Hi, I'm on an old laptop running Ubuntu Linux, with Firefox as the browser. When I open a tab for STW, the Firefow CPU usage goes from about 25% to over 90% and stays there. It's unusable, the browser freezes.

It's caused by the huge Flash adverts for ChainReactionCycles and others.

So, I've had to install ?. Now I can use STW again, Firefox CPU usage stays around 25%.

I don't like doing it, and I know ads pay for the site, but these ads are SO HUGE that they're counter-productive – they stop me using the site at all.

Cheers, al.

I sympathise. Those ads are wasting our cpu and electricity.

The browser locking up is a bit of a nuisance.

al.

Load firefox without the Flash gets rid of some of them but I only use it when I'm using the lapotop mobile otherwise I'm ok on my old setup as it's the video processing that hogs things.

I have had enough of the fan in my laptop in take off mode. So have just turned flash off, instant quiet. Cant be good for the advertisers though.

Installing ? also rids Hotmail of all the "I lost 400lbs of belly fat" ads and the associated nauseating pictures.

Yup the ads are utterly annoying. In activiyt monitor the site (safari) shows at using 9% of cpu, the flash just below 30%. All its doing is causing most of us to block ads completely stw and thus WHAT IS THE POINT.

just turned ?? on, no more irritating eyecatching charge adverts, bliss

Agree.

can we start a petition for just static adds on stw?

Judging by this and the thread the other day, a large number of the regulars on this forum use ?? because they have to otherwise it is unusable.

Presumably as similar number of new users are put off joining this excellent community because they don't know about ??and there computer goes mental whenever they visit.

But sadly the ads are how this forum is funded.

So it's all a bit of a quandry.

they can still charge for static adds! And then more of us wouldn't switch them off.

Alan – big thread on it the other day:
http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/is-anyone-elses-pc-getting-ragged-by-this-site

But, yes, this site with the ads on is unusable, so ads HAVE to come off. It's not even a question of morals, simply usability.

No ads, no forum.

The ads don't affect my quad core PC with 8gig etc but not everyone has access to that! My laptop struggles which is basic spec.

Maybe we could have a low bandwidth option?

Oh it'll need money to employ that-hence we need ads lol.

They do make the site snazzy though and strangley hypnotic…must buy…from..crc…hypno toad…

Yup this site makes my laptop battery life pretty rubbish. Not good really.

Main forum page is using 70% processor time on my mac book pro with the ad blocker off.
Ridiculous.

So, to me (as a web professional) it's pretty easy: every advertiser (CRC, Charge) sets up their full-bandwidth videos and low bandwidth (static) equivalents. At the moment, CRC want me to know they have a sale. OK, an image will do it. Charge want me to know that they are cool. Again, show me a picture.

And then, give the user a choice, set it with a cookie. When I come in from my clockwork laptop, I get the low bandwidth site. When I view from my Cray, I see the videos. Everybody is happy.

Alternatively, send threatening email to everyone who takes the time to provide constructive criticism. Like what we all got today. Thanks.

Cheers, al.

Absolutely Al. The voice of reason.

I think some market research by STW over the target demographic might keep mag., advertisers and punters happy.

Just a thought.

*awaits threatening email*

simple people might find out about it!

Wouldn' us be wantin' that now wouldee

It's wierd how this site runs just fine on my phone, with all the ads running, even tho' the phone isn't Flash compatible. The only ad that doesn't display is Chain Reaction; I just get a bounding box with the name. So how come it's ok on a device with less than 60Mb of RAM but computers with Gb of RAM struggle? I'm really interested as to why as I'm no computer wizz, and I don't understand.

The only ad that doesn't display is Chain Reaction; I just get a bounding box with the name.

you've answered your own question there.

Anyway, as shown in the other thread, its not necessarily the hardware capacity of the device thats the limitation, there is something in having high bandwidth flash ads that disagrees with some combination of setups (OS, Graphic Card, RAM, Cache, Browser software, Browser release, flash release etc etc).

But it shouldnt. If it were one or two setups, then you can blame the user, when it's many, many, more as evidenced in the posts on recent threads (extrapolating to user base here, obviously) then its a serious failure on the website publisher.

The CRC and Charge ads are really annoying, and make my fans on my PC spin up. Please STW, this is not a bunch of wingers asking you to cut off your income stream, its just a bunch of STW users asking whoever designs the ads to take some account of processor load.

i'd pay a little extra in my subs for an ad free version when i'm logged in to make up the difference

No problem here. 4 year old PC with 2gb of ram, 128gb graphics card and a 3gig processor. CPU usage is only 12-18% but I agree it can be annoying for some. I found older versions of Firefox to be worse.

I think CHB has hit the nail on the head there – I think everyone realises the importance of the ads to STW as an income stream – I have used them when buying things and would continue to do so as do/will many others. However, I think it is fair that we as 'customers' can point out to the powers that be that the ads they are running are a) causing problems with smooth running of (often well specced) machines, (b) this is resulting in disgruntled users, and possible loss of revenue from said ads because people either block them* or deliberately wont click them as a form of protest, and (c) that this could be sorted fairly easily by either better coding/less intensive images/movies coming from the guys who develop the ads. After all guys, keeping pretty loyal customers/fans happy can only be benificial to you in the long run and just simply makes just business sense- revenue from said ads might go up, people are less whingey (maybe!) and everyone (you, us,your advertisers)is happy.

Incidently, I quite like the cotic thing down the side – think it would look better as \ [main page] / rather than / [ main page] /, but thats just me.

point II is – having upgraded my machine, site + ads runs better with a dual core rather than single core, but them I have 8gb ram and a clean install of win 7 etc (cf single core processor, 4gb ram and xp where it held everything up no end)

* not condoning blocking ads here, but it is a fact that people are doing it

* not condoning blocking ads here,

I would condone the blocking of ads.
The alternative is a PC juddering to a halt.
No amount of faux sympathy for STW's ad income is going to make it any more acceptable to be forced to sit through the kind of effect the ads have on my PC.

it wasnt faux sympathy – just trying to see it from both sides*.

*written from a PC which I freely admit has ads blocked – it would probably die if the CRC ads were running, but as our work IT policy wont let us install flash on any machines then theres not a lot I can do about it and I get to see the benefits of the flash based ad free site.

The evans and wiggle ads arent flash, they catch they eye, are less irritating (both visually and on machine resources) why cant the CRC/charge ads be like that?

We are symapthetic to the problem and we've spent the last few days investigating what has been causing the high processor demands. It would indeed seem to be the Flash CRC ads that were the problem. They've now been changed and the processor demands on the machines here n the office have significantly dropped.

All our advertisers will be getting our new guidelines on ad production that gives details of the bench testing we will be doing on all ads before we put them live on the site. We have set up a test rig that consists of, well, a really shite computer and some old version browsers. If the ad doesn't ramp up the procesor on that machine more than a preset level then it passes. If not and it will get sent back to the advertiser for a diet.

Sorry if our site has been causing your machines to run hot. Hopefully we can avoid that happening again in the future.

thanks Mark.

*tentatively reaches for the Adblocker "off" button*

Brilliant. Good work Mark. Will check out the site on my shonky laptop at the weekend and see what happens. Thanks for taking our concerns seriously.

Thanks Mark.

thanks Mark, glad you're listening and acting upon it 🙂

Many Thanks! Glad to have helped in my small way 😉

A quick test: no ads (won't say how?!?), Firefox CPU == 6%

Turn on ads, Firefox CPU == 60%

So, that's much better than my previous browser-freezing 90-95% but still quite a lot. Leaves enough overhead for the browser to function which is the important thing.

Cheers, al.

Great – cheers Mark.

I've now had to turn the heating on in my dining room since you fixed this problem, can we have them back please.

having gently turned off the adblocker, I cant say Im overly impressed with any changes CRC might have made.

As al says, my CPU burn-up may have dropped, but it's only to 30% from 60%+

Im supposed to be browsing a forum, not rendering for Pixar. How can you have it thrashing so much. It doesnt happen on other sites I visit…

Cant CRC use animated gifs or something?

Nothing wrong with the new CRC ads Stoner, they are nice and light, 8% CPU on this ancient machine. Okay, not using flash at all could drop that still further, but that isn't likely to happen. Charge Ad takes 24% for comparison, so the new CRC ads far less trouble than that.

Sorry, I paid for the CPU in my machine so I get to choose what it does and CPU hungry Flash adverts are not something I want eating into the machines resources whilst browsing the STW forums. Adverts fine by me but stealing CPU cycles is just that.

Having an old or new system doesn't necessarily determine the impact on cpu utilisation these ads have. It's as much to do with how well the graphics driver can render the output.

An old PC with an old gfx card with a well written driver with good hardware support in the kernel will have lower overhead than a modern gfx card in a modern computer with a crappily written driver that requires the cpu to assist the gfx hardware in rendering the output.

Drac – Member

I've now had to turn the heating on in my dining room since you fixed this problem, can we have them back please.

that is the first time I ever have chuckled at a computer/IT joke. I must be spending too much time on here.