Browser Becomes Billboard 476
MikeKD writes "Citing a desire to 'enhance the user experience', United Virtualities is 'preparing to introduce a product [called Ooqa Ooqa] that will allow advertisers to automatically change the appearance of Web browsers, usurping some of the functions built into popular browsers...', according to an MSNBC article--and all this supposedly without downloading any additional software. UV says a lot of sweet things about being able to turn it off and allowing the web sites to customize the degree of intrusion (from reverting to normal form when leaving to retaining the rebrand even after leaving), but does anyone think advertisers will restrain themselves? Not I." Friends don't let friends use browsers susceptible to this.
glad I use Konq/Moz (Score:4, Interesting)
Konq would do the same I'm sure...
How? (Score:2, Interesting)
It's MINE (Score:2, Interesting)
It's mine...don't touch!
-Matt
why would anyone use this browser? (Score:5, Interesting)
But then, I remember the comet cursor scandal*. I'm sure they will package this into a really neat sounding program that will do everything you need, plus other things that you don't know about.
* For those that don't remember, Comet Cursor was this cursor customization that you could download and make your cursor look like anything you want, even an animated something. Pretty neat, except that the software transmitted all your mouse movements and click to their company, so they know where you clicked (becasue it was a browser plug-in) and where you went. The product was wildly popular for a while. I guess some will do anything for a little bit of snazzy-ness.
problems (Score:2, Interesting)
Now I now ie has some fishy abilities to let people mess it up (or enhance it), so ie would be a pretty easy target. Allowing plugins to automatically be installed was a bad idea, I do not know how many people have had me remove viruses from their computer that were really just garbage like comet cursor, gohip, nad that gator thing. Why is my computer so slow. Why does the internet not go where I tell it to. All because they clicked yes by mistake during a popup storm.
The question comes in, are they going after mozilla/netscape6, and opera. If so I do not think these browsers will be as inviting as ie. If they find bugs to hijack mozilla, you can bet that it will be fixed in a hurry.
Maybe if they block all the non complient browsers...
If this all this advertisement invasion this keeps up it will make linux the better browsing platfrom (the plugins are windows only, unless codweavers for some reason decieds to support them). Heck right now people are amazed when they see me go to sites and get what I wanted, instead of all sorts of ads.
Crosses the line - big time (Score:5, Interesting)
Then, I stopped visiting certain websites when the "browser takeover" intensified with the use of "shoshkles"(sp?) - which obscured the very content I visited the web page to read, in order to hock their annoying, unwanted product. The analogy here is opening a newspaper, and starting to read an article on a local election, when suddenly an ad from the other page crawls and sets itself over that article.
Now, the same company that brought *that* annoyance now decides that the very interface of my browser isn't mine to control. Who needs that "Home" button? Not you! No - you go ahead and have this "BUY!" button instead. "Back" button? Nonono...you need another "BUY!" button!. What? You're not pressing them? Well, maybe you need some more incentive...let's replace the Reload button with a button that looks *just like* your old one, but actually goes to the same place our "BUY!" button takes you!
Hopefully Opera will stay clear of this, otherwise I may have to stop browsing altogether when I'm forced to use the Windows partition of my comp.
How long until a new worm uses this to quietly replace all the buttons and fields in a users browser with identical-looking ones that don't work as advertized?
"Opt out?" (Score:2, Interesting)
Great. Look forward to that!
Desktop Advertising System (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually what they are working towards is to turn the desktop computer into a Desktop Advertising Device, all protected by Digital Rights Management so you can never avoid the Ads.
To get any work done, you have to sit through long blocks of ads.
And viewing the ads will be mandatory.
Ultimately this will be a form of economic slavery neatly package as something neat and fashionable. Imagine being a borg as a fashion statement, or something to do to tick out the 'rentals
Re:glad I use Konq/Moz (Score:3, Interesting)
Deja vu (Score:5, Interesting)
Open Source is your Friend! (Score:2, Interesting)
Konq would do the same I'm sure...
Thanks to the sh!tty practices of many advertisers and web designers, I'm just itching to get my new system together, running Linux, et al.
In the recent (or not so recent in some cases) past, here are things that piss me off and motivate me away from closed source (alleged) systems:
Page refresh/redirects, trapping etc. I will disable this first, if it's not an option I'll make it one and contribute. Most hated and abused feature of any page.
Bloat. (*cought* Tom's *cough* Hardware *cough*) Pages are getting bigger and bigger and on a 56K modem I just close the window at some point, their insistance upon saying it all in one page failed. Dunno what to do if anything, probably just maintain a list of anti-bookmarks (i.e. warn me if I'm heading toward one of these wastes of time) Maybe even notify what's being fed in from where and disable on the fly.
Javascript Bloat. Yeah, it's not just a little, it's pages absolutely loaded with it, but I need it on for some pages, so being able to enable/disable per browser window would be nice. Some people write it so badly it crashes on a regular basis or brings up an empty page in Netscape and IE
Pop-up/unders. These will not happen, period. I'm fed up with mopping this fecal matter off my desktop.
Flash On/Off, like other features, too much is a bad thing, but some people just don't get the clue.
Malformed html. Man. If you cruise eBay, you see this a lot. People buy some piece of crap auction authoring tool and it mangles the page. I usually email people about this, but they're 99% of the time clueless about what to do. (i.e. point it out to the hack who sold it to you and get some cust support)
For all the bitching and whining I hear about Slashdot, it's about the least offensive site I visit all day. I hope it stays that way.
Re:favicon.ico (Score:2, Interesting)
Also unlike IE, Mozilla also supports PNG, JPEG and GIF for site icons.