Why does DPReview FORCE Flash upon us???

[Phil Askey]

Sigh. If you knew how many hours I have put into coding cross-browser support. There are many hundreds of lines of code on this site designed to deal with the differences between browsers. This is the primary reason the site works better with IE:

IE is not a moving target, since version 5 (late version 4) we have had to make no changes to remain compatible and have the same rendering. This can not be said of Netscape or Opera which introduce significant changes every six months, while I try to keep up and change our cross-browser coding my work priorities for a subtle improvement for a small minority of users (less than 8% of all visitors) is low.

And there is little if any alternative, since Phil's site is coded
specifically for IE, and other browsers (he considers all other
browsers "damaged" and will do little if anything to let them work
properly) are typically crippled when it comes to even some common

 

[Petteri Sulonen]

Ed Leys wrote:
[snip]

If you have an IE browser and the flash plug-in is not installed,
when a flash advert is detected, the full plug-in will be
downloaded as a "favor" to you by IE and then it will ask, through
a pop-up, if you want the plug-ininstalled. There is no known way
to turn off this activity in IE.

How about Tools: Internet Options: Security: Custom level: Download signed/unsigned ActiveX controls > Disable? Or setting your user account up so that you don't have permissions to install ActiveX controls (leaving those for the admin account)?

[snip]

Petteri
--
Portfolio: [ http://www.seittipaja.fi/index/ ]
Photo lessons: [ http://www.seittipaja.fi/lessons/ ]

 

[brn]

I'm going to have to agree with Mike. The News forum is often abused. I'm not specifically picking on Geir, but the way this forum is handled in general. There is an "Open Talk" forum where this kind of stuff would be more appropriate.

... unnecessary thread onto the readers of the News Discussion
forum? There are more appropriate places for it ...
Mike

 

[bm bradley]

Phil

every now and then the browser on my machine runs an error mesg about the script being unsable and shuts down

--
bm bradley

 

[brn]

I can tell you that I've never visited the site with IE. If there are things that IE can do on this site that I can't, I don't miss them.

IE is not a moving target, since version 5 (late version 4) we have
had to make no changes to remain compatible and have the same
rendering. This can not be said of Netscape or Opera which
introduce significant changes every six months, while I try to keep
up and change our cross-browser coding my work priorities for a
subtle improvement for a small minority of users (less than 8% of
all visitors) is low.

And there is little if any alternative, since Phil's site is coded
specifically for IE, and other browsers (he considers all other
browsers "damaged" and will do little if anything to let them work
properly) are typically crippled when it comes to even some common

 

[BJN]

I, and othres I work with, have encountered various problems. They
may be solved now, but none of us want to use 14 days to set up a
complete development platform wilt Dev. tools, databases, drivers
etc. just to test if flash now is without problems. OK?

Get real. If you are so precious about your system, surf from an "expendable" machine. This reminds me of the kind of "into the wind" complaint when the text-only curmudgeons would gripe about websites that used bitmaps on web pages. Don't expect the net to dumb down to meet your peculiar needs, it won't happen.

--
BJN

 

[nufferkay]

Well, know then that your efforts do not go unappreciated. I browse using a Mozilla variant (on a Mac - a tiny tiny minority), and DPR renders if not perfectly, well enough that the difference doesn't bother me. This is enormously better than a lot of sites out there, made by people who don't know that there ARE browsers other than IE, and who think FrontPage is the perfect way to develop websites.

I think people who use "alternative" browsers tend to be (because they have to be) more tolerant of pages that don't look perfect, as long as they still work just fine.

IE is not a moving target, since version 5 (late version 4) we have
had to make no changes to remain compatible and have the same
rendering. This can not be said of Netscape or Opera which
introduce significant changes every six months, while I try to keep
up and change our cross-browser coding my work priorities for a
subtle improvement for a small minority of users (less than 8% of
all visitors) is low.

And there is little if any alternative, since Phil's site is coded
specifically for IE, and other browsers (he considers all other
browsers "damaged" and will do little if anything to let them work
properly) are typically crippled when it comes to even some common

 

[Pan Shizhu]

I understand it is great work to support for cross-browser. and generally most non-IE users are more "tolerant" if the web-page is not looking very good.

I do find dpreview looks much better in Mozilla than in IE, because in IE the font is toooo small and I've got no way to increase the font, in Mozilla I can change the font size freely and the page looks much better.

Here is my only two finding:

in IE when my mouse move onto the left side bar, the sub-menu will pop-up, but in Mozilla it cannot.

in the forum, the imbeded image can be expanded by move the mouse onto it, but in Mozillia I can't.

These two things seems similiar and if you can solve these problem I'll be greatly preciated. Mozillia is a GNU software which is supposed to live forever even if IE dead.

IE is not a moving target, since version 5 (late version 4) we have
had to make no changes to remain compatible and have the same
rendering. This can not be said of Netscape or Opera which
introduce significant changes every six months, while I try to keep
up and change our cross-browser coding my work priorities for a
subtle improvement for a small minority of users (less than 8% of
all visitors) is low.

And there is little if any alternative, since Phil's site is coded
specifically for IE, and other browsers (he considers all other
browsers "damaged" and will do little if anything to let them work
properly) are typically crippled when it comes to even some common

 

[brn]

in the forum, the imbeded image can be expanded by move the mouse
onto it, but in Mozillia I can't.

That's 100% a browser issue and there's nothing Phil can do to change that. I do believe that feature is going to go into a future version of Mozilla (1.4 maybe). In the meantime, you do have the option of clicking on the image to view it in seperate window.

 

[Geir Ove]

I now get a Dialog that I have to click away, but that's fast!

Geir Ove

If you have an IE browser and the flash plug-in is not installed,
when a flash advert is detected, the full plug-in will be
downloaded as a "favor" to you by IE and then it will ask, through
a pop-up, if you want the plug-ininstalled. There is no known way
to turn off this activity in IE.

How about Tools: Internet Options: Security: Custom level: Download
signed/unsigned ActiveX controls > Disable? Or setting your user
account up so that you don't have permissions to install ActiveX
controls (leaving those for the admin account)?

[snip]

Petteri
--
Portfolio: [ http://www.seittipaja.fi/index/ ]
Photo lessons: [ http://www.seittipaja.fi/lessons/ ]

 

[AdamW]

These two things seems similiar and if you can solve these problem
I'll be greatly preciated. Mozillia is a GNU software which is
supposed to live forever even if IE dead.

But MS owns IE, and the only time IE dies is when MS goes kaput and nobody wants to keep it as a GNU.

 

[ssclaire]

Here is what is happening...

If you have an IE browser and the flash plug-in is not installed,
when a flash advert is detected, the full plug-in will be
downloaded as a "favor" to you by IE and then it will ask, through
a pop-up, if you want the plug-ininstalled. There is no known way
to turn off this activity in IE.

In Internet Explorer: Tools -> Internet Options -> Advanced --> Uncheck "Install on Demand."

Isn't that what the setting is for? I've never tested it myself but that's was my understanding.

ssclaire

 

[Tore Lund]

That's a rather up-nose statement

If anyone's being up-nose, it's you. I find it embarrassing that a fellow Norwegian behaves in this way in this in this forum. I wish people would stop pestering Phil about their pet peeves. As far as I have been able to observe, Phil is quite responsive to sensible user requests, and he has created a great forum that we use and enjoy for free, without undue hassles by ads and the like.

I, and othres I work with, have encountered various problems. They
may be solved now, but none of us want to use 14 days to set up a
complete development platform wilt Dev. tools, databases, drivers
etc. just to test if flash now is without problems. OK?

The bottom line is that many of us surf this site without any problems at all. For my own part I use Mozilla 1.3, and there is no problem whatsoever, with or without flash installed. Take your problems up with Microsoft if you want to continue using IE.

Tore

 

[Andrew Harvey]

Yes there is a (little) known way to stop this behaviour.

I hate Flash for the simple reason that ads produced using it are all animated. If there's one thing I hate with a passion is having an animation in the corner of the screen whilst I'm trying to concentrate on reading the page text. You can stop your computer from ever downloading Flash again. It works on Windows NT4, 2000 and XP I'm not sure about 95, 98 or ME.

Firstly, remove all references to "Flash", "Shockwave" or "Macromedia" from your Windows registry. Be careful though if you have other Macromedia products installed - you don't want to delete those entries. WARNING: editing the registry is an expert task, if you don't know what you're doing DON'T DO IT. I take no responsibility. Don't forget to back-up first too.

Secondly, look in the folder "C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc". In there you will find a file called "hosts". Open this "hosts" file using Notepad.

Add the following three lines to the hosts file:

127.0.0.1 active.macromedia.com
127.0.0.1 http://www.macromedia.com
127.0.0.1 download.macromedia.com

There must be a TAB character between the 127.0.0.1 and the domain names. There is no http: in front of the http://www macromedia.com - Phil's scripting is inserting that and I can't stop it.

Save the hosts file. Reboot NT4. You should not need to reboot on Windows 2000 or XP but you may do that if you wish. You will now no longer ever get an invitation from IE to install Shockwave or Flash. There are three downsides - 1. You will not be able to download from Macromedia or even visit their home page. 2. You will not be able to view sites who have only a Flash animation as their entire home page with no HTML alternative for people without Flash (but that's their problem not mine). 3. You won't be able to see those cool cartoons that are circulating the Internet (such as "Star Dudes").

Please do keep clicking on the other ads though, it keeps this site running.

Andy.

Here is what is happening...

If you have an IE browser and the flash plug-in is not installed,
when a flash advert is detected, the full plug-in will be
downloaded as a "favor" to you by IE and then it will ask, through
a pop-up, if you want the plug-ininstalled. There is no known way
to turn off this activity in IE.

In Internet Explorer: Tools -> Internet Options -> Advanced -->
Uncheck "Install on Demand."

Isn't that what the setting is for? I've never tested it myself but
that's was my understanding.

ssclaire

 

[Bob the Printer88467]

Now, I occasionally get popups telling me that Java is disabled.
It sure as hell is. My work machine is just too slow to be futzing
around with Java for some advertisement.

Tell your boss that you need a newer/faster machine so that you can be on DPR during work hours!!!



Sincerely, Bob the Printer

 

[Bob the Printer88467]

Geir,

We're a free site, free to you, if we didn't have advertisers we'd
last about a month. If you had a clue about bandwidth and how much
it costs you really wouldn't complain.

BTW. I think there's something wrong with your machine because on
every machine I've used (mac or windows) having embedded flash has
very little impact on page loading once you have the plugin
installed (which is automatic on the first visit).

Very good Phil! I see now problem with the Flash stuff. Like someone else said, it's a very efficient way of doing things and I see no slowdown at all!

Seems like some are just against progress??



Sincerely, Bob the Printer

 

[Bob the Printer88467]

Hello,

We have been spared for it for a long time. But now, every time I
go to the front page, IE 6.0 sits there for about 30 seconds before
it finally asks if I want to install Macromedia Flash! And NO, I
DON'T WANT THAT. For several reasons:

1) The space it takes up
2) The peformance resources it steals
3) Most importantly: I have had all sorts of conflicts with ohter
development tools that I use.
4) This should not be FORCED upon anybody.

Get with the program Geir! I see no performance hits here with WinXP and Flash! You must be running an old 386 or something!

Better update your 'development tools' while you're at it!



Sincerely, Bob the Printer

 

[Peter G]

I hate flash with a passion, because it is so dang annoying. It used to severely slow my old computer (Ppro 200MHz, which my mom has now) on flash rich pages.

The latest version of Opera is fast, powerfull, stable and full of useful controls. Like shutting down all plugins, open only requested pop-ups (or none if you choose), and disable java. This is the way mine is all the time and it makes for fast, clean, annoyance free surfing. These and many more are on a quick preference key F12.

It shuts them down and I get no requests to install flash etc...

The downside to Opera is that Phils cascading menus use M$ specific javascript extensions (I assume) which means you you have to click through on alternate browsers.

As far as denying revenue, I don't think I am. Most savy advertisers realize people surf without flash and serve a static add instead.

Give http://www.opera.com a shot.

Peter

 

[pukeazoid]

just get mozilla...

http://www.mozilla.org

i dont' have flash installed and i get never asked...

90% of time flash is just needed to present some spam anyway...

good sites based on flash always have a no flash version...

ie sux mozilla rulez

thats my point !

 

[pask]

it needs very small space on your hard disk
it's well build the is no conflict at all...

most of the best web site today are build with flash, can u really surf on internet normally without flash ? i've made my porfolio with flash,it's powerfull, design, dynamic.

if u don't use flash, java,realplayer,quicktime don't use internet, it's simple

--
http://www.pp13.com :::come to see my folio here:::, no blabla, just picts