1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

    Broken Flash advert?

    You seem to have a malfunctioning Flash banner advert on the site. It's for O2 and Nokia and it's either crashing my version of Firefox (23.0.1 on 32 bit Vista) or turning it into tortoise mode. Site works as normal any time I don't have that ad at the top of the page - so I'm pretty sure it's that.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Broken Flash advert?

      Your feedback is forwarded to our ops team.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Campaign ends on September 19: In the meantime...

      Our apologies. This O2 ad is a CPU hog: an unwelcome first for us.

      We have reported the rogue ad to the creative agency, but the response has been unsatisfactory, to date.

      This ad appears to be running more frequently on our site than elsewhere in the UK, so exacerbates the issue for our readers.

      We are contractually obliged to complete the campaign, but we are examining our ts&cs and testing procedures to try to prevent another debacle like this.

      1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

        Re: Campaign ends on September 19: In the meantime...

        Thanks for the update. It's always nice to know what's going on, even if you can't fix it.

        It's an interesting question as to whether it's reasonable for you to break your side of the contract, given that the problems with the ad don't directly affect The Register. Apart from damaging your reputation of course.

        I would say that they've trashed O2's reputation as well, but I was once a customer of theirs, so that isn't really possible...

      2. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
        Happy

        Re: Campaign ends on September 19: In the meantime...

        Drew,

        Seems to be fixed now. I have many O2 adverts on the screen of the once sad office PC and all appears to be well. Hooray!

  2. jeremyjh

    Very nasty

    In Safari on 6.0.5 on Mountain Lion, pages with that blasted O2 ad are virtually unresponsive and impossible to scroll properly. No other pages/sites affected, so it's down to this particular ad.

  3. The Man Himself Silver badge

    I thought it might just have been me...

    For the last week or so I've had to use the mobile version of the site. Within a few seconds of opening the main version the cooling fans on my i5-based ProBook are running full-pelt trying to deal with some errant processor activity.

  4. QWERTY boy

    Yeah, today it's been horrible. It's stopped me using the site; dead slow scrolling and eventually a beach ball on OS X.8.

  5. This post has been deleted by its author

  6. SteveB299

    I came here to complain about exactly the same issue!

    My Core i5 2.4Ghz Sandy Bridge laptop with 8GB of ram running Windows 7 64-bit SP1 and Firefox 23.0.1 also slows to a crawl when that damn O2/Nokia advert is displayed. I've also got the latest version of Flash, as well as everything else being bang up to date on my machine.

    The page splutters and stalls. If you try and scroll down the page nothing happens for a few seconds. and everything is extremely unresponsive.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Still happening today, causing constant CPU usage and high memory usage for the Flash plugin process. If it can't be fixed in the next few hours it needs to be taken down until it can be fixed, it doesn't give a good impression of o2 when their ads break the site!

  8. detritus

    Hallo Reg - I've been suffering from really slow running on Reg for a while (couple of weeks?) now too - something to do with these Blue full page o2 adverts you've got going on. If I have a couple of Register tabs open, the whole browser chugs to a stop.

    I had simply assumed it was something to do with my running Firefox beta, but having [in a fit of exasperation] tried to check some stories in Safari (apologies, it was the first icon I clicked on) I see your site's running just as slowly there.

    Thanks!

    x

    1. detritus

      btw - I'm on Win7, with plenty of HD space, 12Gb RAM and an i7 running Firefox 24 (although it was doing it on 23 too).

      1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

        I was too busy to install Flashblock, so hit the Chrome button, which allows me to visit the site again, without the browser grinding to a halt. But it seems that this O2 ad is running more now than it was last week, and it still hasn't been fixed. Which is going from the understandable cock-up of hosting other peoples' adverts into a level of being quite annoying.

        Also the O2 advert is now appearing in the square section inside articles, as well as the banner. I don't think I've seen that version on its own (without banner) so have no way of checking if they're both buggering things up.

        I've deliberately chosen not to go totally shields up - because I want sites like El Reg to get their fair share of advertising cash. But if I do, I very much doubt I can be bothered to craft different acceptance policies for each site - so please don't push me towards doing it.

        I've noticed sites getting slower and more crashy of late, and I'm not sure if it's just web admins getting more lax/profligate on how many objects / how much data gets shoved on the front page - or if its just recent bugs in flash and browsers, or a trend in adverts. Bring back the days of <blink>, 32x32 bitmaps, and pages loading slowly over dial-up...

        1. detritus
          Unhappy

          Aye, I'm a great believer in doing the little I can to support the sites I regularly visit by keeping their advertising visible and, when appropriate clicking on them to have a look (I even try the occasional Reg survey, but as a self-employed demi-nerd who doesn't have need of gigaquads of server infrastructure or cloud-based data nodes, my feedback is less than useful!).

          Anyway, yes - this is the first time I've considered ad or flash blocking software.

          I'm just surprised no one from ElReg appears to have noticed - does the whole world use Chrome these days?

          1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

            I got an email from Drewc saying my complaint on here had been forwarded to the backroom boys. But no further queries from them about what the problem was. So some attention is being paid at least.

            I'm just wandering in from the old PC at home this morning, also Vista 32bit and FF 22.0 - and it seems to be working. So either the ads have been fixed, or there's something weird wrong with my office PC.

            Or I suppose it's possible there's something weird wrong my home desktop meaning it doesn't display the bug even though it should...

            1. This post has been deleted by its author

              1. This post has been deleted by its author

            2. detritus

              Ah, I posted a confirmation of your observation in giddy haste (subsequently deleted).

              The thing's still running like a dog with more than one Reg tab open.

              DON'T MAKE ME USE CHROME, ELREG - POR FAVOR!

              1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
                Unhappy

                You're right. Yesterday the site worked. Today, I'm back to using Chrome. Firefox has become un-usable again. Bugger!

  9. mhoneywell

    Yes, a miserly effort

    From O2, you'd think they'd know better.

  10. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

    I've just installed FlashBlock

    Something on this site brought Firefox to a crawl again this morning. I'm not sure what, as I opened a couple of tabs and then it wasn't working enough to find out which tab was the problem. I forced the Flash process to shut down and regained control of my browser - read and closed the tabs, then installed FlashBlock. I've no idea if this was the O2 ads again, but I was under the impression they were now working.

    It's a shame, as most of your ads seem to be Flash based, so I'm effectively blocking your ads, which is something I didn't want to do. I don't know if that matters, as I don't know whether the advertisers know that I'm not seeing them, but for the last week or so Firefox has been unusable at least 5 times, and I've had to force close it, and that doesn't count the times I've looked at this site with Chrome (not my first choice browser). Anyway it's only your site that keeps crashing things, and today I don't think it was the 02 ad (though it isn't possible to be certain). Anyway given you're an ad-funded site, I think this is something you need to take a serious look at.

    It's not a great advert for Adobe or Firefox either, admittedly...

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Another annoying advert today.... a video that plays automatically, with no way to stop it... sorry but adverts like that mean I turn adblock back on... I will occasionally follow interesting adverts but until I hear that this kind of advert will not appear again I will be blocking..

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Sorry! Won't happen again

      So we tried a new way of showing our live training event today - had not appreciated that our media supplier's live player does not have off (or pause) buttons. So before we do this again we need to make sure that an off button - at least - is in place.

      The autoplay was human error - and rectified after a few mins. We will ensure that this does not happen again.

      1. Vimes

        Re: Sorry! Won't happen again

        Any chance of not displaying adverts that include twitter feeds as part of said advert? Last time the feed filled up a large chunk of the right hand part of the screen and pushed anything of any real use off the bottom of the screen. (It seemed to be Microsoft's Technet twitter feed in this case from the looks of things)

        I realise that advertising is important for you and that you depend upon it, but is it really a good idea to give it such prominence that it starts to interfere with how people use this site?

        Incidentally: will there every be a paid for 'no advertising' option on this site?

        http://seurre.com/elreg_screenshot1.png

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Re: Sorry! Won't happen again

          This is also a first for us. The twitter feed is clearly too long. If we run something like this again, we'll shorten it.

          On pay-per-no-ad option: it is something we think about from time to time. Perhaps we should think a bit more about this.

          1. Vimes

            Re: Sorry! Won't happen again

            Now those video ads seem to have stopped they seem to have been replaced with large adverts that frequently appear and seem to fill a large part of the screen, and once again push the right column contents almost past the bottom of the screen (you can just about see the 'most read / most commented' headers, but not any of the entries beneath them).

            And once again these involve Microsoft adverts.

            For the same CRM system being previously advertised in the video ads funnily enough.

            Is there any chance of having a word with whoever keeps on coming up with this stuff and try and get them to think a bit more of the end user before they effectively destroy this site with their overbearing adverts?

          2. Vimes

            Re: Sorry! Won't happen again

            The long twitter feed is back. Is this intentional?

          3. Vimes

            Re: Sorry! Won't happen again

            I clicked on the image on the right of the article - also shown on the left, in both cases as part of the background - to deselect text. But I was sent to another page (there was zero clue visually speaking that the background images were being used as links).

            Apparently the URL was incorrect though because all Chrome would show me was:

            Oops! Google Chrome could not find wwww.powerof60.com

            Did you mean: www.­powerof60.­com

            Please could you at least make sure links are clearly labelled as such, even if they are being used in the page background? Or is this sort of 'mystery meat' style navigation really acceptable in your view?

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Sorry! Won't happen again

              Forwarded to our ad-ops guys.

              1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

                Re: Sorry! Won't happen again

                Drew,

                I've had this same problem ocasionally. It's not really annoyed me much, and I don't mind the odd accidental ad-click - as it makes you guys look good.

                However it is a bit cheeky really. On some campaigns you have a background image that fills the two (currently empty) bars, either side of the site. I guess this is one of the reasons you still use fixed-width pages. It often seems to be used to advertise games, so moodily lit sky backgrounds and hairy people with big weapons. [Stop sniggering at the back!]

                Anyway, I've not had many problems with it on the desktop. But I often come to this site on my iPad, and it's quite hard to scroll up and down the page, if part of the page is a link. One incautious prod with your finger, and the iPad interprets that as a click, rather than a touch-and-hold to drag the screen. Then whoosh! You find yourself on the ad's website, wondering what happened.

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