<rant>
Is it just me, or does it seem like over the past few years the general experience of surfing the net has gone in the hole... For general everyday web usage, it seems like half the websites I go to either don't display at all, lock up, or you can't scroll, or something gets in the way of me being able to read an article or blog or whatever it is I'm surfing for.

Maybe it's just me being a scrooge, but does it irritate anyone else when you load a page and have to wait 30 seconds for all the ads to load so you can scroll down to the content you want? Or how about when you scroll to your content, then the ads load and the page layout changes and you have to find your place again? Or you're reading and some flyout ad jumps in front of you and they conveniently obscure the means to close/remove it?

It takes me three or four tries just to see an album on facebook anymore!

Oh, and here's my favorite: I forget what site offhand (technet maybe?), but the background is a link! Don't try to click an empty area to get focus for scrolling, you'll have another window pop up with a bunch of garbage I had no desire whatsoever to see! Lucky me, just wanted to scroll down to read the next paragraph... thanks for that.

Just seems like the general quality of websites in general isn't at all what it used to be. Doesn't matter if I'm in FF or IE or Safari - it's always something. Not many random sites I can go to anymore and have stuff "just work".

Advertising schemes aside, I wonder if all the newer technologies and mediums in the web today have made it more or less impossible for any particular browser to understand it all.
</rant>

ah, anyway - happy holidays all - I'll just sit back here and not browse the web while I savor the smell of a feast on the fires.

Cheers,

Jack,

Personally, I think the Internet could go on a diet and exercise program. I think it's bloated/constipated.

Happy Holidays.


AvgJoe

Yeah... it gets to us all.

I've kind of got used to all the unwanted popups etc, the thing that really gets me is when I get onto a site which won't let me out (no matter what I do... )!!! Like I'm doing a Google search for something and when I don't find exactly what I'm looking for I just hit the back button and continue searching... until I get on one of THOSE sites which wants to hold me hostage! So I have to exit and I've lost my place in the search list and have to start again. Why do they do it? It's not like we're locked into them forever - however frustrating it is we can always start again. But because of their tactics we (or at least I) are unlikely to visit them again because we know what will happen. So they've lost a potential customer - what kind of thinking is that? Is it deliberate or just bad programming? Just because it's hard to escape doesn't mean I'm going to buy something (I know some shops like that too... )


Carole

I think Al Gore put it on 'stage 2 for a few days, after all He invented it.

I understand your frustation at those sites!! There's a 'trick' that works for me if I have the misfortune to get to a site that doesn't want me to leave - double click the back button in your browser instead of single clicking. You may need to do it a few times and generally faster than you'd normally double click, but it's never failed for me and you don't lose the results of your search list

i usually open links from a Google search list in a second tab, then i can jump around as much as i want and then just close the tab, click on the Google tab again, and move on down the search list.

Ditto.

But yes agree, could do with a clean up to get rid of the bloat.

The supposedly "locked in" sites can generally be escaped by opening the list of recent pages and picking where you really want to be. It is the drop down arrow on the Back/Forward group in IE. Click and hold on the back button in Firefox.

It is just the way they have constructed the site with redirected pages. A single back click just takes you back to the redirecting page then of course immediately to where you were giving the impression you can't leave. This structure becomes evident when you look at the recent pages list.

Thanks to all of you for the tips!

Carole