darcs can't fetch from the repositories on my
web server because of these "soft-404" errors. (Darcs tries to determine
whether the repo is Darcs or Git by requesting a Git file and seeing if
it errors out. But my web host helpfully tries to auto-correct it...) Of
course, since I have no power over the Apache configuration...
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>> - Links that won't open in a new tab.
>
> What browser are you using which does that? I have never noticed such
> a thing.
Firefox.
The problem seems to be that some links use a JavaScript onClick event
to change the page URL, rather than using an anchor tag like any normal
human being would.
And then there are the flashy pages that use AJAX to reload just part of
the page, keeping the headers, sidebar, etc. unchanged. So now the URL
hasn't even changed, so the back button is useless...
>> - Advertising.
>
> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865
>
> It's surprisingly effective.
Maybe I'll take it for a test drive sometime.
> It's even able to remove ads from flash videos
> (you know those which some video sites play before every video you want
> to watch?)
Oh, I hate that.
> As for popups, Firefox has a setting that blocks them. I thought it was
> on by default.
Yeah, that's right. And it seems to work for sites that pop up *windows*.
The latest trick seems to be where the whole web page turns dark and a
box appears on top of it. I don't know how it's rendered, but it seems
to be part of the page itself. (I.e., it's certainly not a seperate
browser window.) Popup blockers seem to have no effect on this.
>> - Stuff which is "free", yet you still have to "register" to actually
>> get it.
>
> What irritates me is when some people want to share some file and they
> put it on one of those free file sharing websites where you have to jump
> through a dozen of hoops and enable *everything* in your browser (javascripts,
> cookies, referrers...) in order to get the file. (More often
> than not the website will choke because it doesn't like your browser or
> its settings.)
Or because the site gets 55,487,215,678,425 hits per second and the
servers can't cope...
Yeah, I hate that too! (Fortunately, I have a web host that I pay actual
money for, and I can put things on that.)
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>> - Advertising.
>
> Adblock Pro is what I use to avoid that. :-)
>
> But I agree that it's annoying - the latest trend that I really dislike
> is on many news sites, they now break a story down into multiple "pages"
> - and on each page, the space for the story is a small percentage of the
> total space.
Yeah, that too.
>> - Stuff which is "free", yet you still have to "register" to actually
>> get it.
>
> "Free" always comes with a cost when dealing with a commercial entity.
> You get something, the provider gets something. Them giving you
> something and getting nothing in return doesn't give them reason to give
> stuff away for free. Commercial businesses are in business for one
> reason: to turn a profit. So everything they do is in pursuit of that
> goal.
Some companies give stuff away for free, and it really *is* free.
Usually because you using it gives the company some other kind of
advantage. E.g., Acrobat Reader is utterly free. Anybody can easily
obtain it, install it, copy it around, put it on 20 PCs, no
restrictions, no limitations. Because that way, Adobe can go "Hey, buy
Acrobat Professional! Because EVERYBODY HAS ACROBAT READER..."
> Of course, you could always use a jetable mail address or a mailinator
> address.
I still object to having to jump through hoops to get something that's
supposed to be "free".
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Invisible wrote:
> I don't own a webcam?
Whoosh!
>> That's what a free junk email address is for.
>
> Except some of them actually check for this.
So, they don't let you use any free email account? Sucks to be them.
> And you still need to go to
> all the bother of setting up that email address in the first place.
Once.
> often when you "register" you must also provide a real street address,
> telephone number, inside leg measurement and a few other items.
I usually use my own info, with the individual numbers rearranged at the
end. :-)
> It's worse with open-source, since it usually starts out as a one-person
> hobby project. Ther person who wrote it knows what it does and why
> that's useful, but they forget to explain this part on their website!
Even when it's not a one person hobby project, how many times have you
gotten a source file with 50 lines of copyright disclaimers, revision
control stuff and etc at the top, and not a single line saying something
like "this file implements the regex parser"?
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Yes, we're traveling together,
but to different destinations.
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Warp wrote:
> What browser are you using which does that? I have never noticed such
> a thing.
It's when you have javascript loaded up on the page intentionally causing
that. Or, just as bad, links in Flash. (Try watching a youtube video, then
opening one of the "see also" links at the end of the video in a new tab.)
> As for popups, Firefox has a setting that blocks them. I thought it was
> on by default.
There are pages that implement it by using javascript to introduce new DOM
elements. When you see one of those pages with random words
double-underlined, that's what he's talking about.
> them and then you *might* get the file if you are really lucky. (More often
> than not the website will choke because it doesn't like your browser or
> its settings.)
See my comment on economics. :-)
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Yes, we're traveling together,
but to different destinations.
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> > As for popups, Firefox has a setting that blocks them. I thought it was
> > on by default.
> There are pages that implement it by using javascript to introduce new DOM
> elements. When you see one of those pages with random words
> double-underlined, that's what he's talking about.
Maybe it's because I have NoScript and hence most javascripts are blocked
by default that I don't notice a flood of these "semi"-popups.
--
- Warp
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