Just an observation that challenges dial-uppers

grammaboodawg

grammaboodawg

Immortal
I had been wondering why my pages on TORn were sometimes taking a long time to load through my dial-up... and I've just noticed there are occasional animated banners at the bottom of the page now. Ah HA!

Is TORn going to start using a lot of animated banners/ads? It really slows things down on an already slow visit :)

I did a quick search to see if this has already been discussed. Sorry if I've missed any.
 
[tongue] Solidarity gramma! I really must get broadband - one of these days... I think when TV all goes HD, I will be one of those people not watching TV anymore... [crazy]
 
They have an absolutely beyond-wonderful add-on called Ad Blocker. You can zap those nasty little thingies with the click of a button, and you don't have to have a high-speed connection to do it. And best of all, it's completely free.

I'm a biiiiig Firefox fan. [laugh]
 
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That aside, doesn't TORN get a little income from these ads if we click on them?

There's always a flip side I guess. Awfully tempted by that ad-blocker though.
 
I never even get a glimpse of 95% of the ads it blocks. Every once in a long while something new will pop up that Ad Block doesn't have on its list yet, and I'll see a little transparent tab up in the corner labeled "block." I click that, and it all goes away. Sooooo wonderful. [:)] In fact, that's the main reason I stick with Firefox. Well, that and the fact that it's much less vulnerable and/or attractive to hackers than Internet Explorer.

I will say, though, for anyone still deciding whether or not to go with Firefox, that the new version 3 still has a few bugs in it. I upgraded a month or so ago, gave it a whirl, and then went back to the last version of Firefox 2.
 
at least the ones that prompted you to switch back?

I've upgraded to 3 and I noticed a few smallish differences that are a little annoying but livable at the moment. Or I've found ways around them. But I am curious what I might be missing or might not have run up against. It's an idle curiosity so only bother if you've got some free time available.
 
The smaller one, though still quite annoying, was that I couldn't copy pictures and paste them into my photo editing program; all I got were black squares. The larger one was that about once every other day, the browser would just shut down for no apparent reason. I've seen both issues addressed on the Firefox support board, but the people describing them seemed to have different configurations and/or add-ons than I did, so the answers were no help to me.

BTW, where do you keep managing to find so darn many different avatars with magpies in them? [;)]
 
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The smaller one, though still quite annoying, was that I couldn't copy pictures and paste them into my photo editing program; all I got were black squares.
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no.. haven't had that problem.

The larger one was that about once every other day, the browser would just shut down for no apparent reason.
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no... not that one, either.

The problem I noticed was here. When the new boards first opened, If I quoted text without hitting enter (and creating line breaks) first, I just couldn't get my cursor to hit the end of that line under the quote so that I could then hit enter and have it start typing. The cursor would just kind of catch the line and these edit type boxes would come up and I couldn't get the darn thing positioned to be able to type. My only recourse was, like I said, to hit enter a few times in a blank compose field, then copy the text into the first line, then highlight it and hit the quote button. I never used the quote function next to reply because I could never get the cursor to get outside the end of the quote.

But, of course, I would forget half the time. Over time, though, it got easier to do it and I stopped having to fuss with it at all. I'd put the pointer at the end of the line and click and hit enter and all was good. I'd start typing. But as soon as I upgraded to 3, the problem happened again. I cannot, no matter hard hard I try, get the cursor to hit outside the quote area. My fix, though, is to switch to Basic Editor, hit enter a few times after the end quote command and then go back to Advanced Editor and find that new line I just entered.

Otherwise, I haven't run across any other problems.

BTW, where do you keep managing to find so darn many different avatars with magpies in them?
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Well, I am obsessive and this is the kind of activity that takes very little brain power so late on Saturday night I often find myself searching Google images. I also use it to avoid doing work that needs doing. The game is to enter different search parameters to get up different sorts of results. It also helps that lots of other people seem fascinated with magpies.
 
Yeah, I'm sure that is some sort of Firefox 3 glitch - and one that's not likely to get fixed any time soon unless it affects a bunch of other forums besides TORN.

Anyway, Firefox 2.9.whatever works just fine for me, so I can stick with that for as long as necessary. If you (or anyone else) wants to downgrade from 3 to 2.9 and need directions, I'll be glad to provide.
 
and now I have the same quote problem with Firefox.

That's how I solved the problem: I didn't hit the 'quote' button, but typed in 'quote' and '/quote' in square brackets at the beginning and end of the quote. Then I don't have any problems.
 
I had a dial-up connection until just a couple of years ago. There was a noticeable difference in speed between Firefox and IE over dialup -- especially on some of Microsoft's sites like Hotmail, which you'd think would load faster under IE.

Also, as others have pointed out, Firefox has add-ons like AdBlocker. And Firefox is absolutely free and has fewer security problems than IE.

Some of the Microsoft sites do require IE, though, so keep it up to date.
 
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This was a few years ago. I had switched to Firefox, then my old work laptop died and I had to get a new one. The default on the new on was IE, and after using it again I found it to be much faster than Firefox. I'd be interested to learn what the more recent experiance of high-speed users is.
 
My work computer (at home I'm using mainly Safari on a Mac) had only IE, and was rather annoying for a long while (though not exactly because of speed). Some time ago I got an updated IE, and after that, it drove me nuts. It slowed down extremely, not only in loading websites, but in pulling up my favorites as well. One minute per click ... *rolls eyes*

Finally I convinced my boss that I need Firefox, and since then there are no more problems, pages load fast and I don't have all these annoying problems I had with IE any longer.

Maybe it has something to do with the versions or the computer, too?
 
Anyway, Firefox 2.9.whatever works just fine for me, so I can stick with that for as long as necessary. If you (or anyone else) wants to downgrade from 3 to 2.9 and need directions, I'll be glad to provide.
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Well, I'm running into more problems that I think might be FF3 related. I'm having trouble posting comments at youtube and I can't see certain special characters. After spending a fair amount of time trying to find some fix for these problems, I'm ready to downgrade. So, I'll take you up on your offer - if you catch this delayed reply from me.
 
No worries about my not seeing your message; I have the "automatic e-mail" function turned on, so I always know when someone replies to one of my posts. :-)

Sorry you're still having problems - but not surprised. [unsure] Firefox 3 apparently has a lot of growing-up to do. Anyway, here's the link that will tell you how to downgrade to any previous version of FF that you like.
 
Both the response and the downgrade. A quick check of one site shows the characters show fine.

But my toolbar looks different and I don't seem to have the options for it that I did with Firefox (This isn't quite firefox, is it? It's Shiretoko). I can't add icons for site searches or image searches.

Dang... I want those icons more than the lack of characters showing up bothers me. I may just upgrade again.
 
It should be Firefox, unless a) they've changed the links since I downloaded my own 2.9 version or b) you downloaded a different version. Anyway, you should still be able to find add-on's that will restore your toolbar to its former look. I didn't have much trouble with that.
 
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