Escapist Ads Eating My Computer

[Geoffrey42]

I recall this coming up before in a different thread, but I could not find that one (as I believe the ad topic was a tangent to the actual thread, not the point of the thread).

Basically, people were having problems whereby the Ultima Online ads were eating their computer. I don't recall experiencing problems with those, but with the Fury ads, well, those are eating my computer. It seems that the more Escapist tabs I open, the more memory that gets dedicated to those ads, and then they don't relinquish it until all instances have been closed. This morning, I had opened maybe 7 tabs, then finished all but two of them, and Firefox was running at 97-99% of processing, and ~150 megs of memory.

I'm willing to suffer through ads to get to the Escapist, and keep it up and running (which behooves us all), but I draw the line at ads which cause my browser to malfunction. Blame my browser, sure, but don't even try to tell me to come visit you in IE7.

 

[Ajar]

I had a lot of trouble with the Fury ad last night while I was trying to type a reply in the forum -- it was making my text input stutter. This was in the current version of the Safari 3 Beta (on a Mac), though, so that one may not be the Escapists' fault.

 

[NiteRaven]

Flash based ads do tend to use a bit more computer horse power then their standard image counterparts. This is amplified by running multiple tabs open, so I'd try to keep it to 2-3. There are tips and techniques, you can find by doing a quick search on Google, to reduce the amount of memory Firefox uses. People have used them with varying levels of success.

 

[Geoffrey42]

Flash based ads do tend to use a bit more computer horse power then their standard image counterparts. This is amplified by running multiple tabs open, so I'd try to keep it to 2-3. There are tips and techniques, you can find by doing a quick search on Google, to reduce the amount of memory Firefox uses. People have used them with varying levels of success.

This is a cop-out, and you know it. I run far more than 2-3 tabs most of the time, and never have a problem (flash or no flash). There is a particular subset of ads which are causing these difficulties. The above response equates to "dems da breaks," when you and I both know that the result is not par for the web-browsing experience. In addition, at the time of my 99%/150megs, I had 5 tabs open (GMail, 2 non-flash HTML based sites, and 2 Escapist tabs). After successfully closing the Escapist tabs, processor usage returned to normal, and ram returned to ~66megs.

I accept that I may be in a minority impacted negatively by these ads, but I know I'm not alone in that minority. I also accept that it may be out of your hands as to what ads run on the site, but I'd rather you said that than question my ability to operate my machine smoothly.

I also accept that I may be deluded about my own ability to operate a computer, but there's not much you can do to dissuade me of that notion. You'd be better off just ignoring me.

Edit: I felt it unfair to quote and respond to something which was never technically said. Still a tempting suggestion.

 

[Goofonian]

I've been having this problem recently too.
I've just switched to firefox on the PC (I usually use a mac) and the whole program will just stop responding occasionally when I have multiple escapist tabs open.

I never have this problem on my mac and I never had a problem using multiple windows (no tabs) in IE6.

Is there something wrong with the way tabs work in firefox? Or is the escapist just using more ads than usual?

 

[Nordstrom]

Same thing happens to me. The Escapist stutters on Firefox. It's abysmally slow. And, now and again the Escapist locks Firefox up entirely and I have to shut down the browser and start all over again. This especially happens on the front page. I think that it might be the funky magazine animation because the animation doesn't seem to work lately and the browser usually locks up on the front page.

I like the Escapist and what they're doing in terms of layout and content but I don't understand why it has to be so damn slow and buggy. I don't have other sites doing this to me.

 

[Nordstrom]

Also, I couldn't play Yahtzee's review in Firefox. After several attempts I resorted to IE7. I usually don't have these sorts of problems.

 

[Echolocating]

The Escapist typically freezes my machine when trying to view Yahtzee's stuff as well. I use Firefox on XP. I haven't experienced an issue like this on any other site.

 

[Premier]

Slightly comforting to hear I'm not the only one who can't watch Yahtzee's stuff. I have Win98 (and the recentmost version of Flash), and I've tried watching the videos in Internet Explorer, Firefox and an old version of Mozilla to no avail. With IE and Mozilla, the video window doesn't appear on the page, while with Firefox, the video stutters, lots of video frames are skipped, the Play/Pause controls respond with a lag of several seconds, the progress bar is proceeding at a ridiculously slow rate, and sometimes I can't even close the window by clicking, so I have to Ctrl-Alt-Del out of Firefox.

The fact that at least one of the others has problems in XP suggests that the problem is not my old OS, but likely something on the Escapist's side. Now, I'm no expert in matters like this, but I wouldn't put it beyond the realm possibility that all problems could be fixed if only the videos were hosted in some vanilla format like .mpg or .wmv instead of whatever ultra-secure-but-ultra-incompatible you-can't-download-this-onto-your-hard-drive format they might be using presently. But of course, people could download the files then and the Escapist would lose their precious exclusivity which - as evidenced by their diligence in scouring Youtube of Zero Punctuation uploads - they seem so anxious to retain.

Now, we might still learn that the problem IS, in fact, on my and Nordstorm's and Echolocating's end, and I'd end up with foot firmly in mouth; nevertheless, I'll go out on a hunch and address any Escapist creators/employees who might be reading this: You guys are putting up the content in a format that people apparently cannot access, and you cut off their attempts to view the content elsewhere in more accessible format. In other words: you're denying content from readers which makes them frustrated and dissatisfied. This, in other words: your actions and decisions are (and/or inevitably will be) losing readers. And that, in yet other words: you're doing a bad job.

 

[Redfeather]

I use firefox, WinXP and have had absolutely no problems. Of course my computer is Skynet...so that might be why.

Hint: The problem is on your end, but you haven't given enough information to nail it down. So other than the old standby of "update all your drivers"...there's no specific help anyone can offer as a result.

 

[StarStruckStrumpets]

I hate web-based ads, I admit I had a sucky PC ones, and I tried to get on here, my computer killed itself.