Site Change?

[Ijack]

Something has changed on the site recently that makes it almost unusable on my iPad (Safari). Almost half of the page (the right-hand side) is taken up by white space with a small label "AdChoices". This makes the rest of the page too small to read comfotably.

 

[jay_nar2012]

You can download the Adblock app from the app store, that should remove it.

 

[Ijack]

I appreciate the suggestion, but I don't think that downloading paid-for software is the answer; and if people block ads it restricts revenue to the site. To my mind, if there is a problem with a web site the solution lies in the hands of the site's designers not in expecting users to alter their configuration.

 

[jay_nar2012]

Well that will remove ads (well atleast the desktop version does for free).

I think they put random ads there and don't adjust the size of the area that they go in which causes them to cover most or all of the screen.

I doubt it restricts the revenue of the site otherwise they wouldn't allow adblockers.

Info on adblockers- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus

 

[Ijack]

How would a web site control whether users run ad-blockers on their clients? Believe me, if they could stop it they surely would.

I don't believe this problem is caused by an ad as such, especially as it only affects my iPad, not other browsers. It's a layour problem with some component that is meant to be invisible - for some reason it isn't in the iPad browser.

The same thing is happening on the companion Computing.net forums so it appears to be something that has changed site wide in the past few days. Ah well, I'll just give Tom's Hardware and Computing.net a miss on the iPad for the time being.

 

[Saga Lout]

No amount of third party apps are going to re-enable the broken link to !"Hide the right column", jar_nar2012. I already have Ad-block turned on permanently but today is the first time I've been unable to see the Forum in full screen without the right column. It's probably temporary and connected to the Forum upgrade.

I hope it's only temporary because I can't see enough of the page on my netbook if it remains this way and it's quite bad enough on my PC..

 

[Saga Lout]

This might explain a thing or two



div id="deleteSidebar">
<a href="#" onclick="displaySidebar(0);return false;" title="Hide the Right Column">&gt;&gt; Hide the Right Column</a>
</div>

 

[randomizer]

The link works fine. The problem is that it's behind the sidebar that it's meant to close.

 

[jay_nar2012]

Seems to work fine on my ipod and all my computers.

 

[Ijack]

My problem is not the right-hand column. It's an additional column of white space that often appears to the right of that one, filling about 1/3 the width of the screen. It's stopped now, so may be related to a particular ad. I'm reluctant to start ad-blocking, but that may be the only answer in the end.

 

[randomizer]

I have a large amount of space as well, but it only appears on the home page of the site and it is not interfering with my browsing (on a deskop), so it might be a different issue.

 

[Ijack]

Advertisements seem to be causing increasing problems with many web sites as the advertisers get more aggressive. Understandable, perhaps, but I think it is a case of killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

Increasingly users are resorting to ad-blocking software to solve these problems, with a resulting loss of revenue to the sites. And once you turn on ad-blocking software to solve a temporary problem you don't turn it off again.

 

[jay_nar2012]

Tons of people have adblockers, websites like youtube haven't gotten any revenue related problems nor have any of the other websites.

http://adblockplus.org/blog/ads-dont-generate-money

EDIT: I use Adblock mainly because of how annoying ads are, especially on entertainment websites were you wait like 30 seconds before you can actually watch the video, if ads were less annoying then i wouldn't use adblocker.

 

[Saga Lout]

I've still got this white space with my Profile, Best Offers and The Won a Badge at the top, obscuring the link to Hide the Right Column, which presumably is already hidden. It renders the netbook I'm using now completely useless for Tom's and even on a 19" widescreen, the site is almost unusable for me.