Al, GardenWeb has been "booting" me off the forum lately, I'll sign in, then a couple of posts later I have to sign in again.

I only get the ads and banners when I don't sign in, so that's the first thing I check now.

boy, I hope it's that easy for you, or I'll be no help at all!

Annie

Have you tried using Firefox as your browser. I get very few pop up ads; just a note that they have blocked them.

I love it!

Glenda

I get a big fat Macy's ad! Every time I open a thread. Funny because I shop Penney's much more than Macy's.

Anybody pushes an ad right in my face, has lost a customer for good. That and ads that keep moving and flashing at you.

I was shopping yesterday: as I walked by Macy's that blasted irritating ad came into my mind and I walked on by.

Do they think we are idiots?

I also use Firefox and haven't seen ads here, ever.

I have heard good things about Chrome, also, but I'm too lazy to change.

Firefox and Adblock Plus & Flashblock will prevent all the ads and annoying things that move.

I also use Firefox and haven't see any of those pop-ups.

That's strange! I use Firefox but still get it. Not sure why. Al

Al, you need the Firefox add-ons. I recommend AdBlock plus.

Here is a link that might be useful: AdBlock Plus

I don't use Firefox and I never get those ads. Never have and don't know why. Hope I didn't speak too soon. ; )

Thanks sushipup! I will give that a try. Al

I second Firefox with Ad Block Plus!

Never seen it or any other ad. I sign on via AOL which I have multiple problems with daily, but I can honestly say I never see ads popping up on this forum.

I have AOL and the Macy's ads drive me crazy.

I actually have a pop-up blocker. It works for the old style pop-ups. These new ads are "roll-downs", not pop-ups, so that seems to make a difference. Not that I'm happy they've found a way around my protections.

Nope, no JC Penney. I use firefox, and am getting a rolldown for "zovirax" (first time I actually looked at it.)

I'm just glad that that well-endowed woman clad in her blue playtex bra isn't watching me from the sidelines anymore.

Cathy in SWPA

I use IE and as long as I am logged into the forum, I never have a problem with ads of any sort.

Alexa

Whew! I just subscribed to AdBlock and the popups - or rolldowns, whatever they are - seem to have stopped. I use Firefox with filters and, logged in or not, I was going crazy (not too far to go for me) with ads from Macy's, Penny's, Toyota and someone else.

Thanks for the tip.

Sherry

No pop ups or banners or anything - AOL works fine for me with no problems. However, the cooking forum is v-e-r-y slow loading for me and it is the only site that is so slow for me and I have come to the conclusion that it is this site and not my computer.

At the moment we have four computers in the house - a 1999 iMac, a newer Mac from 2007, one dtr's year old Macbook and another dtr's ancient laptop that I'm using to type this. I use wireless TimeWarner cable and firefox on all of them except the 2007 Mac, which is the main, plugged-in computer. I started getting the popups on all of them a few weeks ago.

To see if it was Firefox, I switched to IE for a while - still got the popups until I added AdBlock this morning.

Woodie, as for slowness, for some reason this site is very slow on the old iMac and the plugged-in Mac, but quick as a fox on this ancient HP laptop and the Macbook. I've been wondering about that since my dtrs abandoned their old computers a few months ago and left them for me to play with while they travel.

Just so you know, I've found that the popups are timed for certain days, or certain times of the days, then they go away. The Macy's/Penney's has stopped at the moment. But I'm still getting one of the "Obama wants you to go back to school" nonsense today.

And yes, gardenweb is the slowest to open of all sites I visit too. It must have gotten huge to be so slow. The pictures that people were talking so much about, if they haven't resized them to something like 600x400 pixels, it may slow the website down as well as the thread they're in.

But I'm no expert... so don't pay me any mind! :)

Beth

I use Opera with popup blockers- no banners!

I use Internet Explorer, I don't subscribe to AdBlock or anything except the free AVG virus software and as long as I'm logged in, I don't get any ads at all, not even the well endowed woman wearing a Playtex bra.

I do have Vista, which I hate intensely.

Annie

So what explains the popups and the different speeds different users get? Simply time of day? We have different computers (PCs and Macs), different ISPs, different software, etc.; some of us get the popups, some of us don't. It's fast for some of us, slow for others. And not just for dial-ups, either. Goofy!

In my case, if it's time-of-day, I can hardly wait until tomorrow morning to see if installing AdBlock really worked (I did it this morning) or if it's a placebo effect that will go away! I was so happy thinking I'd stopped the popups!

I guess I'm too old to learn new tricks. It hurts my brain to think about this.

The Playtex lady was wearing navy blue, to boot, Annie1992. I'd glance over, and there she was. Although I'm used to the sidebars, the rolldowns are kind of new to me.

The only other thing that I notice about gardenweb is that I never get "done" when I load a page. I see a constant "transferring data from cdn.eyewonder.com" or "iv.doubleclick.net, etc." I should probably do something, but I don't feel like learning anymore.

Cathy in Windy SWPA

I'm using IE and I get Macy's at work. Haven't seen the Penney's one and don't really shop at either one.

At home it's AOL and no ads.

Hmmmm.........

I have Firefox loaded, but don't use it simply because I'm too lazy to learn it. IE is my comfort zone!

Deanna

The problem with the JC Penny ad is that if you have your screen resolution set at 800 x 600, there is no way to get at the close button. It just takes over the screen. The web developers use much smaller resolution these days. I think they forget to test for use blind folks that like normal sized text. I wrote to them and they said they would forward it to their tech team.

Usually I use Firefox with AdBlock with few or no pop up ads. Google just released the beta version of Chrome. So far (an hour or so) there are few pop ups and the browser is quite nice.

The more people who are on a site the slower it is to load.

The quickest way to get rid of a pop-up is to click the Refresh button.

Roll downs usually happen if your cursor moves through the banner ad at the top of the page... ( move your cursor before the page loads all the way. )

On my machine Internet Explorer 6 is much faster than Firefox, even without all the add-ons...

Rita

I hate hate hate the popups on this site. They've gotten ridiculous, covering the whole page so you can't see anything. Once recently loaded a full page ad when you hit close (instead of closing).

And I agree, anytime one is so obnoxious that I'm forced to notice what it's for, I make a point of never shopping there. I can't imagine that advertising this annoying has the desired effect.

ROTFL Cathy! Man does that woman give me the creeps! Stuff is blowing all over the neighborhood here, thanks to it being garbage/recycle night. There are trashcan and recycle bin lids everywhere. I hope trash doesn't soon follow!

I seem to get pop ups for a while and then either my computer ad blocker gets wise to them, or they self destruct. Now its Macy's but it used to be Campbell's Soup.